13 Ideasfor 2013

^training

EXPERIENCE]

training Behind the scenes at a concert venue

Opening a mini-golf course

Visiting the experts in employee engagement

Working with shelter dogs

On stage at a late night talk show

In the midst of a photo shoot

Listening to experts

Program Board Training

Schedule a behind the scenes tour at a local concert venue. Bonus: Schedule Q&A time with volunteer manager, see if the students can volunteer at an event, set up a panel with venue event planners.

Student Union Training

Create your own mini-golf course. Break the group up into teams of 5. Each team gets a “hole”. You can buy mini golf putting greens on amazon for cheap. Teams can be challenged to come up with a concept/design for their hole that represents their mini-golf course. Add in other challenges like motivating the staff, selling party or event packages, etc.

this training can be manipulated to be used for many other types of groups -- contact courtney about coming to facilitate it on your campus.0

VISIT THE EXPERTS IN EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENTSearch for “100 Best

Companies to Work For”. When you find the list, check to see if any of

them have a headquarters near your institution. Set up a tour and a time to chat with some of the employees behind the great culture

at that company.

LEARN BEST PRACTICES IN WORK ENVIRONMENT AND EMPLOYEE CULTURE

Teach Calm Assertive Leadership Using Four Legged FriendsThis one takes some planning and is dependent on students’ comfortability/allergies. Perfect for a an exec board or small group. If you have ever watched an episode of Dog Whisperer (if not, YouTube it) you know that a dog’s behavior is completely dependent on the owners ability to be a calm assertive leader. Well students need to be calm assertive leaders too. Call a few local dog trainers, if they are legit they would have connections in “the doggie network” with local shelters and such. If you can pull it off, it will blow your typical team-builder out of the water.

One thing I used to LOATHE about training the Orientation Leaders (OLs) was that every department wanted to present to them. Every department had their canned speech and I was determined each year to not have several talking heads just delivering their canned speeches for the OLs. This happens not just in orientation but with RAs, tour guides, and any “ambassador type” leadership position.

REINVENT TALKING HEADS

LATE NIGHT WITH Or!"#$%$!&#

Over the course of your training program spread the key department heads out and bring them in for a “late night talk show” style interviews. Think Jimmy Fallon, his model is the best because after he interviews a guest he plays a little game with them.

So you bring in the director of dining services and one of your leaders gets to play host.

They ask questions about upcoming projects, common myths about dining on campus, and throws in some fun personal questions like most embarrassing moment on the job.

End with a blind taste test or minute to win it type game.

After that you could always open it up to any other questions the students have for him/her. O

REINVENT BONDINGEvery training includes some type of meal or movie to “bond”. Save your money. Borrow, rent or grab a nice DSLR camera from another office or a friend and do a photo shoot with your students. The students love getting their picture taken, they will be silly together, and they will share the pictures like crazy on social media. So you get an added bonus of a buzz on campus about your program because of amount of photo sharing and tagging going on.

See a few examples on the next slide.

Bring in an outside expert on a relevant topic

Teaching communication? Bring in a hostage negotiator.

Teaching public speaking? Bring in a stand up comedian.

Teaching supervision skills? Bring in a head chef.

Ptechnologyinfuse

With Pinterest boards for your staff

Tracking a training hashtag

Ditching boring openers/case studies for videos

Using online modules prior to training

With a Slideshare account for your office

Blowing minds with Nearpod

This is the perfect assignment to delegate to a student intern, graduate student, or any Pinterest lover in the office. Create a Pinterst account that your student team can follow. Below are some ideas of boards. This is a great way to highlight key things from training, or something they can look at before they get to training. See examples for Residence Life, Program Boards and Orientation Staff on the following slides. Get creative and mold the different ideas to work best for your staff.

• Meet the department- introduce others in your department with their pictures and a brief (300 character or less) bio/contact info

• Leadership Resources- blogs and websites to find new and different ideas on leadership

• Upcoming events that they should be aware of

• Key partners/on campus resources- link to their websites, pictures of their offices with location/contact info

Board Ideas (General)

• Door dec ideas

• Feature returning staff- pictures with their name, year and their advice for the year

• Relevant “good practices” happening at other campuses

• Programing ideas for their floor

• Emergency- Pictures of emergency staff on campus with brief bio, why you would contact them, and their contact info (could highlight EMT, PD, and counseling staff among others)

Board Ideas (Residence Life)

• Up and coming artists

• Event ideas

• Cool marketing ideas

• Pictures of venues on campus to host events with tips, info on how to reserve space, etc.

• Unique event set ups and decor

• Event planning blogs

• Speakers to bring in for campus lectures- maybe feature a few alumni of the university that also do speaking gigs

Board Ideas (Program Board)

• Meet the NODA/Grad intern staff- pictures of them with brief bios/contact info

• Icebreaker websites or ideas

• “Personalize your polo and khakis”- pictures of staff with their uniform and ways to personalize it with accessories

• Feature returning staff (see Residence Life)

• Have some fun with the Beloit Mindset list (pics of things on the list)

Board Ideas (Orientation)

#AwesomeTraining

if you do it for events then you should do it for training

create a hashtag for training-- it creates buzz for your office on social media, and it helps you assess your training with real time qualitative data

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Ditch Case Studies and Boring Powerpoint Intros to TopicsCase studies can be boring, and the typical intro to a topic is generally one of the reasons students tune out early in presentations. Videos are great to grab attention. With TED talks you can have an expert in your workshop for free. I have curated over 20 videos including the ones you see here, as well as a whole page of pop culture clips, TED talks and a few other featured video clips that anyone can use for a variety of different training topics.

Above is a screenshot from one of the video libraries on Courtney’s site. Go to the courtoconnell.com video library to see them all.0

Don’t waste time on boring policy review, put it in an online module.A few years ago I came across a career services site that was using Adobe Presenter to create slideshows that could have audio and video embedded that they used to create resources about the job search for students. I instantly thought, wait a second, we could use that kind of software to create training resources for students. After much research into the software and endless time figuring out the kinks. My office is officially in the business of creating online modules. Now prior to August training, all students watch an intro to student life and a module about the service mentality. It is great.

If you are unable to view the screen recording on this page I have included it as a video on the blog post. Check out how you can create a virtual resource for your students, and email Courtney with any questions on how to get started.

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Slideshare is like a little bucket to store all the training presentations you do. Why wouldn’t you want your students to have access to these after the training? Create a slideshare account to store them all and voila, problem solved!

Take your training from boring to mind blowing with

a free app. Basically you create a media rich

presentation using content you create on their site, a pdf

of a slide deck, videos, quiz questions (use their site to

create those), and any other media you want to include.

Then watch the presentation come to life when your

students download the free app and view the

presentation along with you as you present it.I am not doing this thing justice. Go to nearpod.com and play

around for a little bit. This will change the level of student engagement in your presentation instantly.