Entertainment in Training

Many times i hear observers measuring the success of a training session by the entertainment it provides and really, how entertained they felt. What this often results in, is a session that gets tweaked to provide fun as against great value. To me an activity in a training program must be informational and provide some value to the attendees. A fun activity that doesnt provide enough value is what I call "fun for the sake of fun".

I also like to measure the success of a session based on the following:

• did the objectives get achieved - fully, partially or not at all?
  
• did the students seem engaged?
  
• did the session allow for stimulation every 10 minutes or so? (if not, think of redesign to fix this)
  
• were there long periods of non-interactive lecture? (if yes, think of redesign to fix this)
  

Its unfair to evaluate sessions as an outsider without associating yourself with the position of the students. For all you care, a session by design may be intended to be "not entertaining". So for an outsider, the session may seem to be "boring", while it can be extremely engaging for the attendees. To dissociate yourself from the trainees' position and to deem the class as "boring" may sometimes be a tad unfair. To avoid this fundamental attribution error, await feedback from the students to understand if your assumption was indeed true.