Page Updated on January 25, 2023
Welcome to Day 2 of the free course on Creating Effective Lessons. Today, let’s look at how to keep your learners attentive and engaged for the duration of the training session. By the way, if you missed Day 1 you can find it here.
Yesterday we talked about what motivates adult learners. Now that you know what motivates them, you might be wondering how to design and deliver a session that keeps the learners engaged and interested in the training?
1. Showing Enthusiasm as the Trainer
First and foremost, show enthusiasm!
Your participants will be more engaged if you teach something you are passionate about because your enthusiasm will shine through.
Enthusiasm, when teaching, is infectious.
So, unless you can fake enthusiasm, choose a topic you like to talk about, be it soft skills, equality, and diversity, or something else.
Even if you are pressured into teaching something that you are not naturally enthusiastic about (because your boss has asked you to give the training for example), try and find elements of the topic that do interest you in some way and build on that interest.
2. Use Body Language Appropriately
Body language can be a powerful tool at your disposal.
Make sure you make eye contact and have a good posture that portrays confidence.
You can also use hand gestures to make a point and make your delivery lively (but without exaggerating!).
Also, make sure that you dress appropriately to make a good impression.
3. Use Your Voice for Maximum Effect
Just like your body language, your voice is also a tool that can be used to hold your participants’ attention.
Have you ever listened to someone speaking in a very monotonous voice and lost the will to listen after one minute?
Then you know how important it is to vary the tone of your voice as you speak to your audience, in order to keep their attention alive. Also, remember to project your voice so participants can hear you.
There are many great books you can buy about using your voice including:
- Freeing the Natural Voice by Kristin Linklater
- Talk like TED by Carmillo Gallo
In many locations worldwide, Toastmasters is an excellent group who organizes regional clubs where you can practice and learn public speaking.
4. Include Games and Activities
As mentioned in lesson 1, people are more motivated to learn if they can be actively engaged in the learning process and be creative.
Games and activities are great tools for this purpose. You can include activities such as:
- Drawing mind maps
- Quizzes
- Small group discussions
- Divide participants into small groups and ask them to design a short presentation together and deliver it in front of the class
- Brainstorming
- Roleplays
- Games
- Problem-solving
- Discussing case studies
- Organize structured debates
- Asking questions to your participants to guide and/or reinforce their learning
5. Space Is Your Friend!
You can use space in the room to provide variety. We will talk in more detail about the importance of the environment for a good learning experience in lesson 3.
For now, though, suffice to say that you can ask participants to move around or use different types of seating layouts to create variety in your sessions.
An activity in which participants need to move around is particularly good after a lunch break, to avoid the afternoon slump!
6. Include Multimedia
It is always good to include a variety of media such as images, graphics, videos, audio files, etc. to keep learners interested.
These media can also be the starting point for an interesting discussion.
7. Tell a Short Story
Stories and anecdotes are always good tools not only to help people remember things but also to attract their attention.
In particular, stories are good to introduce a new topic and instigating curiosity in learners.
For adult learners, it is good to tell an anecdote that they can relate to, maybe something that relates to their everyday life.
8. Use Humour But Don’t Try to Be a Comedian
Not everybody is good at using humor and telling jokes, so do not do anything you do not feel comfortable with, otherwise, it will seem awkward.
However, if you can use it, humor is very helpful (without overdoing it) to keep your participants engaged.
9. Give Coffee Breaks
Regular breaks are essential to make sure that your participants don’t become too exhausted by the end of the session.
How many breaks to give depends on the length of the session, but you can also play it by ear if you sense that the group is tired and needs a short break.
10. Plan Your Session in Advance
As the saying goes:
Failing to plan is planning to fail
Benjamin Franklin
In other words, it is important to plan your sessions carefully to make sure that you include the right balance of activities and content delivery.
Of course, the plan can be flexible, depending on your participants’ needs and reactions, but it is good to have a guide.
So, this is it for this lesson!
Tomorrow we will talk about the teaching environment. How do you create the best environment for your learners and why is it important?
Bye for now. Valeria – Ready to read Day 3 of Trainers BootCamp?
Dr Valeria (Lo Iacono) Symonds
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