I'm doing some research on classroom best practices and I'm hitting a bit of a brick wall. can anyone help me find a source that has a description of best practices for using a parking lot (also called an "Ask It Basket" or "Issues list") in the classroom?.

So far I've found "Turning Training Into Learning", "The Ultimate Training Workshop Handbook" and "Strategic Planning Training". Does anyone know of any other good resources?

I believe "Training for Dummies" by Elaine Biech has a description of the parking lot. Not much to it though. If any questions come up that are going to take the class off track or will be answered later then put them in the parking lot for later. We have a poster on the wall labeled parking lot and we have the learner write the question down on a post it and stick it to the poster. We either answer the parking lot questions as they come up in the course or answer them at the end of class if they are off subject.

Try splitting it into "long term" and "short term"

Use it to create an interactive "stump the class/stump your teacher" game

Don't use it if you're not going to follow up on the long-term parking questions.

Out of curiosity... I have to say I'm a bit confused as to why one would need sources with best practices on a specific question storage device. Help explain context of your question?

The best twist I heard on this was, "Let's put it in the cooler and keep it fresh."

Not sure it needs much more description though. I agree that anything not answered at the time must be answered in follow-up, perhaps by email.

We used to use the parking lot format, but found that it was more distracting and out of date than useful. Our training dept. has found that if you set the expectations up front, the off the wall questions are cut down significantly.

We use the "Great Expectations" theme to capture questions/ideas up front so everyone is aware what will/will not be included in class.

At the beginning of class, each participant writes down on a sticky what they expect to learn in the class, anonymous of course. They pass all the stickies to the end of the row, the facilitator writes the expectations on the "Great Expectations" flipchart.

We use this to match expectations with course objectives, if the expectations don't match with the course objectives, it's easily identified on the board for the entire class to see. This also provides the facilitator with a temp check on the class.

Just a suggestion, happy training!