Learning from Experience: Adult Learning Activities and Resources from the Author of Assessment That Works

By John Sleigh

This book has over fifty interactive training activities:
—To start, enhance, or conclude a session or subject area
—From ten minutes to two hours
—Individual, pair, team, and seminar-wide involvement
—Negotiation, problem-solving, planning, and reinforcement

Suggestions and strategies:
—Icebreakers, breakout sessions, role plays
—Brainstorming
—Learning styles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984502193

John Sleigh

John Sleigh is the author of Making Learning Fun (1990), Making Team Learning Fun (1994) and more recently ASESSMENT thAT WORKs (2018). He shares the techniques that he has adopted and developed in his career as an employee, supervisor, trainer, manager, mentor and regulator. John's material can be used in a wide range of subject areas.

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Copyright © 2018 by John Sleigh.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 09/13/2018

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Also by John Sleigh

Dedication

Great games, but when does the learning start?

Ice breaker checklist

BEFORE WE START

1. 30 second intro

2. What does good look like?

3. Final exam

4. Learning from other people’s experience

5. Arm wrestle

6. Pack your bags

7. The honest auction

8. Test your detective skills

9. Common language

10. Common knowledge

11. Body parts

PAIRED ACTIVITIES

12. One word conversation

13. The last cab

14. Whatever turns me on

15. Purse-o-nality

16. Value exchange

TEAM LEARNING

Effective breakout sessions

17. Word power

18. Royal flush

19. Brief encounters

20. Blackstuff coal mine

21. The new bike

22. What’s the problem?

23. Reward poker

ALL TOGETHER ACTIVITIES

24. Brainstorming

25. Brainstorming enhancements

26. Overhead questions

27. Please explain

28. Simple instructions

29. The yolk of eggs

30. Enthusiastic addition

31. The psychic card trick

32. Quick count

33. Martini time

34. Ten things to think about

35. The better report

36. The poker game

37. Getting to work on time

38. Who is Jill’s boss?

39. Representing a candidate for appointment

40. Card chaos

41. Task breakdown

CONFLICT

Personal needs and values

42. An inducement to purchase

43. Whom would you choose?

Role play alternatives

44. Open all hours

45. The new manager

46. Attendance management

47. Do Drop Inn

48. Escalating tension

49. The youth refuge

50. Unexpected Reaction

BEFORE WE FINISH

Learning preferences

51. Developing a learning style survey

52. Thirty second exit

53. Postcard

54. Tricks trainers trade

55. Requesting feedback

Also by John Sleigh

ASSESSMENT thAT WORKs

This book contains some activities that were first published in John’s earlier books, which are now out of print,

Making Learning Fun (1990)

Making Team Learning Fun (1994)

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

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Dedication

To my talented grandchildren, Kobie, Mitchell, Ruby, Hayden and Finnegan, who teach me something new every time I see them.

Great games, but when does the learning start?

I was on my way to a management planning session and was circling the block looking for a parking spot when one appeared from nowhere. I pulled ahead, stopped put the car in reverse, checked the rear view mirror and my parking spot was being invaded by another car driving straight in.

What would you have done?

Well, I developed a structured exercise that I used in that session to illustrate the many different ways that people act when there is a shortage of resources.

• Concede immediately – avoiding conflict is rarely constructive.

• Start reversing in and create a stalemate – it happens in workplaces every day;

• Size up the other car / other driver – who will win the fight? It happens every day in offices;

• Negotiate with the other person based on urgency / importance – this might not happen as often as it should.

Since then I have revised the exercise and the scarce resource has become a cab – two people get in different sides, both going in different directions, the last seat on an aeroplane with two people at the stand-by counter and, in a session in Central Queensland, a combine harvester. Parking spaces are plentiful there, but harvesters at picking time are rare and valuable.

This is the essence of experiential learning activities. They illustrate a point, bring out a range of typical behaviours yet are non-threatening to the participants. 15 minutes spent on this activity provides a common memory that can be recalled during the budget planning session.

I could see that the group I had been asked to facilitate was bogged down on resource allocation. I could see each of the sources of power being applied. Rather than giving a lecture on sources of power, I chose to move away from the immediate conflict and asked the group to indulge me for 15 minutes so that the deadlock could be broken. That was the sum total of explanation. I said something like: we seem to be deadlocked here. Let’s try something completely different for 15 minutes so that we can refocus!

Because I had established my credibility with other process tools earlier in the session the group complied, albeit those who thought they were on the ascendancy with some reluctance.

Within about 5 minutes the stalemate was forgotten, but the same behaviours were evident in the parking space. There were bullies relying on the size of the bull bar on their four wheel drive; Some abandoned the conflict and conceded prematurely. Some sought to understand the other person’s position. Some ignored the rules and parked in a V with both cars not quite fitting into the space. Some traded – you park here for your five minute task, while I circle the block. Don’t leave until I return and let me in. Let’s swap phone numbers in case I find another space.

