or Post-it notes are your friends…

After Tuesday’s post a couple of people expressed an interest in me writing about some of the activities and exercises I always fall back on. I thought I’d try and make these short, just little snippets of info really, and then I can intersperse them with more detailed posts.

Now I’m sure I’ve talked with some of you about this on Twitter but I do this. A LOT.

This is a quick and easy activity to get immediate feedback from a group (Perhaps you’ve not got evaluation forms, or you won’t see the feedback straight away)

Simply ASK them.

What is the one thing you’re taking away from today?

Write down one thing you have learnt from today?

So after today’s training, can you tell me one thing you are going to do when you get back to the office?

Depending on the size of the group, you can either go around the group and ask everyone to tell you individually, get people to talk about it in pairs or get them to write it on a post-it note and stick it on a piece of flip chart paper on their way out of the room.

Post-its can also look pretty. And I’m not being vacuous here. (HONEST) If you use different coloured post-its, it can tap into to multiple intelligences. Obviously it taps into visual intelligence, I already said it looks pretty. But it also taps into bodily or kinaesthetic intelligence. After all, they’re touching the post-it note and then you’re asking  them to go and move and put it in a different place. It also uses intrapersonal intelligence by allowing a little time for thinking.

So not only does this give you feedback, it also allows the group to reflect on what they have done during the day and can go  someway to closing the learning cycle. It’s possibly a little quick and dirty but you’ll get a quick snapshot of what the group thought.

It’s also something you can do at a moment’s notice. Running out of time? You can do this activity instead of a longer summary exercise. Or running short of material? You can add this in without anyone noticing.

Always have post-it notes with you. ALWAYS.

(I am going to write a more detailed post on feedback and what to do with it in a couple of weeks.)