How to Energize Financial Education Training: Icebreakers, Energizers, and Openers
Financial education material can be dry, complex, and even emotionally challenging for some participants. Skilled facilitators can be essential to making financial education engaging and accessible. Becoming a skilled facilitator involves understanding what works in a financial education setting and for your particular participants. This starts with understanding your target audience through a needs assessment, but also involves being able to use a mix of methodologies to make the material accessible to a broad range of learning styles.
Most trainers can learn a set of methods to incorporate into their financial education sessions that will enliven even the driest material and more effectively communicate its content. This article explores three such methods, all of which are important at different times during a financial education session: icebreakers, openers, and energizers.
Having a range of these methods ready to use during any financial education session is like having a toolbox full of different tools. These training methodologies can help to :
- Create a relaxed training atmosphere
- Enliven the group
- Change direction if participants are confused or materials are too simplistic.
Including the methods among other teaching methods and techniques will not only animate financial education course material, but will help to more effectively convey the financial topics being taught. This article provides practical guidance for financial education trainers to learn why and how to include such techniques in a curriculum, as well as when best to apply them. While the methods described are not the only effective teaching tools available, implemented correctly, they help to create a learning environment that encourages dialogue among participants, maintain a good energy level, and keep participants interested in the subject matter.
In participatory training approaches, icebreakers can be used for warming up a class of participants, no matter the subject area. Used most often in the early sessions of a multisession course, icebreakers can help participants get to know one another and the facilitator, and create a relaxed and trusting atmosphere. They help develop group cohesion and trust while lessening learner anxiety.1
Most often, icebreakers are content-free activities, meaning they are not tied to the specific session objectives. Besides being fun and interactive2, they can:
- Set the tone for the training—“This is going to be fun after all.”
- Indicate the responsibility for the learning—“It looks like I'm going to have to get involved.”
- Communicate what kind of training it will be—“This is going to be an engaging and participatory experience.”
The following guidelines can help you plan for using icebreakers in a training session:
- Use icebreakers that are positive and set people up to succeed; conversely, avoid icebreakers that might cause people to become embarrassed or fail at the task.
- Start with icebreakers that do not push people too much beyond what they are comfortable with in the beginning of training.
- Ensure the activities are unbiased from cultural, gender, age, and socioeconomic perspectives.
- Make sure the directions for the icebreakers are clear and concise.
- Use humor judiciously. Humor can be a great tool for helping participants relax; however, facilitators should remember that what is funny and in good fun to one person might be offensive and alienating to another. Jokes as icebreakers, therefore, should be avoided altogether.
- Even though icebreakers are content-free, there should still be transitions from these to the core of the training. Facilitators can ask participants to reflect on the icebreakers and share the reasons the training session began with such an activity.
Finally, while icebreakers can help get training off to an energetic start, it’s important that they do not take up too much time relative to the content that is planned. Icebreakers that drag on too long lose the energy they were intende