Easy peasy activities to make your workshops more interactive Part Two

Last week I wrote about seven reasons why you REALLY need to add interactive activities to your workshops and twelve examples of easy peasy engaging and fun activities.  This week I’m back with twelve more.

Remember, adding interactive activities to your workshop isn’t as hard as it sounds

I have hundreds and hundreds of what I call F.G.L.A.’s (facilitated group learning activities) and while many of them are customized to my specific learning content, lots of them aren’t and can easily be adapted to your workshop content.

Here are twelve more engaging activities you can easily use in your next workshop

Next week I’ll share twelve more and a final, fun bonus.

Note:

• those marked with a * can be used online.
• the ones with a # can be used online and IRL (including if you’re in a physical room with the participants and demonstrating from your laptop).

1. # Bingo: use a digital and/or hard copy of a bingo card based on your content.
2. # Polls and surveys: I think these are way underutilized.  Both MSTeams and Zoom have polls and if you want to continue to gather data use a tool like Survey Monkey, like I have here with my Feedback Fallacy survey. Continuing to collect data can be a great way of getting input on your subject area.
3. # Worksheets: before you roll your eyes at me in boredom, give editable worksheets a chance.  Participants have the choice of printing them off or downloading them and then editing them online.  Giving learners a choice is always a good thing. Here’s an example I use when I’m teaching collaborative data analysis. 
4. # Blog posts: Give participants the option to delve further into your topic by including references to your blog posts.  When I teach groups about their motivation style, I always give this blog post as an option to find out more.  
5. # WhatsApp group: This has been a godsend since Covid.  For every workshop I teach I now ask my client to make a WhatsApp group for us so I can easily and quickly share resources with the group in real-time.
6. # Audio clips: in addition to video clips (mentioned last week) use audio clips to emphasize a point, have a guessing game, add some laughter, etc. Check out this laugh track I recently made for the 100th Learning and Development Roundtable.
7. # Google Draw: use the Google Draw tool to get people participating.  I use this bullseye to have participants annotate the image according to how on track they feel we are.

8. # Tic tac toe: use the tic tac toe game, sometimes called x’s and o’s and have participants play in pairs.  Only before they place an x or an o on the gameboard they need to restate something related to your content.  It’s a simple way of reinforcing your content.
9. # Flashcards: create a little quiz in Powerpoint with one slide stating a question and the next slide stating multiple choice options for the answer.  Add slide transitions to resemble flashcards changing then save it as a movie.  Voila!  Flashcards.
10. # Google Sheets: Use google sheets for pretty much anything you want.  I like including a column that has dropdown menus where participants can categorize things. You can protect the sheet as much as you need to.  I usually make the content that the participants and I have added non-editable after the workshop so someone doesn’t mistakenly type over it or erase it later.  Here’s an example Google Sheet with 100+ Life Lessons I collected based on the recent 100th Learning and Development Roundtable.

11. # Easter Egg: hide something in a learning resource that you come back to later and reveal.  Here’s a Google Sheet where people add examples of rewards and recognition based on motivation styles.  Later on, I tell them to scroll down to row 133 where they can see the motivation styles automatically tallied up.
12. # Diigo: use a social bookmarking tool like Diigo to bookmark (tag and remember) your resources and then easily share them.  Explore my account. See the categories by tag on the right-hand side; click on one and you’ll see all the things I’ve tagged in that category. Notice the URL changes to reflect the category, which makes sharing tagged content even easier. Cool huh!?

There you have it, another twelve really easy ways to add interaction and more engagement to your workshops whether they be online, IRL, or even hybrid.   Which one(s) are you most interested in?  Pick one or two new ones for you and get going. Your future workshop participants will thank you.

And stay tuned for next week where I’ll share twelve more and a final bonus.

Now go on and learn, learn some more, and lead

Learn

• Figure out which two or three activities you’d like to try and get ready for some fun.

Laugh

• No more faking an excuse to escape dreadfully boring workshops, even if that includes faking your own death like this mongoose pretending to be dead when a hornbill is near.

Lead

• Press the gas and actually try the activities you’ve selected.