Flip charts are a fun, engaging way to provide participant involvement that leads to understanding and retention.
Last week I attended a two-day Bob Pike Group “Train-the-Trainer” Boot Camp seminar and learned several easy ways to incorporate the use of a flip chart in training. Six of my favorites were:
- Ground Rules
- Road Map Agenda
- “Ask It” Basket
- Dot Voting
- Idea Collection
- Window Pane Grid
Ground Rules–the class ground rules were literally taped to the ground. Participants couldn’t miss them walking in:
Road Map Agenda–the agenda was presented as a road map:
“Ask It” Basket–Off-topic questions could be written on sticky notes and placed in the “Ask It” Basket to be addressed later, so as not to interrupt the concept development:
Dot Voting–Near the start of the seminar, each person got 4 dot stickers to indicate which 4 topics were of greatest interest:
Idea Collection: This was also an activity to help form a learning group. Each table of participants formed a group that came up with a group name and tag line. Then, from the concepts we had covered, we each contributed our 2-3 favorite concepts to write on sticky notes: 
Window Pane Grid–This technique of using a graphic plus a key word works as a priming mechanism for the brain to recall stored information. In this particular exercise, the table groups each came up with their own icon to go with the key words and then each table group looked at other groups’ icons. If another group’s icon was deemed to be better, the group could copy it and replace their earlier icon with the new one. Using sticky notes made it easy to change out the icons:
While a flip chart may not work for very large groups (Bob Pike has successfully used them for groups of 80-100 people), they are a versatile resource in training–just add sticky notes and markers (scented Mr. Sketch markers are pleasant to use).
Flip out for flip charts at your next training!
These are great! Only once have I seen training content taped to the floor, but it was really memorable, and (literally) remarkable. So it could be a great way to reinforce the key points from a talk, especially if they’re worded too briefly to mean much until the speaker explains them.
That would really pique people’s interest as they kept walking over them, yet their full meaning was only gradually revealed as the session unfolded.
As for audience size, if you’re presenting via a video feed, you could present to any number of people – from 1 to 1 million at a time!
You might like this video of someone doing just that, and he demonstrates some more really useful flipchart techniques, as I outline later in that post.
Would love to hear your thoughts on his techniques, and you’re more than welcome to leave a back-link to your own post too.