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Join the Nerds!
Welcome to the funtastic world of the Fabulous Learning Nerds! Scott Schuette and Daniel Coonrod and Zeta Gardner are Learning Executives with over 50 years’ experience between them. Together they share new ideas, learning tools, approaches and technology that increase learner engagement and impact. All while having FUN! To participate in the show and community please contact them at learningnerdscast@gmail.com
The nerds are all about creating a community of learning, innovation and growth amongst educational professionals: Instructors, facilitators, instructional designers, learning and development professionals, trainers, leadership development professionals, learning metric gurus, sales enablement wizards and more. So, if you want to learn, connect, grow and have a good time doing it, The Fabulous Learning Nerds Podcast is for YOU!
Scott (00:01.221)
Hey everybody, welcome to another super fun episode of your fabulous learning nerds and with me as always, you love them, Dan Coonrod's in the house.
Scott (00:15.225)
Dan!
Daniel (00:16.76)
Scott! What's up, man? Super fun. I love the energy. I love where we're going. I'm super excited.
Scott (00:19.458)
Super fun!
The topic today has me energized. We're going to get to that in a minute. Yeah, I think it's really, really great and kind of edgy and out there and it's fun and it's cool. And I'm super excited after my day. Gosh, I'm going to tell everybody something they already know. It's it's hot. It's hot out there. And I had to go do some yard work today over lunch. I did yard work over lunch and that was a huge mistake. So now I'm happy to be here because I have air conditioning.
Daniel (00:25.453)
Me too!
Scott (00:52.493)
Air conditioning is a good thing, so how are you, sir?
Daniel (00:54.306)
Man, air conditioning.
Fair to Midland.
Daniel (01:01.838)
There it is. There it is.
Scott (01:03.299)
you you're saying about air conditioning
Daniel (01:05.71)
dude, air conditioning is like, listen, whenever people talk about like the greatest human inventions, like the printing press, you know, the engine, all of those things, super great, super great. But man, air conditioning, whew, that's up there for me. That's easily top 10.
Scott (01:25.497)
Yeah, I know. And you really appreciate air conditioning when it stops working.
Daniel (01:31.631)
Scott (01:35.949)
Especially in Florida when it stops working.
Daniel (01:39.278)
I was I was in Tennessee when our air when our AC went out and like the first day was like this sucks and then the second day I was like Nope. Nope. You need to send somebody out right now to fix it And I mean it was warm like probably in like the mid to upper 90s. So I was very warm but I can't I can't imagine would hold a Be anywhere close to Florida with high heat high humidity
Scott (02:08.469)
it's awful. It's terrible. at any rate. Speaking of somebody who's super... I can't say that. I was gonna say she's super hot. Is it okay to say she's super hot?
Daniel (02:22.238)
That's all we got the thumbs up. That's all we got the thumbs up.
Scott (02:22.777)
Dan's giving me the nut. I got the thumbs up. right. Speaking of super hot, Zeta's in the house.
Scott (02:38.511)
See you to my friend!
Zeta (02:40.211)
Thanks, Scott. How are we?
Scott (02:43.301)
I'm doing great. That's awesome. I hope you enjoyed the compliment. It was sent with love. So there you go. It's all good.
Zeta (02:52.405)
Very cool for someone very hot.
Scott (02:55.151)
There you go, I love it. You know what that compliment is?
Zeta (02:58.635)
Thank you, thank you.
Scott (03:03.789)
That's right!
Scott (03:10.09)
I know, know, I know. Alright, so how you doing?
Zeta (03:10.377)
love it, I love it, I love
Doing pretty good, doing pretty good. Thankfully, our AC is still working. doing a lot better than some folks who are struggling right now. So yeah.
Scott (03:23.229)
that's no good. All right. Yeah. The first thing, you know, we should give an, this is an educational show. This is a show for learners, the Fabulous Learning Nerd. So I'm going to give a little pro tip. Like if your air conditioning just shuts off, what's the first thing you should check? Dan, what's the first thing you should
Daniel (03:39.97)
The Breakers?
