CONVERSATIONS learn that way anymore. This offers us a huge opportunity to learn some new tricks along with our staff members. Students are much more visual and kinesthetic these days I think. I found an interesting PowerPoint by Jessica Utts at the University of California, Irvine – http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/ CMC3Utts2008.pdf – that offers an overview of learning styles. I don’t think we really take into account adult learning styles or incorporate tools that help adult learners. I think we also struggle with not having professionals trained in training and development or adult learning in the role of planning and implementing training. Our highest rated training activity is our lip sync. It’s a staff bonding exercise. We give them their assigned lip sync song in the morning and they have until that evening to come up with props and what they are going to do. We tried giving it to them the day before and found they were staying up all night and producing movies which really didn’t do the whole bonding thing as well as we had hoped. While their productions were amazing, we decided to give them a shorter timeline, and it has worked well. The majority of the staff groups prepare well thought-out lip syncs. Our Behind Closed Doors activity is also a favorite with staff. One twist we will put into the scenarios for next year will be something having to do with veterans. We are seeing an influx of veterans, and our Veteran’s Affairs office has asked that we focus on being “veteran friendly.” We look forward to adding this topic to our scenarios. The technology piece is dizzying at best. Trying to stay up with the latest and greatest is exhausting. I wholeheartedly agree that with all of the things we need to train our staff on these days, we are going to have to find some new mechanisms. Budgets also prohibit having staff come too early for days and weeks of training. We are thinking about having some online training modules they can complete before they get to training and then maybe just have a Q&A follow-up. Last year we decided to create a social media-oriented grad position, and it has paid off well in areas other than training. We have a new person in the position for this upcoming year, and I look forward to what he can bring us in the way of online types of training modules and/or other innovative ways to reach out to our technology-focused staff. CONTINUES 51 PHOENIX, AZ March 7-11, 2012 arch 012 www. www.theplacementexchange.org ONLINE | FACE-TO-FACE | YEAR-ROUND | EVERYDAY R REGISTRATION OPENS OCTOBER 3 The premier place to be for student affairs job placement 46 TALKING STICKhttp://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/CMC3Utts2008.pdf http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/CMC3Utts2008.pdf http://www.theplacementexchange.org http://www.theplacementexchange.org