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This entry is a Finalist in the “Harnessing Technology for Learning” category on Wednesday 22 June 2011
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Georgina Havers Principal Training Specialist PPD |
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| Breaking the Virtual Ice |
| Adapt your training class to a web-conference….no problem there are lots of examples of using polling questions, break-out sessions and interactive tools to do just that but have you thought about an ice-breaker that can be used virtually i.e. on a web-conference and also in a classroom? This was the problem facing our trainers as our company embraced the concept of virtual training and as a result the training team has been coming up with original creative ideas to engage audiences in different regions. The use of web cams made visual ice-breakers a winner and generated some interesting discussions! |
| Impact | Innovation | |
| At this point the virtual ice-breakers have only been used for small team meetings but as the company is investing in its use of virtual training media into the 3D environment for induction training of new hires the potential use could be realised by a much larger number of employees | The feedback from participants is that they prefer to attend face-to-face training however in the current business and economic climate this is not always possible so many classes have been delivered by web-conference but with little thought on how to support the social element. Despite searching the internet and posting on various training related discussion boards the team found that virtual ice-breakers were pretty much none existent so we set about creating and testing them on our own training team. | |
| Insight | Inspiration | |
| We started off with the tried and trusted ice-breakers, pick a name out of the hat and have to find your matching pair, “Tom” finds “Jerry”, “Laurel” meets “Hardy” or other similar physical ice-breakers that get people moving around the room and meeting new people. But these just didn’t work in the virtual environment. We then tried more visual ice-breakers: picture games (made culturally relevant e.g. famous bridges to be matched with the location of participants), word searches, favourite quotes. We discovered these took more preparation time (from the trainer and trainee) but did enhance the session’s social aspect. | This really challenged the creative juices of our training team and inspired each of us to come up with something more innovative and daring than the last, not all our attempts succeeded but we had a lot of fun trying and can see real possibilities as the virtual training world expands. We would love to see a website in the training community dedicated to sharing virtual ice-breakers! |
| Georgina Havers |
 Georgina Havers is a Principal Training Specialist and has extensive experience with over 15 years in the clinical trial industry. She obtained her Bachelors’ degree in Genetics and French and commenced her research career at Johnson & Johnson as a Clinical Research Associate Since then Ms Havers has worked for Pfizer as a Project Manager and for the past 8 years in clinical development at PPD. She has been involved in various capacities from site management to project management and for the past 5 years has been a trainer. Georgina has provided training workshops for PPD employees and research site staff throughout the world .PPD is a leading global contract research organization providing drug discovery, development and lifecycle management services. Our clients and partners include pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, academic and government organizations. With offices in 44 countries and more than 11,000 professionals worldwide, PPD applies innovative technologies, therapeutic expertise and a commitment to quality to help clients and partners accelerate the delivery of safe and effective therapeutics and maximize the returns on their R&D investments. |