Scott (03:42.789)
Okay, what's the second thing that you should check?
Daniel (03:44.27)
We just had a learning moment.
Zeta (03:47.613)
say airflow airflow
Scott (03:50.337)
Airflow is not the second thing you should you should check but you get a copy of our home game
Daniel (03:58.375)
man. Let's see, I would go and make sure that the outside unit the fan is spinning.
Scott (04:07.097)
Yeah, that's not the second thing you should check. I'm saying you go to the thermostat and the thermostat is off, right? And so your air conditioning is not working. The first thing you should check
helpful folks. The first thing you need to go check is there's a drain pipe going out of your airy C handler that goes to the outside of your house. And if you don't clean that drain pipe, gook will form in there and then it'll back up. The water will back up and there is a little switch that if it gets wet, it'll turn the whole system off. And all you need to do is take your handy dandy shop vac and if you don't have a shop vac, you should, everybody should have a freaking shop vac.
Daniel (04:35.947)
Scott (04:51.277)
And you just suck out that gook and then you're good to go. And then other piece of advice that I'll give you, and by the way, I only know this because it's happened to me like a thousand times, is you take vinegar and you pour vinegar down that little, that little pipe, so to speak, that water pipe, about once a month. And it helps prevent the gook from forming. Dan, you were going to say?
Daniel (05:17.166)
If I was going to say something, it's gone now. It left. The gunk. I like the gunk.
Scott (05:20.889)
Eight left you? Yeah, was this something that you knew of before today? No, well, yeah, there you go.
Daniel (05:26.454)
No, no, I also just had a learning moment.
Scott (05:32.503)
Little GI Joe, the more you know moment. I don't have that drop. I should get it. At any rate, I'm super, super excited to be talking with the two of you about this topic. were going to we were talking about what are we going talk about this week? And I'm like, hey, what about this? And so without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into our topic of the
Scott (06:00.985)
Topic for the week this week, why does your training suck? There you go. I know it's spicy, right? I know, I know. So what we wanna do, listen, we wanna just kinda talk to people out there around the struggles sometimes we have with designing, learning, and development and what we would love to create and sometimes why.
Daniel (06:06.574)
so spicy. So spicy. Makes my mouth tingle. I love
Zeta (06:11.699)
necessary.
Scott (06:28.601)
with the best intentions. Like I really feel like everybody has the best intentions out there. It just kind of misses the mark. So I'll just open it up free for all everybody. Hey, what are some things that we want to watch out for? we don't have trainings that kind of
Zeta (06:46.949)
first and foremost, is it relevant? Right? Just a jump in
Daniel (06:47.106)
Man.
Scott (06:49.445)
Daniel (06:51.31)
Strong, strong.
Scott (06:54.391)
Okay, let's talk about relevancies, Ada. What do mean by that? How should people be thinking about relevancy?
Zeta (07:00.395)
Well, sometimes training is seen as a checkbox, and I know we've talked about that before, but if it's not relevant for your learners, if it's not gonna help them become something new, different, like you've said, Scott, then it's not gonna be relevant for them. It's not gonna actually help them. It's not gonna change anything. It's just gonna waste their time. Whoever's designing that time, it's not gonna be helpful, ultimately.
Scott (07:23.909)
So finding out those objectives from the front end and really kind of honing in on are we going to meet some objectives and making sure that it's relevant. Yeah, totally, totally important. I think that's a really great place to
Zeta (07:32.873)
Yeah,
Daniel (07:37.294)
You know, I jump in, I'm gonna piggyback off of that and say, not only should it be relevant, but your training should speak to your audience. I think too often I see trainings that are made for like everybody. And so they fall flat for everybody. I'll call it out. So much, so much HR training is like, it's written for everybody and it's a legal requirement that we give it to you. And because of that, it's so bad.
