GAME #94: Snowball Fight
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Game Categories:
Opener Energizer Communication
Team-building Review Topical: Evaluation
❖ Purpose: To garner anonymous course feedback.
❖ Time Required: 10 minutes.
❖ Size of Group: Unlimited.
❖ Materials Required: Scrap paper for everyone.
❖ The Exercise in Action: Getting honest feedback is an issue for every trainer, says William Weech, a foreign service officer/course manager with the Foreign Service Institute, Arlington, VA. For that reason, he uses the “snowball” technique to gather what he hopes is better, more accurate input from participants—on an anonymous basis. Weech tells participants that their input will be anonymous, and that he would like each person to neatly print three positive things about the course and three things needing improvement on a sheet of paper. After about three minutes, he asks participants to wad their papers into balls and have a “snowball fight.” When the sheets are thoroughly randomized, he asks each participant to pick up one sheet and read it to the class. Says Weech: “The nice thing is that it allows everyone’s voice to be heard without attribution. People can see what the general feeling of the group is without knowing specifically who thinks what.” Often the exercise “snowballs” into a further discussion of what did and did not work during the session. And it ensures 100 percent participation in the evaluation process. A final thought Weech keeps in mind during his presentations: Listen to participants during a course and they’ll evaluate you openly at the end. If they’re convinced you don’t listen, they won’t bother to say much. In other words, don’t wait until the end of a session to ask for (and respond to) feedback.
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