The Most Important Principles to Remember for 5-Star Learning (Facilitation Friday #34)
Appropriately blend "sage on the stage" presentation moments with more "facilitator of learning" segments to lead workshops worthy of 5-star ratings from participants.
Looking to being less of a sage on the stage and more of a facilitator of learning?
Applying five simple principles can help you design and lead sessions that create this different exchange of overall value. Use them to help inform your initial design and facilitation choices (preview) and as a post-session assessment of what works and can be retained and what might need future refinement for better results (review).
L everage participants’ knowledge and insights.
Perhaps you’ve seen the famous scene in The Paper Chase when actor John Houseman, portraying law professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr., famously tells students in his first class that “You come in here with a skull full of mush. You leave thinking like a lawyer.”
Unless you also want to tower over participants in your session and teach them via the Socratic Method while dripping with disdain for their lack of intelligence, you probably should assume they have some knowledge, insights, and perspectives to contribute. They may even rival your own.
Doing so requires privileging more active learning and intentionally using a mix of teaching techniques and conversation formats that robustly blend the knowledge you are uniquely (or best) positioned to present to the group and the knowledge you can effectively facilitate with and from the participants themselves. This content cones model can help you apply this important concept.
Tip:
Get participants making meaningful content contributions as quickly as possible after a session begins rather than lulling them into a more passive state of listening to lecture. This immediately changes the feel and power dynamic between you and the participants, as well as among themselves.
E ngage individuals in meaningful reflection, distillation, and practical application of the session content.
Ideally this occurs not only at the end of the session (one of its logical placements) but also throughout your program. Periodically ask people to:
distill what is being discussed;
identify the most relevant points for their future efforts; and
specify how they might effectively apply this information.
Content insufficiently connected to context(s) often temporarily raises learner awareness, but does not lead to meaningful or enduring change in mindset or behavior. To make it easier for participants to connect content to their contexts, engage them in exploring two questions:
Implications: So what?
Why or how does this matter? In general? For you? For others?
Applications: Now what?
What might you (or others) wish to do differently? How might you apply this information?
You might first have them do so individually on their own and then connect in pairs, quartets, or small groups to share and discuss their respective responses.
When presenting you also can make potential connections explicit:
“Here is what this might mean for your efforts and here are some ways you can apply this information.”
Follow this by inviting participants to offer their reactions:
What are additional implications or applications you see?
Tip:
Use this simple activity to operationalize the first two principles (leverage, engage). Ask individuals to note on an index card one idea or insight from the session and how they are going to use it. Now do a rapid read and pass where people trade cards and read others' takeaways. Then engage all participants in some brief large group facilitated discussion.
A ctivate participants’ engagement with the session content through group discussion, case studies, and other interactive formats.
The level of participant engagement for any teaching technique can always be increased. Example: a presentation with fill-in-the-blank statements or notetaking prompts in the handouts is more engaging than lecture alone and handouts that mirror the slides.
For every content segment in your presentation identify multiple ways you can bring that content to life and make it more active. Then examine the mix of techniques you are using and ensure a healthy level of engagement throughout your program with the important caveat that “active” and “engaging” looks and feels different for extroverts and introverts.
Extroverts generally engage and gain energy through external participation: talking with others, doing a hands-on activity, et al. Extroverts are more likely to “think out loud.”
Introverts generally engage and gain energy through internal participation: reading and reflecting, answering questions on a worksheet, et al. Introverts are more likely to think silently.
A general rule of thumb to guide your efforts is the following: when you want introverted participants to share verbally, consider having them first jot down some responses to the questions you’re posing. You don’t have to do this every time, but using this approach at core moments or the first time you ask for participant interaction increases the likelihood of more equitable engagement among extroverts and introverts.
Tip:
An excellent resource for workshop activities, teaching techniques, and different formats is the International Association of Facilitators Methods Library. While some materials are restricted to IAF members, many are available to all … as are other ideas and techniques at the Sessions Lab site that hosts this library.
R egularly help participants move from theory to practice to theory, offering not just tactical pointers, but also the concepts and principles behind them.
Participants often want quick fixes and easy-to-use solutions. But without understanding the thinking that informed how the answers were derived, they only have a short-term solution for a specific situation.
Ensure your session content regularly travels the continuum between principle or theory and practice, as well as incorporates single-loop and double-loop learning. Provide both practical ideas for immediate use, but also the questions and concepts that help participants understand how to adopt, adapt, and apply them.
N ever fail to use metaphors, analogies, examples and ideas that are inclusive of the diverse needs and experiences of session participants.
You can’t treat everyone the same if they truly are different. Chances are, participants in your session will be diverse in many ways. Make sure you offer a mix of examples that will connect with individuals from different departments, people with different levels of knowledge or experience, people from different geographic locations, or organization sizes (employees, budget, et al).
Individuals filter what happens in a conversation, meeting, or workshop through their respective lenses, roles, and experiences in order to make sense of things ... to make meaning for themselves. Periodically surfacing these different meanings can help knit together a richer and more robust understanding among participants.
Tip:
Representation matters. Be more inclusive with the individuals, organizations, and content sources that you quote, display in images, or amplify as noteworthy. This often requires conducting an affirmative search for more diverse content sources, not just defaulting to the most popular or most easily discovered.
Bottom Line
When designing a workshop or other learning experience, consider how to appropriately blend sage on the stage presentation segments with more active teaching methods that surface, engage, and facilitate participants’ knowledge, ideas and, perspectives. Sessions that do so are more likely to create a 5-Star learning environment that engages individuals more fully and increases their understanding, application, and retention of the content shared.
Getting in Action
The 5-Star Learning Principles in this essay expand on the acronym LEARN. Without reviewing them, see if you can recall what they are. Then compare your answer with the actual principles. Try rewriting them in your own language to enhance your recall.
Review the design of a workshop you plan to present (or have previously presented). Assess how well it reflects these five principles and how you might refine the design to better do so.
Visit the IAF Methods Library and identify at least one technique you want to use in a future meeting or workshop you will facilitate.
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