Re: Exercise to get participants involved

["Lisa M. Bronson" <lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com>]

Since you're teaching how to write effective documentation and want
something relevant to that, here's a way of showing how important it
is to give complete, precise information.

Have two volunteers come to the front of the room. One is the
"instructor" and one is the "instructee". The instructor has to tell
the instructee how to make a peanut butter sandwich {or tie their
shoes, brush their teeth, or whatever you feel is appropriate}. The
instructee can only do exactly what they are told; they cannot use any
personal experience to complete the task. (We know this is not
real-world; there are always things you can expect your audience to
know, but for this example, they're to assume nothing.)

Make sure you situate the instructor and the instructee so they cannot
see each other!

The rest of the people in the room are in charge of making sure the
instructee only does what the instructor says, and letting the
instructor know if they haven't given enough information. For example,
if the instructor says, "Take two pieces of bread out of the bag," the
audience will tell the instructor that the instructee can't do that
(the bag isn't open). It can be really fun if you have someone who can
be a literalist about it, and when told to open the bag, but not *how*
to open the bag, they rip a hole in the plastic rather than removing
the twist-tie! Or, if told to put peanut butter on each piece of
bread, they coat the whole slice, crust and all, instead of one face
of the bread. :)

Have fun,
Lisa B.


On 9/27/05, gwjohng -at- yahoo -dot- com <gwjohng -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> I am involved with a series of workshops at my company where we teach engineers to write effect documentation. These workshops seem to go very well and despite attendance being entirely elective, the classes are filled to capacity.
>
> We are looking for a relevant exercise we can conduct early during the two hour session which will get the participants verbally involved in the workshop. We are after something that encourages folks to ask questions, make comments and become comfortable interacting with their fellow participants.
>
> Does anyone have suggestions for such exercises? If so, could you describe the exercise?

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