2008 - December
Yours In Training
 |
December 2008 |
Freecall 1800 2 TRAIN (1800 2 87246) www.mrwed.com.au |
In This Issue
Training News: Conferences for 2009
MRWED News: MRWED named in Q400 for second year
Training Tip: Rewind
Website of the Month: www.culturalsavvy.com
Training Game: Human Treasure Hunt
Also...
Training News: Conferences for 2009
There are a range of exciting Training and Development conferences announced for the first half of 2009. Below is an overview of some of the bigger events to consider penciling into your diaries.
DEEWR’s Big Skills Conference, Sydney, 2nd-5th March 2009
The BIG Skills Conference is hosted by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, on behalf of the Australian Government. This is the first major national conference on skills and training hosted at the Federal level in recent times, and it has the support of many organisations and individuals involved in tertiary training and education. It is timely to reinvigorate our tertiary education system and identify how skills and training can help address the big challenges of productivity, participation and social inclusion.
The Conference will be forward looking and it will bring together major national and international players with an interest in skills and training to debate issues, think differently and stimulate change in the Australian tertiary sector.
For more information visit: http://www.deewr.gov.au/skillsconference2009
DETA’s Smart Training and Assessment Conference, Gold Coast, 27th-28th March 2009
Join the Department of Education, Training and the Arts for its vocational education and training (VET) conference, Partners in Smart Training & Assessment. The conference will feature motivational speakers, interactive workshops led by experienced practitioners and regulators and an opportunity to network with others in the VET industry.
For more information visit: http://deta.qld.gov.au/conference/rto/
LearnX Asia Pacific Conference and Expo, Sydney, 1st-2nd April 2009
The premier Asia-Pacific education and training conference returns to Sydney in 2009. LearnX brings the best learning minds from corporate, education and public sectors to present and discuss the challenges of building e-learning and training programs that meet the needs of a modern workforce.
For more information visit: http://www.learnx.net/learnx/
AITD Conference, Sydney, 21st-22nd April 2009
The Australian Institute for Training and Development is Australia's Leading Association for Training, L&D and HR professionals. Their national conference offers access to a variety of motivational key notes and interactive sessions to make it one of the standout professional development events of the year. This conference is open to members and non-members alike.
For more information visit: http://www.aitd.com.au/conference/venue
MRWED will be represented at each of these conferences in the 2009, so come up and say ‘hi’!
MRWED News: MRWED Named in Q400 for second year
MRWED was named in the prestigious Q400 list for 2008, for a second consecutive year. The Q400 recognises high performing Queensland businesses and are independently ranked by BDO Kendalls, which assesses a range of factors including turnover, full-time staff and assets.
Launched by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh at a gala dinner at Suncorp Stadium on October 30, the Q400 program lists the state’s top 400 privately owned companies. MRWED Principal, Marc Ratcliffe said “It was an honour to be listed along side so many iconic Queensland businesses, and I give credit to my fantastic team whose efforts are equally deserving of this achievement”.
For more information on the q400, visit www.q400.com.au
Training Tip: Rewind
Here is quick revision tip for courses that run on multiple consecutive days. After a few days of training you might want to “Rewind” to get students to consider what has been covered on the previous days in order to link it to the new content. Ask them to take a fresh piece of paper and write down as many key points or topics as they can remember from the training so far. Give them about 60 seconds to generate this list. Then go around the class and take a selection of responses. Tell the students to cross the point/topic off their list if it someone else says it. Keep going until there are only a few students left with new responses and give them a prize. The benefit of this activity is it helps to bring back important points and make them present of mind. It also acts as a useful check on how much the participants took out of the previous training.
Website of the Month: www.culturalsavvy.com
We get a lot of questions asking where to get additional information on cultural awareness as it relates to training. Whilst there are many publications on the topic, many people have struggled to find something online that could help. Recently, we came across the www.culturalsavvy.com website and were delighted to find a range of articles and tips for training that could act as a starting point. There is additional fee-for-service information and training available from the site, but you are not obliged to be a customer or sign up for anything to view samples, articles and tips.
Training Game: Human Treasure Hunt
This game is a variation of the bingo games that are often played in training and it can be used as a “get to know you” on the first day of a course. Tell the students that the goal is to meet as many people as they can and remind them of the importance of introducing themselves as they collect items for their human treasure hunt. As an extension, you could have a prize for the student that gets all treasure hunt information first.
Below are some sample treasure hunt Instructions.
- Find someone who has the “same” shoe size as you;
- Find someone who has a Nokia Mobile Phone;
- Find someone with a blue pen;
- Find someone who enjoys the same type of music as you;
- Find someone who drinks at least one cup of coffee each day;
- Find someone with a bus, train or tram ticket;
- Find a person who likes to wear baseball hats.
- Find someone who enjoys the same recreational activities as you (biking, swimming, watching tv, reading, playing music, etc.);
In debriefing this activity you could discuss whether it was more or less difficult to find similarities in other group members. Further to this, you could explore whether people used any strategies to obtain their items more quickly. You will find that some people are very task focused and others are more into the social element of the activity. This could be a nice lead into content on types of workgroups, learning styles or even personality traits.
As an alternative, Human Treasure Hunt could be played in teams. For example, you could get students into groups of 5 or 6 and give them three minutes to collect a range of common items from members of their group. e.g. Mobile phone, shop receipt, shoe lace, business card, pair of glasses and liquid paper. To add to the difficulty, you could have a rule that each member of the group can only provide one item from the list. There could also be a series of lists and you could have the teams compete in time trials until there is only one team standing. This time the debriefing may involve a discussion on strategy and team work.
These games work with small groups and large conference groups alike… have some fun with them.
Next Issue
The next issue of Yours in Training! will be revamped to include some exciting additions in style and content. So look out for a shiny and new ezine in 2009.
MRWED Quick Links
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Thanks!
If you have any questions, suggestions or issues to be discussed on the Yours in Training! Ezine then please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it us or call our Client Relations Team on Freecall 1800 2 TRAIN (1800 2 87246).
Happy training!
Marc Ratcliffe
Principal – MRWED
