The Three Rs of Processing a Training Activity: Review, Reflect, and Relate

How many of you have done this (or experienced) the following? Your class has just completed a wonderful activity you chose especially for them. You proudly ask, “So, what did we learn from this?” After a moment of thought (or not) you hear bits of insight from your participants:

• Not to trust you again, you make us do role-plays
• Never volunteer
• Not to pair up with Julia again, she cheats
• I don’t know. Say, why did we do that?

When you provide a learning activity, it is up to you (the trainer) to translate that experience into learning. If you follow the three Rs of processing an activity, you’ll find that responsibility much easier.

Review

Even though your participants have just experienced your activity, they need to have their experience reviewed. They are focused on the end of the activity, not how they got to that point. You need to help them see the path they just took. For example:

Review: I had you look at a picture that obviously had a lot going on in it. I asked you to count how many faces you saw in the picture and to call out that number. Almost immediately, you heard people call out three, and then four.

You need to put their thoughts back to the moment that began their learning experience. This often begins as a summary of your original directions.

Reflect

Now that you’ve reviewed what you had asked them to do, you ask them to reflect and share their experience. Below is an example of the reflection questions a trainer would ask and the common responses from participants.

Reflection: “When you heard the numbers three and four called out, and you had found that same number, what were your thoughts or what did you do?”

Participants: “I stopped looking, because I found what they’d found.”

Reflection: “When you heard people call out 5 and 6, but you hadn’t found that many, what were your thoughts or what did you do?”

Participants: “I looked even harder because didn’t see what they did.”

Reflection: “What happened when I told you that there were 9 faces in the picture?”

Participants: “Wait, let me look harder.” or “Prove it!”

Of course, as you count and show the faces, there are all kinds of comments, including rationalization as to why they didn’t see the faces.

Relate

The next step is to have them relate this current experience to your real-life learning point. In this case, the learning point is an awareness of how we have difficulty moving on from our first impressions and that this failure to be open to the other person hinders our communication with and understanding of the other person.

Relate: “What you just experienced is similar to the issues of first impressions. First impressions commonly occur in the first three minutes of meeting someone. Actually, the first impression occurs within the first minute. The other two minutes you spend justifying your impression. Think back to a time that either you hung on to a first “bad” impression or that someone hung on to a first “bad” impression of you. What kinds of troubles did that cause for you or the other person?”

Participants: “I think someone did that with me because from the very beginning I couldn’t say anything right.” or “When I first met this one guy, I couldn’t stand him. I avoided working with him. It took a year before I realized he wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

Relate: “What other kinds of consequences are there for hanging on first impressions?”

Participants: “Missed opportunities, such as ….”

The relate questions continue until your participants have articulated your learning point(s).

This process follows a basic bit of adult learning theory – adult learners want to participate in their own learning. You could easily lecture on the dangers of hanging onto first impressions, but we know that learning is more powerful when it comes from within. When the participants share their own awareness’ and insights, they are contributing to their own learning, as well as, contributing to the learning of those around them.

If the participants are having difficulty following your questioning, make a more direct cause and effect connection between the review and reflect steps.

There’s a bonus to this process. It’s a reality check for your activity’s appropriateness for your learning point(s). If your participants can follow this process with you and the responses you get from them match your intentions – fantastic! If not, consider whether your activity is too abstract. Sometimes we choose an activity because it sounds fun. If you have to force it to be relevant, then it’s not really fun and, it’s not relevant. Then you’re back to “So, why’d we do this?”