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TRAINING TIP 35: Don’t Put the Brakes on your Breaks

By Edwin Pauzer posted 06-07-2017 10:37

  

Have you ever stayed up past your point of exhaustion just because a movie or TV show was so interesting, only to have fallen asleep and missed it anyway? It is the same thing in training if you are racing to cover content and skipping the breaks to do it. You will probably be getting various states of unconsciousness from your participants.

Breaks are just as important to the training as the topic. If you continue well beyond the participants’ attention span, you may be covering the material but they are no longer learning, and you risk becoming a content-centered instructor who is more interested in the topic than insuring that learning occurs. It’s an easy trap in which to fall.

Give your breaks approximately once an hour, without being a slave to fashion by holding to the once-an-hour routine. If you have lots of activity in that hour, you can stretch the hour. If you see your participants are dozing, add some instructional activity that makes them walk, talk, write, or at least makes them stand up. The Z Monster is most likely to sit on participant eyelids after lunch and around 4 p.m. If you see them nodding off, give them an activity or even another short break. One time I put people on a break 20 minutes after they returned from lunch because the drowsiness was apparent. Freshly made coffee, a chance to stand and converse, made all the difference in the world.

Shorter, more frequent breaks are better than fewer, longer ones. Long breaks allow participants to get on their cell phones and talk or text away. Fifteen minutes is a long time to get nice and comfortable on a break. Make one 7 or 8 minutes long, and give them an odd time to return e.g. “Please be back by 10:42. It is now….” The 15 minute break is too common and was probably invented by the same person who thought starting a presentation with a history of the agency was also a great idea. (It isn’t).

So please be learning centered. Don’t put the brakes on your breaks.

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