Opening Activities

When your course begins, the first things that happen set the tone for the rest of the time you are with your learners. It’s tempting and feels “organized” to the facilitator to make the first activity informational, i.e., the facilitator does the talking and it’s all about “Welcome, here’s who I am, here’s our schedule and agenda, here’s where the restrooms and smoking areas are, and so on.” However, this is not the best way to begin.

Think About This

It’s OK to be nervous. If you weren’t nervous, you wouldn’t care! Use that nervousness to give yourself energy and enthusiasm.

When you start the program in a way that forces the learners to be passive, you set the tone for passivity for the rest of the course, making it more difficult to engage the participants. Additionally, starting a program in this way puts the focus on you, not them, and that breaks the cardinal rule: It’s about them! Instead, get the learners active and involved with each other in the first activity. Not only will you set the tone for engagement and involvement early on, but you also will increase the learners’ comfort level with each other.

In addition to setting a participative tone, good opening activities help the learners relax and become receptive to learning. Your opening activity can help break the ice and set the tone for sharing. For example, you can go around the room and ask all the participants how many years of experience they have. Add up the numbers on a flipchart page to see how much collective experience resides in the room. Another

Basic Rule 17

Begin a learning event with an activity.

idea is to have the learners introduce themselves. One active way to do this is to have learner pairs interview each other and then have each person introduce his or her partner to the group.

Or, conduct some quick, on-the-spot polls, surveys, or discussions that can give you more information about the learners’ backgrounds and skills. You can also introduce some group activities to gather the learners’ expectations of the course. Then, when you present the agenda, you can refer to their comments.

When your opening activity is over, and learners are relaxed and comfortable, that’s the time to launch into the introductory material, sometimes called house-keeping items.

Important considerations for choosing your opening activity include these:

• Make sure the comfort level is a good match for the learners at hand.

• The shorter your course, the shorter your opening activity should be. For a four-hour course, your opening activity might take 15 minutes; in a multiple-day course, it might take two hours. A five-day course might have an opening activity that takes the entire first morning. It’s your call to decide what needs to happen to set the stage for your content and for learning.

• If your learners already know each other, focus the opening activity on content or on their expectations, not just on introductions.

• Watch out for the silliness factor: Depending on your audience and organization culture, you might not want to go very far in the opening activity. As

  Noted

  Some learners may come to your course preoccupied and distracted by work or personal issues. If you know that ahead of time, your opening activity can focus on helping them set aside those distractions and be more open to learning. Here are a couple of ideas that can help. Try developing an “issue chart” or “parking lot” flipchart or whiteboard and let the learners know that when issues come up that are distracting for the moment, they will be “parked” there. Make sure to address these issues when appropriate during the course of the program. Another idea is to ask learners to make a personal list of all the distractions that are on their minds and have them fold up the lists so they remain private. Then, collect the lists in an enve-lope and tell the learners you will keep their distractions safe until the course is over. When they leave, they can pick them up on their way out.

  Think About This

  Several books and articles listed in the Additional Resources section offer suggestions for icebreaker activities (as well as other types of learning activities) with instructions for facilitation.

  long as you create active involvement and participation, that’s OK. Even a small group discussion in which they share, then a large group in which you collect what they shared, is still participative.

Ground rules are behavioral expectations that the facilitators and learners have of each other to support the learning. Developing ground rules can be an excellent opening activity. Depending on your assessment of which activity will work best, you can

• present a list of proposed ground rules and facilitate an activity in which the learners react to and revise them

• facilitate an activity in which the learners propose their own ground rules and then come to consensus or vote on them.

When the ground rules are established, post them so they are always visible. And, the learners should decide on a way to “call each other” on the ground rules when one is broken. Depending on the formality of the environment, the “calling” method can be as low key as the learners simply committing to point it out verbally, all the way to throwing paper wads or Nerf balls at the offender.

Noted

When you introduce yourself, should you make a big deal out of your background and qualifications? No. To establish some immediate credibility, you can put a short biography in the learners’ materials to be read at their leisure. Additional credibility is generated by your facilitation and expertise as the course progresses. Too much emphasis on your background makes the learning event about you.

Many of your ground rules can be tailored to the organizational environment. Some typical ground rules that work in many environments include the following:

• All learners participate actively.

• No question is a dumb question.

• Return punctually after breaks and lunch.

• Turn off or set cell phones and pagers to silent mode and return calls during breaks.

• Challenge each other respectfully.

• No interruptions or side conversations are to be tolerated.

• Ask questions and make comments that will help make the learning yours.

• Everyone has the right to pass.

• Discussions that occur in the room stay in the room to maintain confidentiality.