Many trainers conduct quizzes or tests during or at the end of their training courses to help capture learning and events. But have you ever taken a quiz to teach something from scratch? It works, it’s fun, and I’ve done it many times, so let me share with you how you can do it. It works especially well if you want to teach something quite technical that is contained in a handout, workbook, or textbook. First, you need to decide what you want to cover in your course. And you should have this inside a handout or workbook. He then announces the quiz to his group. You will want to explain to the pragmatists why you are doing this.
They may be thinking that a test won’t teach them anything, but it does. As always, announce the instructions in steps, keeping a tight rein on the explanation for all to hear. Then put them into teams. You decide the size and structure of these, but many times I have worked with groups of forty people. Teams should not be larger than four or five. Then give them the task of designing five or six questions based on the material in front of them. Give them index cards to write the questions on and make sure they appreciate the need for the answers on the back of the card. Give them time to create the questions. Suggest that they don’t look for easy questions. Put the score cards on the white board or flip chart, clearly arranged, and start the first round.
When they have finished, ask them for the name of a team; it encourages cool and funky names, like the Winners or the Cool Gang, something humorous. Confirm that each team will ask one of their questions to another team and that there will be four rounds. You have fifteen seconds to determine the correct answer and you may refer to your textbook or handout during this time. If you get it wrong, you can give another team a bonus worth three points. The first round begins.
Make it fun and flashy. Deduct points for insolence; Award extra points for smiling, asking good questions, or being able to. Keep it moving; make scores after each round; promise a prize; make the event exciting. After a few times of running your test session, you’ll collect some good questions so you can have a “Paul Round” to fine-tune your learning objectives. Award a grand prize to the winning team and, as always, break down the exercise by tying it all together with GLU.
G – What did you get from the exercise?
L- What did you learn?
U – How could you use it in your work?
Don’t be afraid to run a test session on a particular technical topic. Allocate a good hour; you’ll have a little fun and they’ll learn a lot more than if you forced them to use a dozen PowerPoint slides.
Prepared Questionnaires
Give each learning team half a dozen index cards and ask them to write questions about the topic on the card with the answer on the back. Collect all the cards and take a quiz similar to a quiz show with points and prizes.
search for answers
Ask each student to write three or more questions on a piece of paper. Ask them to wander around the room and find someone to ask one of their questions. If you know the answer, great. If not, then the couple needs to find someone who will. The goal is to get all questions asked. To review, ask a few students to read your questions and confirm the answers.
marathon question
Put people in pairs. Designate one partner “A” and the other “B”. Have “A” question “B” non-stop for five minutes, one question after another. The questions can be a combination of questions to which you know the answers and others you don’t. Ask them to take notes on the questions that neither “A” nor “B” can answer. After the allotted time, have partners switch roles. After this exercise, the class as a whole, along with the facilitator, can answer any questions that remain unanswered.
posting questions
Give students several large Post-it notes and ask them to write on each one a question they have about the learning material. Ask them to post their questions anonymously on a question board on the wall or on a flip chart. During a break, ask students to look at the questions and choose those that they can answer. After the break, have students read the questions they have chosen to the class and give them the answers. Students and the facilitator can add to these responses as appropriate.
question ball
Give each person a full sheet of blank paper. Ask everyone to write a question they have on the paper. Ask them to print their question so someone can easily read it and not sign their name. Ask them to make a ball out of the paper. You can then collect the question balls in a bucket and redistribute them by throwing one to each person in the class. Or if the group needs a physical energizer, you can ask them to stand up and have a snowball fight with the trivia balls, to see how many people they can hit in three seconds. Then, at a signal, ask everyone to pick up a ball, open it up, and use any person or resource in the room to help answer the question. After a few minutes, ask everyone to read their question to the class and give their response.
Put all your cards (of questions) on the table
Distribute blank index cards to students seated five or six at a table. Ask each student to write questions they have about the learning material on the cards, one question per card. Then ask everyone at the table to combine their cards into a deck. Have each table select a dealer. The dealer then shuffles the deck and deals the cards face down to everyone at the table. Each student, in turn, reads while playing music. Ask them to continue passing the question cards around the circle to the person on the right. When the music stops, they will be given one to three minutes to formulate an answer to the question in hand. They can use any person or resource in the room to help them answer it. Then each one reads their question and gives their answer.
Hot Potato Question Circle
Ask people to stand up and form a circle. Have one of the students start the game by asking a question and tossing a Koosh ball or other soft ball to anyone in the circle. The person who catches the ball has to answer the question. If the person can’t answer the question right away, she quickly tosses the ball like a hot potato to someone else in the circle. The ball keeps rolling until someone can answer the question posed. The person who answers the question can ask a new question and the process starts over. Instead of a Koosh ball, you could use a real potato. (Variation: To prepare the bomb, the facilitator can give everyone in the circle a card with a question to ask when it is their turn.)
Team Question Exchange
Divide students into two or more teams. Ask each team to write a quiz of ten or twenty questions for another team that would test their understanding of the learning material. The teams then exchange sets of questions. The first team to answer all of their questions correctly wins a bag of peanuts or some other prize.
touch your friend
In the middle or at the end of a presentation, put people in pairs. Ask classmates to ask themselves five questions about the topic, both questions they know the answer to and questions they don’t. If none of the partners can answer a question posed, the partners ask this question to the whole group at the end of the exercise. .
pass the hat
Ask everyone to put one or more of their questions on a card and put it in a hat. Then ask each student to draw a question from the hat and read it to the class. The first person to answer correctly gets a point or a prize. The facilitator answers only those questions that none of the students can answer.