Like every time I'm doing a class and I'm teaching folks ID and I ask them what what trainings do they hate the most? Like HR courses number one every
Scott (08:19.641)
Yeah, yeah. I would also add to that as well, like not only do we have to be relevant for audience perspective, but I need to be thinking about, know, especially if I'm designing for a team of facilitators and they have their own objectives and whatnot, I need to make sure that the learning that we create is going to meet their needs as well. All too often, I think sometimes we end up delivering with the best of intentions, like, hey, everybody, here's your learning.
And the people that receive it and are supposed to execute on our behalf, right? Look at me and go, you wouldn't mind if I changed some of this up, why not would you? And I go, yeah, of course I would mind if you changed some of it up. Well, then I'm probably not going to use it because it's not going to meet my needs, right? So if you have sales trainers out there, this is a huge opportunity. Like this happens all the time. Like here's your sales training.
Daniel (08:50.19)
Heh.
Scott (09:17.295)
Well, it's not going to meet the needs of my market. It's not going to meet the needs of my audience. And so it just kind of sits there or they go ahead and they change it to what's going on. And let's be honest. I'm just going to be honest, like field reps and, you know, facilitators and whatnot. the best of intentions, again, we're going to go back with the best of intentions here, folks. they, they don't always understand the design process. They don't always understand how to create engaging stuff. And
nine times out of ten when they go ahead and get a hold of something and they change it, it doesn't make it any better. So anyway, that's that's relevancy right
Daniel (09:59.806)
Let me ask you guys, we've talked about relevancy and stuff like that, but I feel like I don't want to name names, I usually, as I said, I usually ask the folks I teach ID, like Scott, what's the suckiest training you've been part of? And then since I know you've made training, I'm going to ask you the spicy question. What's the suckiest training you've made? And I'll tit for tat you, I'll answer the same.
Zeta (10:00.047)
yeah, yeah.
Scott (10:28.151)
Okay. Why don't we take the question one at a time? So the, the, the worst learning experience I ever had was a, a four hour class. I don't even remember what it was, but there were no objectives, no agenda, no activities, and most importantly, no breaks. And so I get
Like I want to cram as much stuff into my learning as humanly possible, but research will tell you that the human brain can only absorb so much. Does anybody know the answer to this? What is the maximum amount of time that the human brain can stay focused in a
Zeta (11:19.613)
Isn't like three hours, four hours tops throughout a day.
Daniel (11:20.517)
I think it varies for that. I think you can do up to like nine minute bursts.
Zeta (11:29.032)
sorry.
Scott (11:30.149)
90 minutes is the longest you should keep somebody in their seat before you give them a
Daniel (11:34.634)
you're just talking like, you're okay. see what you're saying. Yeah. yeah.
Scott (11:38.533)
Yeah. 90 minutes. And I see a lot of times people don't take a break. The best learning I ever was part of, we designed a week long learning for technical trainers and fire alarm installation. And we had two days of solid training, right? Solid, you know, deep, you know, the instructor is just going to give you a lots and lots of stuff and you're going to take notes. And there'll be some activities, but for the most
Every one of those sessions started at the top of the hour and ran 45 minutes and then we took a break. Do know how many people complained about having so many breaks?
Zeta (12:17.259)
Probably zero.
Daniel (12:17.998)
How many? Yeah, that's what I
Scott (12:19.557)
Not a one, not a one. People love breaks. Give your people breaks. Starting at the top of the hour, finish before the top of the hour, 10 to 15 minute breaks. So I can check my email. I can go to the bathroom. I can go ahead and have that conversation about something I just learned with somebody else. And then we're going to start right on time at the top of the hour and move forward. It's awesome. It's great stuff. yeah, four hours of just a knowledge dump. That was, that was pretty bad.
that that was and all by the way if you don't give your people breaks you know what they'll do
Zeta (12:55.807)
tune out. They'll give their selves break.
Daniel (12:56.024)
Tune
Scott (12:57.423)
They'll tune out. What else will they do? Do know what else they'll do?
Zeta (13:01.715)
disturb the class.
