Interactive Strategies
for Performance Improvement

September 26, 2005
Wright State University

Workshop by Thiagi
Review by Jerry Kail

“Learning should be engaging!”
“Engaging participants facilitates learning!”
“Content talks, interactivity walks!”

There, in a nutshell, is the essence of the workshop presented by Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan (better known as Thiagi) at Wright State University on Monday, September 26. These “essential messages” were generated by the participants at the conclusion of a full day of activities, interaction, and imparted wisdom from Thiagi, by means of an exercise in which Thiagi challenged teams of participants to summarize the day’s learnings in exactly four words. The resulting summaries were direct, simple – and memorable, the more so for having been created by the participants themselves.

The four-word exercise embodied another of Thiagi’s essential messages: “Anything can and should be taught through an activity.” As Thiagi described it, the process of instruction consists of: (1) Conveying new information; (2) Having the learners do something with that information via an activity; and (3) Giving the learners feedback on how they did.

This three-step process was illustrated by a form called an Interactive Lecture, in which a representative of the session sponsor, Zlimit, gave a three-minute talk (the “new information” part) about his company and its offerings. The participants then broke into small groups and created three closed-end and two open-ended “quiz questions” based on their notes from the talk (the “doing” part) which they then posed to other groups for response (the “feedback” part). With characteristic tongue-in-cheek humor, Thiagi described this learner-driven approach to instruction as “letting the inmates run the asylum.”

Attendance topped 125 people in Wright State's Apollo Room

After emphasizing the importance of giving learners activity-based experiences as part of the learning process, Thiagi then made the provocative statement, “People do not learn from experience. Experience gives you data. The learning comes after the experience – from the debriefing.” He then described a six-step debriefing model that can be used to focus learners first on their in-the-moment reactions and ultimately on how they might relate the experience to changes they might make in their behavior or awareness.

With Thiagi, “activities” is often synonymous with “games,” and the day involved many different kinds of competitions, pen-and-paper games, and even cash-based games – all of them intended to focus and engage learners and, through the debrief, make a wealth of different points. In one game, Thiagi offered fifty dollars to any team who could give him exactly $3.73 using the greatest number of coins. After a loud and lively scrounging for loose change, Thiagi asked the participants to reflect on the question of how the winning team should divide the winnings – the real question being, how should a team measure and reward the contributions of each of its members? (And, in a perfect example of “letting the team come up with the best solution,” the winners decided to give the fifty dollars to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.)

Throughout the day, Thiagi modeled the best characteristics of the adaptive, responsive facilitator who uses everything that happens in the room as a potential teaching moment. Like a seasoned improv performer, Thiagi wove the smallest unanticipated events – late-arriving participants, screeching microphone feedback, missing index cards – into the program in a seamless and usually humorous way. “Fun” is an essential part of Thiagi’s approach to instruction, but as he pointed out, “There is bad fun and good fun. Bad fun is someone running around in a chicken mask. Good fun means intrinsic fun tied to the subject matter.” Fun, then, serves the purpose of getting people totally immersed and engaged in the learning.

Interactivity, immediacy, responsiveness, fun … perhaps another four-word summary created by one of the groups said it best:

“Thiagi rocks rocks rocks!”

(We invite you to take a look at the results of our participant survey for this event. Most attendees agreed that "Overall, the meeting was a good value for the money.")

The Western Ohio Chapter Thanks Zlimit.com For Their Sponsorship of this Event!

Winners of the Zlimit Raffle with Sponsors
 

The Western Ohio Chapter's "Team Thiagi"

Cris           Sheila     Jo       Victor   Rich   Thiagi   Dave   Scott       Kristi           Verne
(Missing from photo: Loretta and Stan)

About the workshop leader