Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember.
Involve me and I’ll understand.
– Confucius
Remember when you were in school? Did you learn the most from the interminable desk-bound subjects you had no interest in and where the teacher droned on and on, or the hands-on subjects and field trips that involved all the senses?
How many of us learned more about handling money from playing ‘shops’ or Monopoly than we ever did from a maths book.
Games are multi-sensory and offer something for everyone irrespective of a person’s learning style. Most of all, games are fun.
Where traditional training methods attempt to instil skills at an intellectual level, skills learned through games tend to stick at an almost cellular level. This is an essential factor in ‘training transfer’ – a measurement of how well a trainee is able to effectively use the skills learned over time. The greater the training transfer, the better the return on the training investment.
In many training environments, messages introduced from a traditional lecture style method are filtered against participant mindsets and perceptions. In many cases the message is either fully or partially rejected as something that doesn’t apply to the participant. Games and activites that create an immediate experience followed by a linked debrief are often very successful at shifting these judgements and mindsets that would otherwise prevent a person from developing new skills.
When designing or evaluating any training program, consider how much of the content includes elements of:
- Participant interaction between participants and the facilitator.
- Variation in the use of games to deliver messages and learn skills.
- The fun value keeping participants engaged and energised
- The link between the game and the message – is there are a clear connection?
- Dynamic delivery! Even the best game or activity will fall flat if the facilitator is not able to bring their own energy and passion.
| ACROSS 5 Training should be ______ (3) 6 Games are multi-? (7) 8 Role- ______ embed skills (5) DOWN |
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