Scott (13:03.289)
they will make their own break. They will decide that I need a break. And they will leave probably in the most important piece of information that you want to give them at that particular point in time. And they will leave because they have to go to the bathroom or they have to answer a phone call. You know what I'm saying? So anyway, that was mine. Dan.
Zeta (13:24.453)
yeah.
Daniel (13:26.648)
So I will say the worst experience, worst training experience I was ever part of, worst is tough, because I was in a training classroom where some, where two facilitators got into a very heated argument in front of the class. So that was, man, wow, it was, yeah, that was, that might be, that would be technically the worst, but that's an outlier.
Zeta (13:48.267)
How spicy?
Daniel (13:56.482)
We'll say, I was working for a company and we were talking to call center agents because they were taking courses and the take rate was so low. It was like, were looking, we're trying to get it into the 90th percentile and above and like we were hovering in and around like
And having worked in call centers all my life, anytime, anytime agents don't want to get off the phone to do anything, something else, that's, that's a bad sign. And I, you know, I went to these teams and I was like, Hey, you know, guys, why aren't we taking the training? And they're like, it's so bad. I'd rather take phone calls. And I was just like, no.
At the time I was leading up a team and I said, hey, I got good news and I got bad news. And the team was like, okay, let's do the good news first. And I'm like, sure. The good news is almost anything we're going to do is going to be an improvement over what is. And they were like, what's the bad news? I'm like, the bad news is right now the presence data is so bad that our call center reps say they would rather take phone calls and take our training. And, you know, they were like, no.
That's probably the worst experience that like that I've seen. I'll say the worst training I've built. I think I've talked about it before. I built a printer training deck that people jokingly called the printer Bible. It was like 400 slides. It was one of the very first things I built as a tech. And you said you talk about four hour blocks.
It was a solid eight hour day of printer training and it covered everything. And I was very new and in my brain I was like, well, I'll just put everything there. And that way, you know, if like somebody wants to know something, they can just open up the deck, but otherwise they can just kind of win it and like do what they need to. Again, very, very new. No, not a, not a good instructional designer. had
Daniel (16:18.754)
I'd been a trainer until then and had always wanted more information. And then I inflicted that. I've already apologized to everybody who had to run that training that I wrote. But again, I am terribly sorry if you had to run that training. It was the worst training. finally, it's the thing that made me a better instructional designer because finally when I went back to go get feedback and everybody universally hated it, I had to have a moment where I was like, am I wrong? Could I be wrong? no.
I think I'm wrong. Breaks, needs breaks? Breaks are for the weak, Scott.
Zeta (16:56.563)
No, breaks are essential.
Scott (16:56.751)
Gotta have your breaks.
Zeta (17:00.875)
When I was thinking about having the four hours, that's the total amount of time that you can learn in a 24 hour span. So you're taking all of that and trying to condense it into one sitting. That's a lot.
Scott (17:18.445)
Yeah. So, you when I think about things that we're asked to put together, anything that is missing key components, I feel can really hamper you. And again, people are well -intentioned. So, hey, I want you to do this. That's great. And then, okay, so what's our objectives? we don't need any of that. Right. Or even you make some up, right? So you make some up and then you put an agenda in and then you put a review in.
Nah, we don't need that. Take it out. And we talked about Gagne many, many episodes ago and the importance of a good opener and a good closer and all that stuff is so, so important. your audience needs to know what's going on, make sure you've got those objectives. Make sure you're following the rule of three. Does AidaD know what the rule of three is?
Zeta (18:11.349)
The three is that you don't want to go too far in putting too many objectives because then they won't be able to focus on what's important. If you do more, you're spreading your cognitive load.
Scott (18:24.777)
The brain works well in threes. So that's a really nice rule to keep in mind. hey, I have some points I want to make. Well, three. I have to have objectives. Three, nice place to start. You can add more if you want. Three works really, really well. That's just the thing. I don't know how our brain works. We can get the learning pirate in here again. that would be.
