This Is What We Want – 3 Agenda Activities

The following ideas are ideal for face-to-face training but work equally well with live virtual training.

As part of our opening, we need to:

• bring learners mentally as well as physically into the room
• connect our learners together
• connect our learns to the content

These 3 agenda activites can help with all of these.

Sticker Vote

Prior to the start of your training:

• -place 3 ‘sticker’ on each learners table/desk
  -Write out your daily agenda
• Say to learners, “You will see 3 stickers in front of you. I’m going to explain each point on today’s suggested content and once I’m finished, I’d like you to place your 3 stickers next to the 3 key things for you. Where I see more stickers, that’s where we’ll spend more time, where I see fewer stickers, I’ll know that you just want the key point and move on.”
• Explain each piece of content along with the benefits of each.
• Ask learners to bring their 3 stickers and add them to the 3 key point for them personally.
• Once everyone has voted, identify the key content for the day.

As you move into content that has a high vote during the day, refer to it as you begin. Likewise, as you move into low voted content, mention that you will be keeping this to just key practical points. This gives learners the feeling of choice and that their needs are being met.

Graphical Vote

• Prior to the start of your training:
  -place different shapes of PostIt notes on teams table/desk
  -Write the content modules for the day in graphical format ie draw the 2 axis of a graph and add the content from left to right across the bottom (see image to the right)
• Say to learners, “Please take 3 PostIt notes each – they can be 3 the same or 3 different from the selection on your table. I’m
  going to explain each point on today’s suggested content and once I’m finished, I’d like you to place your 3 PostIt notes next to the 3 key things
  for you. If someone has already placed a PostIt note where you want to vote, place your directly above to form columns. The higher the column, that’s where we’ll spend more time, the lower the column, I’ll know that you just want the key point and move on.”
• Explain each piece of content along with the benefits of each.
• Ask learners to bring their 3 PostIt notes and stick them to the 3 key point for them personally.
• Once everyone has voted, identify the key content for the day.

As you move into content that has a high vote during the day, refer to it as you begin. Likewise, as you move into low voted content, mention that you will be keeping this to just key practical
points. This gives learners the feeling of choice and that their needs are being met.

100 Points Vote

• Prior to the start of your training create a flip chart poster with
  the content modules for the day. This can be liniear of as I have it, similar to a mind map.
• Say to learners, “I’d like you to work in your teams. Each team has 100 points. I’m going to explain today’s content and I’d then like you to work as a team to distribute your 100 points among the content. The higher the importance to you as a team the more points you allocate to it. 50 points is the maximum you can allocate to any one piece of content. The person keeping score is the person who has been with the organisation for the longest time (or if it’s a public workshop, then the person who lives the furthest away from this venue).”
• Explain each piece of content along with the benefits of each.
• Ask learners to discuss and allocate their points. Once they’ve allocated their points, the team leader ie the person that has been keeping score, will write their allocations next to each piece of content.
• Once team leaders have written their content scores, add the scores next to each topic and write the total on the flip chart.

I really like this version because it gets teams discussing the content which adds depth rather than just working on their own as in the previous 2 examples.

As you move into content that has a high vote during the day, refer to it as you begin. Likewise, as you move into low voted content, mention that you will be keeping this to just key practical
points. This gives learners the feeling of choice and that their needs are being met.

Supplement

The only additional part that you might like to add is to dig a little deeper after they have made their agenda selections eg In small teams:

• With the top 3
  selections, what question would you like answered about each or
• What’s the biggest challenge you currently face in your everyday work with the top selection and what do you need from that element of the content?

Call to Action

Avoid just talking through the workshop agenda. Start adding methods that involve your learners during this process.