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How to Get Fully Engaged Trainees for Compliance Refresher

By Mike Dickinson

We got the brainstorm to do a game show instead of traditional presentation for some compliance refresher training. Then after a quick search we chose Game Show PLUS. I have been 110% pleased with that choice. In addition to the obviously fun aspects of the game show (more on that in a moment), I have been delighted with the intuitiveness and reliability of the program. With other authoring systems and our Learning Management System we seem plagued with clunky interfaces and software glitches. Not so with Game Show PLUS: It’s easy to use with hardly any instruction, and it has been totally reliable. Both those virtues mean our develop-to-deliver ratio is very low, a welcome change.

As for the fun, it was there from the very first ‘show.’ We ran 20 shows in a 3-week period, each one one hour long with up to 40 people per show. Every person in the room was not only fully engaged, they were intense, too!

A couple lessons learned. For our first few shows we used the buzz-in method, but found a few teams got frustrated from lack of manual dexterity or perhaps from millisecond differences in buzzer response times. In any case, that detracted from the learning so we switched to taking turns and that actually increased the learning while not lowering the fun level much at all. It still gets exciting if someone gives a wrong answer! (The buzzers are hot in that case.)

It also added to the excitement to have each respondent sit in a row of ‘hot seats’ up front. We did that out of necessity because we bought the USB buzzers with cables, but it actually increased the sense of peer pressure. We ran with four teams and thus four players responding.

We encouraged team participation and that made it really wild! The person in the hot seat was encouraged to get advice from their team before they answered. This actually worked very well with the rotational method (vs. buzz-in) because the person answering each question had some protected time. Folks found they had to be sure of their source, though, as there was some negative coaching going on!.

As I hoped at the outset, folks walking in a nearby hall would stick their head in the room to see what all the excitement was about. When they heard it was compliance refresher training they couldn’t believe it! Now I’m getting requests to use the Game Show PLUS for other refresher training combined with team building. What fun!

Just one more point. On my own, I am not the kind of person who can inject excitement into a room of learners. But with Game Show PLUS and its neat little touches such as Al Morale, the music, sound effects, etc., together with the competitive environment, my personality didn’t matter. I get stopped often in the halls by people thanking me for the fun experience and eager for the next time they can do it.

Mike Dickinson is Director of eLearning and Curriculum for a Texas-based company that is one of the 500 fastest growing private firms in the US.

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