Daniel (18:44.462)
Yeah. You know, I know this is a little off topic. I know this is a little off topic, but you know, I would even say for objectives, like I always focus on like the objective statement is internal. Like that's for me as the instructional designer and maybe for the facilitator. But I would say it's one of those things I don't put in front of learners. Usually for learners, I do the big one. This is what we're going to learn.
Zeta (18:46.325)
That would be good. Talk some brain stuff.
Daniel (19:13.398)
And this is how we're going to do it. Because to your point, as soon as you start getting like, hey, we're going to learn this and we're going to demonstrate that and we're going to do this. And you start using those fancy, fancy Bloom's taxonomy verbs and stuff as a learner. I don't tune out anymore because it's my job to pay attention to that kind of stuff. But it's so dry and it's often so bad and often. I wouldn't talk about this.
Often it's because somebody is checking your box because somebody has said, hey, make sure you put your objective statements up front. And they go, okay. And they just write three BS sentences and move on. I will say, well, real quick, now that I've ragged on it, I do want to talk about the exception.
Zeta (19:56.821)
Sure,
Daniel (20:04.106)
And for me, the thing that I think, I think is one of the reasons why training sucks or can suck. And one of the things that helped my training not suck. know I just ragged on putting three objective statements and moving on, but too often when we write our objective statements, we go right for blooms, which we should, but we go right for the knowledge domain. go right for, I'm transferring knowledge, so I need to use knowledge. So here I
Here's, I'm gonna demonstrate, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna hit all my knowledge things, great, okay, I'm done. And at no point do we even talk about any of the other domains. There's the psychometer domain and there's the effective domain. And for me, if I'm gonna write objective statements or if I'm just gonna write like my objective one big paragraph, I'm gonna say why you should learn it. I'm gonna use the effective domain to say,
And this is why you need to learn it. And this is why it's important. A lot of times we separate those into with them statements, but I think so often we're not thinking about how we emotionally connect our learnings with our learners that we build bad trainings. just, build what could have, it could have been an email is what I tell people when they build just straight knowledge dumps. Hey, you could have just built a technical document or an email. Why is this a
Zeta (21:30.827)
you could have built a 400 page printer Bible. No, no, I totally agree on that. That objectives are more than just a checkbox of like, we need to include these. They're the learning outcomes, right? This is the things that we're trying to help our learners learn to make them better, to give them more fulfilling and just skilled at what they're doing.
Daniel (21:36.684)
Maybe. Maybe.
Zeta (21:59.113)
either professionally or personally, right? And so informing your learners about those outcomes, I think is actually part of Gagne's to touch on what Scott brought up earlier. But it basically just allows your class to know what to prepare for, what to expect. So that way they're kind of prepared to, hey, this is what we have to, that's coming down the line. This is what we have that we're gonna learn. This is what we're gonna walk away
Scott (22:27.695)
we look at stuff, it reminds me of this whole idea of death by PowerPoint. So a lot of times, here's a question. What's important to a subject matter
Zeta (22:40.883)
everything.
Scott (22:42.943)
Everything, everything is important to a subject matter expert. So all too often, I think that we're just handed like, you need to talk about this, this, this, this, and this. And it turns into this giant deck that ends up being way too long and way too many slides. And like, one of the things that I've been telling my team is like, we have to be be ruthless about what you take out. Like, does this need to be in there? No, they can get it out. Right. Does this need to be in there? No, they can get it
Daniel (22:43.246)
Yep.
Scott (23:12.815)
We have this idea that our learners are coming into our classrooms either virtually or in person or even in a CBT with this big bucket that we get to fill with stuff. And I'm telling you, they don't have a big bucket. They got a little thimble. That's what they've got, right? Especially in today's environment. They got a little thimble. That's it. Fill the thimble with the most important thing. So I love what Dan was talking about. Remember Curly from City Slickers?
Daniel (23:41.75)
I remember the movie, but I don't remember the people in
Scott (23:41.847)
No. Well, he was like, what's the one thing? Like, define what that one thing is. Jack Palance, right? Love him. Did pushups at the Academy Awards. Gotta love Jack Palance. what's the one thing that we gotta make sure that they know walking away? And then you can add more to it than that. this idea of, just, know, how many slides do you have?
