101 Ways to Make Training Active.

101 Ways to Make Training Active, by Mel Silberman, Book, 2005, Pfeiffer & Company, $55.

Support: CD-ROM.

In the summer of 1990, our local university invited me to give a course on international economic relations. About the same time, Mel Silberman was developing what he calls his "active training" approach.

I wish I'd met him then. It would have been highly unlikely, though. I was working in the headquarters of a regional bank in the top lefthand corner of France--geographically the closest you can get to the U.S. over here--and Mel was, I suppose, somewhere in the Philadelphia-New Jersey corridor, between Temple University and Princeton, NJ.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

My introduction to training was therefore as follows: 400 students in a lecture hall at 8 a.m. in the morning on a subject which I did not find at all fascinating at that time of day--and with absolutely no idea of the students' expectations.

I hated it, but the students didn't. And the reason they didn't was that I was not a university lecturer, but someone from outside in the "real world."

Insight #1: The trainer does not motivate the trainees; they either are motivated or are not.

Insight #2: The trainer had better understand what motivates his trainees, or he'll be off track pretty quickly (I found that out when I read their examination output).

Actually, a French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal, had found all that out in the seventeenth century when he said, "People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others."

Mel Silberman's "active training" approach is all about just that: handing over the learning process to the person doing the learning. Most people who train adults do so because they know their subject. The active training approach is not about subjects or subject matter expertise but about learning. Management theorists might even call it a client-centered approach. You want to be a trainer? Give responsibility for the learning to the trainee, but keep control of the learning process.

And the only way you can do that is using this sort of approach. You can't do it by doing what I did 15 years ago: lecturing 400 half-awake students at 8 o'clock in the morning for a couple of hours. The content was superb; after all, I did know what I was talking about. The knowledge retained by the students was dismal. And all because the first edition of this book hadn't even been written!

What's in it?

101 Ways to Make Training Active is a hefty book--the contents listing alone runs over four pages--with a hefty price. But it is quite manageable as there are in fact three sections and what the author calls a "Nuts and Bolts" section. The three sections are the mainstays of any training session: participation, content, and what Roger Greenaway calls "Reviewing." The Nuts and Bolts section is also on the CD-ROM as a series of files to make them more easily reproducible.

Inside each section, there are a number of areas that are addressed, and within each area a number of techniques are described according to a standardized format: overview, procedure, variations, and an example of the technique's use. The final section on Reviewing, for example, entitled "How To Make Training Unforgettable" (my translation: this is where the learning actually happens), covers four areas: Reviewing Strategies, Self-assessment, Application Planning, and Closing Sentiments.

How good is it?

Don't read this book. Except for the Introduction, this is a book to be dipped into.

The author himself calls it a "resource." Looked at from that point of view, this is a cookbook for trainers and should be read and used on that basis.

I have several of these "recipe books" in my library and use them frequently. Silberman's book is less prescriptive than the others. For example, there is no "ingredients" list for each technique: no standard time, group size, required resources, etc. It is probably therefore less frightening for beginning trainers or those Subject Matter Experts I talked about at the beginning of this review. The words "active training" are probably less frightening to beginners than Games or Activites or (heaven forbid) Fun. However, many of the techniques described in the book are great fun to use. What also surprised me was the number of NEW techniques he describes.

Recommendation

If you're a beginner, buy 101 Ways to Make Training Active. It is a highly accessible, un-frightening resource for anyone suddenly given a training assignment. If you're an experienced trainer who works like me--picking and choosing different activities according to the target audience, time available, and subject matter--then this book is a useful addition to your resource database.

101 Ways to Make Training Active

Mel Silberman

Best Price $38.99 or Buy New $43.68

Buy from amazon.com

Privacy Information

Review by Chris Bressey

Product Ratings

101 Ways to Make Training Active

Value of Content     *** 1/2
Self-Study Value     ***
Instructional Value  *** 1/2
Value for the money  **
Overall rating       ** 1/2