As Anthony Klotz started class Thursday he handed out the quizzes as usual, but also asked his students to take a few sheets of brightly colored paper.
A few moments later they lined up at the front of the class and tossed hastily assembled paper airplanes as far they could, which wasn’t very far at all.
For Klotz, an assistant professor of management at the Oregon State College of Business, it was a quick setup to teach his human resource management students a few things about training.
Now that his students had a task they could improve at, Klotz walked them through different training strategies before getting another attempt at the end of class. They watched a YouTube video on making paper airplanes and met in groups to strategize.
Klotz also demonstrated the need to convince your employees — or students — that training is important.
“You need to make it meaningful,” Klotz said. “So if they beat the class average by 20 percent on the second throw, I take away a quiz.”
“All of a sudden they get really dialed in, and by the end they’re cheering and clapping for each other.”
Klotz’s first class on Thursday threw their planes an average of 12.8 feet on their first attempt. On the second, the class improved to 23.3 feet, a 90 percent improvement.
“The key is that training is not fun,” Klotz said, “but it’s important to do it and measure its effectiveness.”