Zeta (23:42.635)
No.
Daniel (23:47.426)
That's Jack Palance.
Scott (24:09.093)
And I'll see people put together like, we're going to have a webinar and then we tune our people on it. It's mainly leadership and, we got to talk about these things. Okay, cool. How many slides you got? 67. No. No. No.
Daniel (24:21.39)
Good luck. You know, I tell you what, when I teach people ID, that one of the very first things I tell them is to not count slides, count time. And because you start like counting slides and slides are this weird like abstraction, like moment to moment, I'm going to talk about this, I'm going to talk about this. And then we try to put too much into every moment because everybody thinks people will talk as fast as they think and nobody ever does.
And so like I'm always like, hey, think about time. If you were watching a TV show, how much time do you have and how many things are they going to talk about? Well, that's why kids cartoons at the end, they always say, hey, this week we talked about this and you got the moral of the story because it's the big one. You can talk about other things, but the moral of the story.
the big one, the one, and it's so important. Like you should, mm, I could just dive in. I could dive in and talk forever and I'm just gonna bite my tongue.
Zeta (25:30.463)
And if I could piggyback on the whole idea of slides and how much time you have per slide, something that's not figured in also is time for reflection. A lot of times when we're trying to teach people, you need those quiet beats, those moments where you're like, you ask a question, you let that question settle, people can make their own connections. I mean, you're supposed to be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage. So make way for that, yeah.
Scott (25:57.391)
can't remember where I heard this, it's true. And that is people don't learn by doing. They learn by thinking about what they did. So this idea of reflection is super important. It should be part of everything that you do. And there are some easy ways that we could add reflection into a learning that we create so it doesn't suck.
Daniel (26:18.456)
You know, I, even now when I'm building stuff, one of my like favorite, I say activities, it's not an activity, I guess it technically would be, but is in the middle of a training to use just a slide, just a moment, even if I'm building a CBT or whatever, to just ask my learners about an incident or a time where whatever my course is about has affected
So like if I'm building a course about safety, like my moment, my moment of reflection is I'm gonna be like, hey, think about a time where you witnessed somebody get hurt, whether at work or at home. How did that make you feel? What did you wanna do? What would you change now that you know? And I've always gotten positive feedback on that.
I'm not going to say like learners have come to me tears in their eyes. Like that meant so much to me, but like it's, it's important Scott, you're exactly right. Because it goes back to what I said about like emotional engagement. If I'm just throwing facts at you, great. I'm sure there's a knowledge base or a dictionary that will do it better than I can. But I've got to make you care about it. And then I have to make you attach that to your own personal memories and experiences.
Or else I'm just building sucky training.
Zeta (27:51.595)
choose your own adventure PowerPoint.
Daniel (27:54.158)
I love to choose your own adventure.
Scott (27:56.715)
One last thing on PowerPoint. I don't want to hate PowerPoint. PowerPoint's a great tool. Love PowerPoint. Yeah. Less is more in PowerPoint, for sure. So not just the number of slides, but what do you got on that slide? Right? And all too often I see the word wall, like I'm done. I'm out. I can see the word wall of just stuff, just whatever. Hey, put some images, talk about some stuff, help your audience connect to what's important. Does it reinforce what's important?
Zeta (28:01.112)
It's pretty powerful, yeah.
Scott (28:24.805)
Is it engaging? Does it help me or not? So making sure that we have the appropriate amount of slides, but also that our slides aren't just... Word walls, baby, just full of stuff because everything's
Zeta (28:41.961)
Yeah, you have to be very selective. You have to have like a visual hierarchy of like, hey, this is the major point. This is a little bit about it. You don't have to include everything. You want them to also uncover that for themselves, right? You don't have to show everything. Show what's most relevant, what's most important. Sorry, go ahead, Dan. Sorry.
Daniel (28:42.38)
Alright.
