I’m sitting here, waiting for a client in a venue in the middle of town (or toon as the native Geordies say it) in one of the nicest meeting rooms I’ve ever seen. For a start there’s free tea and coffee and (impressively!) a very large supply of chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the table.
It’s clean and warm and the reception staff were very helpful and friendly.
But despite all these wonderful things my heart sank as I walked in. Why? Because it’s a wonderful meeting room – and I’m here to do training.
What’s the difference, in terms of room layout and facilities? Well facility-wise not much, I suppose. Fast wifi would be appreciated for both activities, decent soundproofing too… along with reasonably comfortable heating and air conditioning!
But in a training room, at least the kind of training I need to use today, there’s a fundamental problem.
In a meeting room everyone needs to be able to see everyone else. In a training room, everyone needs to be able to see the trainer (as well as everyone else!).
In a typical meeting room the layout might be, say, a dozen chairs around an oval table, which is exactly what I’ve got here. Putting a flipchart of a screen at one end immediately means that three people at one end have to turn their necks 180 degrees. Preferably they should move, so that they’re not blocking anyone else’s view.
Adding to that is the lack of space around the table. Even if the three head-turners move, where are they going to move to? The table was full already. What’s more, the next two or three people down the table may very well find that they’re unpleasantly, uncomfortably close to the trainer and his or her material, be that flip charts or slides etc. The problem is compounded, of course, for the approximately 50% of the population who are Introverts!
If people aren’t comfortable in their learning environment, they don’t learn as well – it’s as simple as that!
So what things should a training room have that a simple meeting room needn’t?
- Space – space for people to get far enough away from the screen or whatever, so that they’re not overwhelmed by it. A lot of venues simply put a laptop on the end of a boardroom table, point it at a white bit of wall and call it a training room!
- Individual lighting control – no one wants to sit in the dark for an hour at a time and yet all too often that’s the only way to be able to see slides! The whole room is dark or the whole room is light. Training rooms need to be able to dim the lights near the screen only.
- Screen – speaking of screen, training rooms need somewhere to show slides (you may not want to use them – I often don’t – but the option needs to be there). Taking pictures off the wall to create a blank space doesn’t qualify, sorry!
- Speakers – let’s face it, if the trainer is going to show video (and why shouldn’t they?!) you’re going to need to play the audio. Speakers built into laptops and/or data projectors just don’t cut it. Sorry guys – you need a proper system.
- Flipchart – (or a whiteboard at least) There are times when a bit of interactivity is what’s needed and flipcharts are ideal for this. Whiteboards are fine, but with a flipchart you can keep the stuff you scribble and refer back to it at any part later in your work. Speaking of which, some way of displaying flipchart sheets is nice – my favorite way is a thin corkboard around the room about six feet off the ground so that I can pin the tops of sheets of flipchart paper to it around the room
- Chairs – chairs are designed ‘by the hour’. That is, manufacturers recognise the trade-off between the cost of the chair and how long you can sit in it, comfortably. Meeting rooms tend to be equipped (sensibly) with two-hour chairs or (possibly) even one-hour chairs. Meetings don’t often run longer than this… but training does. Three or six hour training sessions (with breaks, obviously!) aren’t uncommon and a one-hour char in a three our session is just asking for trouble.
So there you go – I’m sure we’ve missed things on this list… these are just the things that occurred to us immediately. And don’t get us started on the meeting room which masqueraded as a training room but then made the situation worse by the host saying “I’m afraid we’ve had a bit of a flood over the weekend – the smell should go by lunchtime – but I’m afraid the electricity supply won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest.”
Sigh…..
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