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Reinforcing Seminars with Trivia

Reinforcing Seminars with Trivia

Seminars can be tedious occasions. Anyone who has attended knows they can drag on and on and on seemingly without end and there is nothing worse than the leader of the boring seminar, just when you think he has finished, launching into a boringly dull PowerPoint recap. This hinders learning if anything. Seminars can be great learning tools and can really enhance the educational and training environments if done correctly but if managed incorrectly and performed in dull, unappealing ways then the seminar has the opposite effect than it should.

 

Are you looking to spice up the content and delivery of your seminar? Do you want to give your attendees a session they will remember? Do you want to check if the material you have spent the last 3 hours discussing has been listened to? Then reinforcing seminars with trivia as part of your seminal, either ongoing or as a instructional session at the end, could be the key to turning your seminars around. For now, let’s consider a few key aspects.

 

Everyone leading a seminar, in any environment, needs to know that the information they are conveying is being learned, taken in and understood. It defeats the point of the whole seminar if, you are stood talking for 2 hours and your attendees don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Some may be scared to ask, some may feel stupid asking questions and some may just not be that interested! If you get into the habit of using Trivia as part of your seminar then this will force your attendees to start to listen and engage more. If a person feels they are going to be asked questions at the end of the sessions then they are going to pay more attention, take more notes, try harder to understand and then ask more questions of they don’t. It’s a simple teacher and learner process that has been used for decades to effects. A student/learner is much more likely to engage if they know they may be caught out by trivia at the end.

How to reinforce your next seminar with trivia:

  • Make note of key points you want your attendees to always remember.
  • Formulate these points into a series of trivia questions.
  • Using a game buzzer system, recreate a basic TV-Game show style environment.
  • Ask your questions and attendees who know the answer will buzz in and score points.  The subject matter is now reinforced into the mind of the attendee who answered correctly.
  • The attendees who didn’t know the answer, or just didn’t buzz in quick enough, will hear the main points again, thereby reinforcing the points yet again.
  • Continue until all your trivia questions (main points) have been used up, and the player with the most points is the winner.

Another variation of this is to use an Audience Response Keypad with multiple choice answers.  So, instead of attendees ‘buzzing in’ and only the fastest player gets to answer, everyone gets to submit A, B, C or D on what they feel is the correct answer.  All players that submit the correct answer get points.  Those that don’t….well….don’t get anything.  Since everyone gets to participate in each question, the Audience Response System is your ticket to truly understanding if the attendees are taking home the main points of the session.

 

But let us not be too cynical, using Trivia will also help the attendees learn and know what’s important. The trivia should be designed in a clever way that covers the basics of discussion being had, content being given and information being relayed without going over the top. Short sharp questions with straight forward answers are needed to make sure the learning is taking place. Forget essays, long answers and structured discussion…if you are using Trivia to end your session it needs to be direct and to the point and this will help it stick in the mind of attendees.

 

It will also help end the session on a high. We all know the importance of making a good first impression and last impression, and indeed we have discussed that last impression on the blog earlier, but adding a wireless buzzer trivia system to play a trivia game at the end of the session to test knowledge will give your learners that intellectual satisfaction and brain workout that means the session will end well. It may also introduce some added competition and people will not want to look daft in front of colleagues and friends!

Seminar Trivia Game

As a teacher/instructor or seminal leader the Trivia is also valuable to you as it assess learning. I do not want to delve too deep into the whole, and let us face it complex, issues of teaching and learning but the basic fact is that unless you test your students and audience then you won’t know if your information is being taken on board. If you hold a ten question trivia session and people get 8,9 or 10 you know it has worked well and that your teaching style and method is working. If they are getting 2,3, and 4 then you know something needs to change.

 

All in all therefore, trivia has many potential uses in any environment but adding trivia to a seminar may just give you that crucial edge to ensure learning is taking place, the ability to assess your learners and students and it works and has benefits for both parties. One thing you will have to do is try to not overload the attendees with trivia and make sure its targeted right. Using a trivia session at the end is probably your best bet but if you are dealing with long and complicated subjects you may want to throw in the trivia tests throughout the session. Either way Trivia is a powerful tool and you need to make sure you use it!

One Response to Reinforcing Seminars with Trivia

  1. […] a previous post we touched upon the use of trivia in seminar related work and how it could benefit both the teacher and the learner. You may have read that post […]

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