quote:

Why can't adults be expected to sit for one hour and attend to a serious subject without having to be entertained?

Perhaps the word is ENGAGE, not entertain.

It seems to me that as long as the WIIFM is crystal clear for the audience and the information is important, one hour should keep people engaged without a problem. Unless the person speaking talks like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I don't think keeping the audience engaged for an hour is really an issue.

So again -- if it's important information that is clearly relevant to the audience and the speaker is a good one, you've got the workings of a good presentation that should keep people engaged.

"Fanatic Facilitator" touches two important factors any training: relevance, and good presenter.

Going back to the original question by luv2train, what are the activities ideas for "BORING and highly technical subject", here are my thoughts, following Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction (http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art3_3.htm)

1. Once the content or one topic is presented, the facilitator may host a team game to check audience's understanding, using "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" pattern.

2. The disadvantage of team game is that even someone in the team doesn't understand the content, it won't show. Therefore, at the end of the training, an opportunity can be provided to individuals to test their understanding. A short question sheet, or multiple choice test, etc. This will allow individuals to assess their comprehension level.



2.

P.S. I would also like to make a point about self-fullfilling prophecy. If you frame the content and talk about the content as "boring" "dry" and/or "dull" or "extremely technical" it's like you're setting yourself and your audience up for failure before you've even begun. Positive framing before, during and after will help immensely. Also, it helps to avoid the assumption that what is dry to you is dry to someone else... and if it is that dry, perhaps there is something more important or engaging about it that needs to be brought to light. A presentation should have a purpose -- if it's just information for the sake of information, that's usually what makes something dry. Find the purpose and link it directly to the audience. If you can't, perhaps this presentation isn't all that important in the first place.

Subjects boring or just the people?

Nero