A Picture Tells A Thousand Words & A Story

I cannot believe that I have already finished the second module of the DACE program that I am studying now. The next class will be on Review Competency-Based Training (CBT) Approaches for Adult Workers.

One of the approaches to conducting training classes that promotes interaction and participation among the participants which I have noticed at the last 2 modules of DACE is where the trainer uses pictures to help you trigger thoughts, reflections or even recollections of what you have learnt, how you feel about the program, or what you look forward it. By just using a simple picture, you can start creating discussions and conversations among the participants and encourage them to share with each other.

In fact, this is similar to the innovation workshop that Everest Innovation has asked me to conduct for CPF Board. The workshop program was developed by John Seah, founder of Everest Innovation and within the training program for the innovation workshop, John shared on a method of SCAMPER for brainstorming and ideas generation, that are highly essential if we want to find innovation and creative solutions, products and/or even services.

The SCAMPER method involves a stage of Pictorial Connection, which essentially is to select a few interesting pictures and get team members to generate trigger words from the pictures. The trigger words can help the team to generate and brainstorm new ideas and who knows, you can get very creative and WOW ideas from unrelated trigger words from the issues that you are trying to find solutions for.

Reflecting back, I have seen this in action and have experienced it again in class in using pictures to help enhance learning and stimulate your thoughts. Like many people say, a picture indeed tells a thousand words and the pictures used in class have helped to tell us the journey that I have walked for Training Needs Analysis.

Take a look at the pictures we had in class and what thoughts, ideas and reflections come to your mind:

Based on the pictures, we were in fact able to form a story of the important topics covered for Training Needs Analysis and the learning points that were important to us. I am also comment that pictures must be well chosen to assist in triggering your thoughts and in this case, the pictures were appropriate and well selected.

Look at the amount of information that my group has generated on the “poster chasing” flipchart in a short 3-5 mins of brainstorming and looking at the pictures, to tell you the story of our TNA journey:

Here are the results from the other teams in the class.