That 15 minute interruption (5 minutes for the exercise and 10 for a very brief report back and debrief was referenced continuously during the rest of the day and again the following year when the finance manager rang me and said, we have another parking problem – are you available on April 14?

Many of the activities that you will find in this book would make great party games. But my mission is making learning fun. Where does the game stop and the learning start?

The game provides an opportunity to gain an experience. But how do we learn from experience? It is not automatic. My favourite definition of inexperience is to continue to do the same thing and expect to get different results.

Experience turns into learning when we review it, relate it to some underlying theory, perhaps learnt elsewhere, perhaps developed in the light of our experience and review, then choose either to do it again or to do things differently in future.

The Kolb Learning Cycle

Dr. David Kolb described an adult learning cycle which followed the path Concrete Experience >>> Reflective Observation >>> Abstract Concepts >>> Active Experimentation >>> new Concrete Experience >>>. Some people are inspired to learn (i.e. do things differently, or change) by an experience of their own or perhaps observing someone else’s experience.

Some people prefer to read the manual in full before attempting to make a call on a new mobile phone. These are the people for whom Computer manuals are written.

They can convert a page of instructions or diagrams into meaningful information.

For many others, learning starts with experience. They do something and gain an insight. Others learn from other people’s experience – they observe and reflect then perhaps hypothesise or maybe recall something they read or heard in the past to place the observation in a conceptual framework. Others will plan, assess risks, consider options before treating a learning experience as an experiment.

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None of these is better, they are simply preferred starting points. Understanding, as opposed to recall, only takes place after all stages of the process have been completed.

In many traditional learning models, the emphasis is on the presentation of abstract concepts either as lectures or readings. This is not inconsistent with the learning cycle but requires students to expand their own learning through discussion and application. In this set of structured activities, I have endeavoured to provide opportunities for experimentation, experience and reflection. As a trainer, you need to add the concepts.

For example, activity 13 - The Last Cab can be used to demonstrate principles of negotiation, creative thinking or sources of power – three quite distinct sets of concepts.

Using an activity like this is a way of allowing learners to progress through the adult learning cycle.

This is one way of describing learning preferences. A person prefers to start the learning process in a particular way. It is not the only way.

Another way of describing learning preferences is as Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic.

Testing at the end of the course is then on recall. What this model fails to address is whether the student can apply the learning.

Think about the second person ever to eat an oyster:

They may have observed the adventurer that tried the first and reflected: Well that didn’t seem to do them any harm, in fact he or she has a rather self-satisfied look, and I detect a dramatic change in their libido. I wonder what it would do for me?

The experience was watching the other party eat the oyster;

The reflective observation related to an absence of harm;

The concept was that there was a connection between the smirk and the act of eating the oyster.

The learning will only be complete if the observer carries on with the active experiment of trying an oyster, too and then deciding whether it was a satisfying experience.

I am told that there are people who have tried oysters and not enjoyed the experience. I have never met them, but because the people who told me about them have never been proven to have lied to me about anything else then I am inclined to believe them.

Do you see the learning cycle in that paragraph?

The experience was that I was told something. My reflection is that in the past the information they have given me has been accurate. The conceptual framework is that past behaviour is an indicator of future performance. My active experiment is to choose to believe.

So, I have learnt something from information gathered from other people’s experience. Which is just as well, because we don’t have time to have all the experience ourselves.

Another explanation of the eating of the first oyster may well have been that it was two people engaged in a dare. One challenged the other to taste it. The learning commenced with an active experiment. I wonder what would happen if?

Perhaps it started from a report of someone else having successfully eaten an oyster and living. The second consumer was inspired by a lecture - an abstract concept. This is the principle of which multi-level marketing is based, as far as I can determine. Other people have made a fortune selling to their friends and colleagues, so you can too. I suspect that those who prefer to learn from active experimentation are those who join the down-line. Sure, but how does eating oysters or joining a marketing network relate to using games in training.

Those of you who jump on the learning cycle at the reflective observation level have already found the answer. You are reflecting on experiences of your own that parallel the examples that I have given.

Those of you who prefer to learn from abstract concepts are becoming a little impatient - OK so much for the stories, but when do we get the facts?

Those of you who prefer to learn from active experimentation are waiting for a way to try it out for yourselves, while those who prefer concrete experiences are waiting to be told what to do next - or have already wandered off and started doing something else already.

OK - TRY THIS, all of you!

Without using a computer, a calculator or a cell phone, add the numbers 1 to 1,000 - and show all the workings on a single sheet of letter sized paper. It can be done - in about five lines, in fact.

A nineteenth century school teacher once posed the basis of this problem to keep the class busy while he went to the contemporary equivalent of the staff room. Before the teacher left the class, one student, eight year old Friedrich Gauss had solved the problem in a way beyond the expectations of the tutor. In its original form there was no suggestion that it could be done on a single sheet of paper.

But what does this example tell us about learning styles?

If you have been exposed to advanced mathematics and can remember the name of the mathematicians as well as the way of doing the problem, then you probably tend to prefer abstract