Daniel (28:59.424)
it. Love it. No, no, no, I was agreeing. I love it. am. Everybody knows me is going to groan. But like when I when I tell people how to build slides, I talk about points and like, hey, you get five to seven points per slide and every sentence is a point and your title is a point and your background images are a point and your weird corporate bottom footer text that says, you know, confidential. That's a
When you're all said and done, you've got maybe two or three points of information you could put on there. Because after seven points, learners start deciding what they're going to remember. You're not in control of the experience anymore.
Zeta (29:41.973)
The recipe for me is when it comes to visual hierarchy is you want your negative space to be a little bit more than your positive space. You wanna make sure that you don't have too much words on there, not too many words, not too many images, and if you're gonna have an image, make it relevant.
Scott (29:59.929)
Yep. Hey, last thing I want to talk about, we could talk forever about all this, but I just kind of want to throw this out like activities, right? Do we have enough activities so that your learner is engaged? And what are some important things to think about when it comes to activities? By the way, that four hour training I was in, there were no activities to be found
Daniel (30:27.758)
Bye.
Zeta (30:28.043)
So was this
Daniel (30:31.118)
I was gonna say, I often find for me, I think about my learner attention like a resource, it's like a well. And every slide, every moment in training, you're pulling water out of that well. And the only way you can put attention back in, put water back into the well is through activities. It's the only way to reset your learner's attention
and to buy more time. Every time learners give you attention, you are buying their time and they have to be willing to sell it to you. Attention is not free. Their focus is not free. You have to buy it and you buy that with activities. think, honestly, goodness, I usually tell people, I talked about points, five to seven points per slide, but just to boil it down even more, basically,
You've got about between 20 to 30 minutes somewhere in between there before you have to go and pour some water back in the You have to go buy some more attention from your learners. I'm sure there's a better way to quantify it. You can get down nitty gritty,
If it's not an inexhaustible resource and like I said before, when they run out of attention, they're deciding what to pay attention to. You're not directing the training anymore, whether you're a facilitator or the instructional designer, it doesn't matter. You're not in charge anymore.
Zeta (32:10.571)
Totally agree, Dan. When it comes to activities, I like to mix it up rather than, hey, let's break into groups and do these things. Have discussions, have reflective moments where you're asking the rest of your learners what their thoughts are on the matter, how they feel about something, a reflective moment for them, brainstorm with them, mix up your activities. Because if you keep it like formulaic, like, introduce information,
activity move on, it starts to kind of get a little bit mired in monotonous too. So you want to kind of mix it up. You want to make it interesting for your learners. You want to not stagnate the pool, so to speak. Keep their cognitive load to where that they're still learning. They're still having that hands -on experience like adult learners should and keep it relevant for
Scott (33:08.409)
Yeah, all this is great stuff. A couple of things that I would want to add on activities. The first is they need to be relevant too. So we think about the objectives for the learning and the content. Think about that as well for your activities. Hey, what is it that I want my learner to experience? And how does that help us meet our objectives? So hey, we're going to go ahead and play Wheel of Fortune.
which is great, but the only thing I learned about Wheel of Fortune is how to spell. Maybe that's important. If you have a class about how to spell, then that would be great, but otherwise it's not. It's just a baloney activity. So make sure that those activities are relevant, that there's a purpose for it. So we're gonna do an activity and there's gonna be a purpose for it. I would highly challenge people to think about activities that are unique, right? And...
Daniel (33:41.806)
Nyeh heh heh heh heh!
Scott (34:05.849)
go beyond the just get with a partner and talk about things. And I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with getting with a partner and talk about things, but that's the old standby. And yes, there's some learning transfer that can happen unless you get a partner that's not interested in talking about anything and you're not interested in talking about anything. And then there's no learning going on at all, right? So think about that. And the last thing I want to say about activities, like your opening activity, if we're going to have an opening activity and if that objective for the opening activity is to just kind
break the ice and get people to know about each other. Some people are not going to like me, but I would challenge you to make that extremely unique. How many learnings have we gone to with, hey, we're going to go around the room and you're going to introduce yourself and tell us one unique thing about yourself. Zayde, go.
