A new year, always brings new opportunities to learn and improve. Here are five tips to enhance your training and increase engagement…

1. Give learners something to do. Engagement is a result of being active. Ensure that those who attend your training are learning and not just listening to you because you’re entertaining. Sharing your expert knowledge doesn’t not mean that learning is occurring. If your goal is for those attending your training to take action, you must allow them to be active learners and not passive ones.

2. Use the Recipe for Engagement. Your training should be comprised of 1/3 presentation and 2/3 application and feedback. If your primary way of engagement is them listening to you talk to them, you’re missing learning opportunities. Your learners are less likely to apply your content and take desired action if they’re not engaged.

3. Start with a Bang. Draw learners into the learning experience from the beginning. Do something to grab their attention and set the climate for learning. Your training should begin with making connections with your learners. Give them a reason to pay attention.

4. Make learning easy. Let them know how they are expected to participate to get the most value from the learning experience. Give them a participant guide or handouts to guide them through the note-taking process. If it’s too hard for them to keep up with you and try to determine the key points, they are not getting an extraordinary learning experience. In addition, you should have a facilitator guide to ensure that you are following your training design and staying on track. Facilitator guides keep you from going off topic and aligned with the training goals. We all know how easy it is to start rambling when we’re discussing our passion topics.

5. Regularly assess your training effectiveness. Extraordinary learning experiences are never done. They are always works in progress that you continuously improve. If you’re not sure how to assess your training’s effectiveness, try the Training Check-Up. It will give you a way to assess your training content, structure, materials, and delivery. How else will you know what you need to improve, if you never assess your training.

With these five tips, I’ve given you a head-start in making learning extraordinary for the new year.

Happy New Year!