Training seminar group activities

Hello Everyone, I need a little help please and where better to come than  DPG... On February 4th 2015 I am running a training seminar for a group of around 35 people made up of manufacturing training team leaders and manufacturing module trainers, the session is 8.5 hours and is mainly a training day on a new in-house developed LMS, I want to break the day up by adding in either a game or an activity that can accommodate a group of this size either as individuals or as teams, the room I have for the day is large enough for most task but not large enough for running around in. Does anyone have any new and exciting solutions for me to try, I do have a very small budget if case in need to bye some small accessories.

Darren

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  • Hi Darren,

    Another master piece roles of the production line, well done sounds like a good day to me.

    H

  • Hi all

    Well the seminar went off with a bang, the day was a great success and well received by all 33 trainers who attended, we started with a round robin icebreaker, as they are all trainers, I thought that they should be used to standing in front of an audience and speak, so, I got them all to stand up and introduce themselves to the team, they all had to speak for 30 seconds without a pause (or they were penalised 20 point). Everyone enjoyed the challenge (apparently!)

    The activities we chose were, a Bingo card quiz with a selection of Job specific Q's, Quality Q's, General knowledge Q's and of course the "Wildcards Q's, everyone really enjoyed this as an end of day activity, the learn for me from this was that with such a large group (split into 5 teams), it was difficult to keep the momentum going and therefore we ran out of time to complete the whole card. The second activity was Tennis, the rule were as follows:

    The group is divided into teams of six(ish) people. For each group, six sections of string are firmly tied to a disc. The string segments are all the same length. Groups should form a circle around the disk, with each member holding a piece of string horizontally. A tennis ball is placed on the disk. A  bowl is placed 20 to 30 feet from each group. The team must communicate and coordinate their efforts to walk the tennis ball to the bowl and drop it in. If the ball drops, the group must return to the starting point and try again. We will play 2 teams at a time.

    And the objective of this was:

    Teamwork Olympics fosters social bonding. When the goal is reached, the principle of success through TEAMWORK is reinforced. This activity can and should foster a healthy competitive spirit.

    This was great fun, the rules were deliberately left vague and ambiguous to see how the teams interpreted the work instruction of rules (which they all did as they are all a load of cheats LOL).

    Thanks to those who responded with my call for help and I will certainly use your suggestion at forthcoming events.

    • Yay! Well Darren sounds like a your event when really well. Great stuff!

  • Hi Darren,

    Quick idea, can you get them to make a giant Jigsaw on the floor out of flip chart paper that represents the work flow, then get them to walk it on the floor following a typical user interaction.  you could then stop the action every now and again and ask Questions like "what information do you need here" or how else could you enter/get this info".  Just a quick thought.   I did this with a group of customer service reps when redesigning the customer service process and it worked well.

    Howard.

  • Hi Darren, Hopefully I've sent you a connection request so I can send you a link to the book which contains the game. (A newer version of the book is available on Amazon -  for a very cheap price too!)

    Alison

  • Hi Alison, this sounds ideal, although the session is aimed at LMS training, I wanted to add some fun elements to it, we have a bingo card game which is great fun for an end of session game but this suggestion sound perfect for the earlier sector. I get the gist of the game and I could probable edit it to suit our need a little, it is top of the list at the moment. If you could direct me to where you found this, it would be very much appreciated. FYI, I am for Hamble-le-rice, Southampton, UK.

    • Just spotted this - I'll get onto it tomorrow Darren.

      I have never heard of Hamble-le-rice - what an unusual sounding name, I'll have to go and look it up now :)

  • I had a go at a lovely game to do with demonstrating how difficult communicating can be during a CIPD GLAD session. (Gloucestershire Learning and development Special interest group)

    We experimented with different configurations to demonstrate the ease or difficulty of communicating in different groups (hierarchical, matrix or flat) and we were timed in achieving the outcome in the different configurations.

    Split the group into teams of 5. Each team is challenging all the other teams to win the exercise.

    In round one, the teams sit in a line, one behind the other all facing the front.

    Each team member is given 3 cards from a pack of playing cards. The aim was for the team to get the best 7 card hand within a set time.

    The communication rules were that you could only communicate by passing a note to the person in front and the person behind you. No speaking. No comms with anyone else in the team. The person at the front has to collect the teams best hand. Only one card can be passed and there has to be an exchange between two neighbours. So you can only pass a card to a person diirectly in front or behind you.

    At the end of the allotted time, the team each discuss how they felt in their role. Tend to find the person at the front is frantic and under pressure, the person at the back feels left out and ignored (they only have one person to communicate with), the two middle people feel better about the whole thing but a bit bewildered (they each have 2 people to communicate with)

    You then run the exercise again with the seats in a circle with one person in the middle. The middle person has to collect the best hand.

    There are other configurations.

    As an exercise it is fun because it really gets everyone thinking about communications. as an LMS requires input in order to collect data for communications it might be an exercise that has some use.

    I haven't told it exactly as you need to know it and I haven't got the reference for the exercise here (it's from a book) but I can get it for you if you're interested.

    The card game it refers out to is a cultural thing so if the group is multicultural it may take too long to explain what constitutes the best hand. (a run, two of one and 3 of another and so on)

    It was fun and it was challenging, and we did learn from it.

    There are of course many many games you can play.

    If you choose one you haven't played before it might be worth a practice with a small group first!

    Very best of luck and I'd be very interested to hear how it goes.

    If I was available on that day I'd be happy to come and help you (on the basis it might be something I could do with my lot as I hope to be rolling out training on a new LMS later this year) - but not sure where you are and not sure what's in my diary for that day (as I'm not at work at the mo)

  • You might find something here Darren

    http://www.icebreakers.ws/large-group

  • Well we do love a challenge!

    Do all the team know each other - one way to get people talking and getting to know each other is an activity like speed dating - with the numbers you'll need the space but effectively line up 17 chairs facing each other and get everyone to take a seat then give them 45 seconds (you need to facilitate this and ensure the time is kept to - a whistle helps) to tell the other person a bit about themselves or an interesting fact. It means everyone then talks to everyone in the room and gets the session of in a lively way and people feel more comfortable having talked to everyone first.

    With it being systems training I'm making assumptions there that there is a 'dummy' system or training system that will allow the groups to practice not just telling people what the system looks like and how it will work?

    Are all the 35 going to be doing the same role and interacting with the system in the same way or will they have different roles / levels of access etc?

    I always find a quiz works well with large numbers - like an egg heads sort of battle - each group (3 groups of 10 maybe) create 5 questions based on what they have covered so far and tests the other groups to see who has taken the information in? It's a bit of fun but still based on the learning - What do you think?

    Great feedback and its wonderful you still use the Community like this and of course, Howard is top notch - we only work with the best ;)

    Good luck!

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