Zeta (34:57.995)
My name is Zeta and the unique thing about me is panic, panic, panic. Yeah, no, that's not a good opener. Like definitely go around and be like, hey, what's your favorite color? Or if you could be an animal, what would you be and why? Like make it unique, make it different, make it engaging, not just, like I said, formulaic. There's nothing unique about me other than, you know, I'm a learning nerd.
Daniel (35:07.56)
Hahaha
Scott (35:24.741)
Well, we discovered that you're hot. OK, great. So we got that going for us. I'm going to say something controversial, but I believe that it's true because I know that we've all been through that experience. Yeah, I know. We've all been through this experience. Did anybody look forward to that activity?
Zeta (35:27.529)
Hahaha
Zeta (35:32.991)
Winner winner.
Daniel (35:36.088)
Woo! Excited!
Daniel (35:46.402)
No! God no!
Scott (35:46.959)
Dan, you look for, God no. So research tells us that your audience also doesn't look forward to that activity. They hate it, okay? Now I'm just gonna tell you something. Shh, they hate it. Not only do they hate it, it will cause them to disengage immediately from whatever you're trying to do. And I get it, all this is well intentioned. We're gonna go ahead and do this. would also, so have something unique and make sure it's not something that people see a million times.
Two truths and a lie, same thing. Sorry, here we go again. Two truths and a lie, and I know it's old standby, right? Cool. Hey, there are other ways of breaking the ice and causing those kind of connections that will build a safe place for your learning to occur, right? Google it. Email the learning nerds. We'd be happy to go ahead and give you some examples of some
Zeta (36:36.214)
yeah.
Scott (36:41.871)
that could do that. Like the most effective one that I had was we gave everybody a card and they had to go find the, you had a character on it, right? And so maybe I'm Scooby Doo and I got to go around and I got to find Shaggy. And in the process of doing that, you know, I meet other people and that's great. And that breaks the ice and it's different and it's fun. There's a free one you could use. I'm sure there are better ones out there, but that's what I'm talking about. Challenge yourself to have activities and openers that
that will create the kind of environment that you want. by the way, if you can't, skip it. Totally skip it. Like there are other ways of opening up your class without doing that to people. Don't. They will appreciate it. I'm telling you straight up, they hate that. Don't do it anymore. Dan?
Daniel (37:33.198)
100 % agree 100 % agree
Scott (37:39.325)
All right, with that, I think that's a good place to kind of wrap things up. I love this topic so much. I think we'll probably come back to it. And so thanks guys for helping our people identify ways that they can make sure their trainings don't suck. And I know that there's more out there as well. Daniel -san.
Daniel (37:59.733)
Yes, Scott.
Scott (38:01.219)
Do me a favor, could you let everybody know how they can connect with
Daniel (38:04.544)
Absolutely. Alright party people, if you haven't already, email us at nerds at TheLearningNerds .com. Email us any questions you might have, join in on a conversation. I think for this week, we would love to know what was the suckiest training you've taken?
Kinda spicy, but I think we'd like to know. If you're on Facebook, you can find us at Learning Nerds. For all of our Instagram peeps, Fab Learning Nerds. And lastly, for more information about us, what we do and updates, www .thelearningnerds .com. Scott, back at ya.
Scott (38:40.239)
Thanks, Dan. Hey, everybody, do me a favor. Could you go ahead and hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, share this out with your friends, really appreciate it, and leave us a review. Tell us why we suck. Or you can tell us, hey, why we're great. It doesn't really matter. Reviews are awesome because we actually read them. It helps us get better. And more importantly, it helps us share more of this groovy stuff with more of you. And with that, I'm Scott.
Daniel (39:06.574)
I'm Dan.
Zeta (39:09.066)
Zeta.
Scott (39:11.021)
and we're your Fabulous Learning Nerds and we are out.