Ample experimental evidence and my personal experience suggest that the design of activities plays an important role in providing effective training. But this does not mean that we can ignore the content. Activities without content merely make the participants feel they are roleplaying headless chicken.

Content and Activities

On my desk, I have a large yin-yang poster. The yin is labeled as content and yang is labeled as activity. Maybe it is the other way around. The point of this graphic is that content and activity are interdependent.

Content is available in many forms: books, manuals, articles, research reports, case studies, job aids, stories, assessment instruments, graphics, audio and video recording, and the Internet. These are archived content. In some cases, up-to-the-minute content is presented spontaneously by live people such as subject-matter experts, experienced practitioners, fellow participants, and informants with specialized background.
In my training design, I wrap different types of training activities around different types of content resources. Here are few examples;

Textra Games. When the content is available in a text form, I use textra games. These games add extra value to the text materials by requiring the participants to interact with the content and with each other.
Double Exposure. When the content is in an audio or video form, I use the double-exposure activity. In these activities, the participants watch or listen to the recording and play one or more games to review and apply the new principles and procedures.

Interactive Lectures. When the best source of content is a subject-matter expert, I use interactive lectures that lets the presenter control of the scope and sequence of the content. Typical activities in this area use presentations interspersed with (or followed by) game-like activities to reward the recall and application of the content.

Structured Sharing. If I believe that the participants have useful experience and expertise on a training topic, I use structured-sharing activities. In a typical activity of this type, I provide a context for discussion among the participants about their relevant experiences, opinions, and skills to encourage the sharing of best practices.

Before, After, and During

Here is another way of looking at the use of training activities. Let’s imagine that we are training our participants to use negotiation skills.

Activity first. We can conduct a roleplay at the beginning of the training session. We present a scenario of a critical incident. We ask the participants to pair up and roleplay the situation. We then debrief the participants and help them identify the lessons they learned. As trainers, we provide additional ideas and suggestions.

Content first. We can brief the participants at the beginning of the training session by explaining and demonstrating negotiation principles. We distribute a set of guidelines for effective negotiation and walk the participants through this job aid. Later, we ask the participants to act out the negotiation roleplay, making sure to apply the relevant ideas from the earlier briefing.

Content in the middle. We can begin with a negotiation roleplay and pause it in the middle. We coach the participants by providing them with a suitable analysis of what they did so far and by giving advice for what they could do in the next part.

Two Ways for Combining Content and Activities

In summary, here are the two ways we can use activities to reinforce the content.

Apply activities to suit different type of content resources.
Apply the activities before, after, and in the middle of the content presentation.

The Secret

To design training in a faster and cheaper way and attain effective results, wrap the training content inside a suitable activity.