We just spent the week at the  ASTD 2011 conference, in Orlando, Florida, as both volunteers and attendees. It was an amazing experience, and at times, a disappointing experience.

For those of you who may not know, ASTD stands for “American Society of Training and Development” it is, arguably, the premiere professional organization for trainers, facilitators, team building providers and many other corporate learning professionals.We will likely post a couple  more articles reviewing and describing our observations from the conference, but where I would like to start is with a brief discussion (or possibly diatribe) on keeping learners engaged throughout seminars, workshops, webinars, and the like.

I served as a workshop session monitor as part of my volunteer duties and attended quite a few learning sessions as a participant. Based on those experiences, let me assure you, in case you were worried, “death by PowerPoint” as a “learning tool” is alive and well! I was amazed to see so many industry luminaries still lecturing and droning over PowerPoint slide – shows as their primary method of imparting knowledge. Mega bullet points, tiny fonts, boring graphs, and even long paragraphs were projected on screens and read to workshop attendees over those 5 days – some with great gusto and animation, some in a tired monotone, and many somewhere in between.

There were plenty of presenters who did some interactive exercises and activities, such as using “poll everywhere” (which, in my opinion, is a brilliant app), leading partnered discussions and exercises, insightful Q & A sessions, and so on, but in my personal experience these activities were the exception rather than the norm.

There is so much research out there on how people learn, the best ways to engage learners and how to increase retention, that I have a hard time believing how much “sit and spew” style training is still going on out there.

Here are a few examples of research that supports getting participants actively involved in learning:

• Brain Rules: John Medina
• Your Brain at Work: David Rock
• Spark: John Ratey

These are just a few current and popular resources that are eloquently making the case for increased learner involvement, activity and participation in learning experiences, there are many, many more (a future blog entry, perhaps?). Please, trainers,  facilitators and experts – get us involved! We want to learn, we are interested in you and what you have to say – we just need to engage more than our butts and note – taking synapses in your sessions!

Related articles

• Contest for the Worst PowerPoint Slide Ever (neatorama.com)
• Reforming Higher Ed #3: Teach Differently (barnettwriter.wordpress.com)
• PowerPoint: the kudzu of modern communication | Cory Franklin (guardian.co.uk)