Tools for training designers help corporate trainers plan workplace workshops, create materials, and engage participants. Useful resources include training activities, Canva for visual design, Teachable for online course delivery, and editable training course materials for trainer-led sessions.
Training Activities & Games
To engage participants in the classroom and make the training fun, interesting, and memorable, I always recommend including activities and games.
Some activities can act as icebreakers at the beginning of the training to help everyone relax and get to know each other a little more.
Whether an icebreaker or not, though, the activity or game should tie in with whatever you are teaching, and these activities are ones you can draw on to include in training and when teaching:
- 12 resilience activities that are fun – resilience is a great topic to teach, whether to students or to employees.
- If you are teaching online, these 21 Virtual team-building activities will be useful.
- Goal-Setting activities and games are always useful, as goal setting permeates every aspect of teaching and training.
- You might also require quick training activities, and these 21 ideas are ideal for use both online and in a classroom to make training more enjoyable for participants.
Designing Courseware & Lesson Plans
If you have the time and are designing your own materials, then there are lots of great resources and tools online that you can use, and some of my favorites are as follows:
- For designing any kind of graphic, whether it be a blog banner, leaflet, Pinterest banner, Facebook banner, or so on, Canva offers a free plan.
- Free stock images to use on your trainer’s site or in courseware. This post explains everything you need to know about stock photos, although it is worth remembering that in Canva (as discussed above), you will also have access to stock images.
- To find classroom activities to include in training, download the FREE 53-page eBook on ‘Training Activities’.
- To create your own courses online if you wish, Teachable is the platform we recommend. It is very intuitive, and one of the biggest worldwide in terms of support and structure, and the pricing is reasonable.
Where Can You Find Ready-to-Use Training Materials?
There are several companies worldwide that offer training in a variety of topics, and it can mean that you:
- Save a massive amount of time (i.e., weeks designing your own materials)
- Get well-researched training materials designed by an academic with 10+ years of business experience, too
- PowerPoint slides and trainer notes included
Example: instantly downloadable teaching & training materials
The materials are:
- customizable
- instantly downloadable on purchase
- designed so that they work for British and American English
Designing teaching materials when done well takes a lot of time, particularly when attention is needed for adding in training activities and factoring in the needs of different learner types.
Learning How to Be a Freelance or Corporate Trainer
The best way to get a solid understanding of how to be a good trainer is by doing a Train the Trainer course.
For more guidance on planning and delivering effective workshops, explore our Corporate Trainer Resources and Guides.
Research and Feedback Tools for Training Designers
Research and feedback tools can help training designers understand learner needs, gather feedback, and improve training materials. Online survey platforms such as SurveyMonkey are useful for conducting training needs assessments and collecting participant feedback after workshops.
Here are the tools we have used in the past for research, and that you might also find useful.
- This post might be worth reading, which I wrote before on marketing yourself as a freelance trainer.
Creating Online Surveys
Some of the best online survey options for researchers, I would suggest, are as follows:
- SurveyMonkey is quite a popular one and does everything you will need for basic surveys and for more advanced surveys (you have to pay for the more extensive option).
