Last week I shared an easy opportunity to leverage your training design, how to get three for the price of one, in fact.

To recap, most of us focus only on delivering our training.  You know, that ________  hour (insert the training length) workshop on ________ (insert your topic) to ______ (insert your audience).

And I get it, that’s a mighty fine thing to focus on.  But if you leave it at that, you’re missing not one but two other really important opportunities to engage your audience.

Opportunity #1 → Pre-engagement

Say what? Pre-engagement is when you do just that, incorporate strategies to engage your audience before they’re in the room with you (whether that room is a virtual or IRL room).    

Pre-engagement strategies are geared towards raising your participant’s curiosity and making them feel included and motivated to attend your training.

Opportunity #2 → Engagement

This is the one we all naturally focus on, the delivery of the actual training and the learning.  So let’s skip ahead to number three.

Opportunity #3 → Post-engagement

Post-engagement is just what it sounds like.  It’s building opportunities to engage your audience AFTER they’ve left your training. It’s applying TOL (transfer of learning) strategies, and essentially, it gets the “learning to leave the ‘room’” (again, no matter whether that room is a real one or a virtual one).  

With post-engagement strategies, it’s like you’re behind your participants cheering them on, and supporting them to use their learning. Now that you’re in the know about the three-for-one opportunity, let’s continue with some examples.  Last week I shared seven examples of pre-engagement.  This time it’s onto seven examples of post-engagement.

Now that you’re in the know about the three-for-one opportunity, let’s continue with some examples.  Last week I shared seven examples of pre-engagement.  This time it’s onto seven examples of post-engagement.

Here are seven examples of post-engagement you can use with your next training

Note: the focus of your post-engagement activities will be affected by your subject matter, but no matter the subject, any and all workshops can benefit from post-engagement.Get feedback but add some flair and fun

1. Get feedback but add some flair and fun

• I have a standard online survey I send to workshop participants, but I add some flair by letting them know there’s a little surprise for them at the end after they finish filling it in.  Here’s what they get.  Enjoy!

2. Feedback with flair and fun example two

• Getting feedback is always important, and sometimes all you need is a prompt to get a good discussion going.  Here’s an example I sometimes use.  Fast and easy.

3. Gamify the learning

• Gamification is using the principles that make online gaming so popular and applying them to learning. To help anchor and reinforce the learning, I’ll sometimes use a virtual quest where participants need to move from virtual room to virtual room by answering questions correctly.  The hardest part of this tool is making sure all the links line up!  Here’s an example.

4. Get participants to reflect on their learning using a fun technique

• Stories are a fabulous way to anchor and reinforce learning.  Here’s a classic story format I’ll use to do just that.

5. Another example of learner reflection

• Did you know you can make crossword puzzles and word searches in a flash using this tool?  It’s proven to be a popular activity that workshop participants enjoy.  Here’s an example of one I’ve made.

6. Raise their curiosity and add a dash of competition

• Another easy and engaging way to engage participants post-workshop is to do a digital treasure hunt where you ask questions based on your workshop content and have them answer either on a group spreadsheet or by email.

7. Do the hop

• A hop is where participants go through a series of blog posts and/or videos, but they only get the next video or blog at the end of each post or video. Hence they ‘hop’ from one post or video to another. I learned about this technique by watching craft videos.  Here’s an example that includes a blog and video.  This is on my list of things to try as it would be an easy way to ‘drip’ or roll out post-engagement activities in small bites.

If your mission is to get a three-for-one bang for your training buck, I’ve given you seven examples of how to pre-engage your participants in my last post and now you’ve got seven ways to post-engage your folks.  And with nary a migraine in sight.  In fact, it’s as far from brain surgery as you can get.  With a little planning, pre and post-engagement are easy peasy, and they bump up engagement, learning, collaboration, and retention to boot.

Now go on and learn, laugh and lead

Learn

• Pick one or two of the post-engagement strategies above that you want to try and prep accordingly.

Laugh

• If you’re frozen at the thought of doing pre and post-engagement activities, relax, I’ve got your back.  Simply enjoy this little one’s frozen journey and then get going with the ideas in this post and in the last post.

Lead

• Those two strategies you prepped above?  Time to implement them!

P.S.

Interested in learning more about designing and delivering powerful learning/training?  Feel free to contact me.