Motivation, new knowledge, and refined skills are just a few of the benefits received from a successful workshop. Andy Whitmore, a Performance Consultant for SDI Clarity and an experienced workshop facilitator, will give a few elements of a successful workshop along with some examples from a recent workshop he facilitated: 8 Steps to Problem Solving. This encourages them to start thinking about the content before the actual session, which builds interest and prepares them to participate.
Utilizing prework allows more time to be spent on application and practice during the workshop, increasing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the event. In order for any workshop to hold the interest of participants, it should incorporate a diverse array of teaching methods as well as learning and practice activities. This is called blended learning. Participants need time to talk and connect with one another.
The opportunity to get to know others and to exchange ideas is one of the main values of a workshop for many people, and shouldn't be shortchanged. Long workshop: over 3 hours. A long workshop has some drawbacks, but it does allow you to present material in some depth and to conduct a number of activities.
Six concentrated hours of work a day is about as much as most people can deal with. Be sure to allow for plenty of breaks, both because of the need to stretch and use the bathroom, and because of attention span. Some thoughts about long workshops:. Consider the purpose of the workshop. Workshops are given for many purposes, and each implies some specific methods of presentation and other details. Some common purposes and their implications:. Consider your presentation.
The style of your presentation both your personal style and the actual methods of presentation you employ will do much to determine the effectiveness of your workshop. Some of this will depend on your own personality and experiences, but there are some general guidelines that can be useful:.
The author's prejudice is undoubtedly apparent here. Virtually all good teaching is really facilitation, at least to some extent. In order to learn anything, and especially to learn it at the deepest level, one has to experience it, wrestle with it, reflect on it, live with it.
A good facilitator makes it possible for each participant to relate to new learning in his own way and sort it out for himself, rather than telling him what he's supposed to think or how to approach a concept.
Participants are far more likely to stay tuned in throughout the workshop if you act as a facilitator and if you're personally accessible. This is not to say that there's never a place for leadership in teaching, as long as it doesn't dominate the workshop. If the presenter is a "star" in her field, participants may in fact want to hear what she has to say, more than to be facilitated.
The more creative you can get here, the better. Activities in which participants work with physical objects are often great learning tools. There are the obvious ones workshops for teachers include lots of "manipulatives," objects to demonstrate concepts with , but there are an infinite number of options.
The author attended a terrific workshop on multiple intelligences that involved small groups designing and building villages out of legos and other blocks. Think as outrageously as you can. Now that your planning is done, you need to prepare for the workshop.
Planning is about the delivery of the workshop itself; preparation is about logistics, making sure you have the actual stuff and time you need to make the workshop a success. That means both putting together whatever materials you'll be using and getting whatever information is necessary for you to do the best job you can.
Find out about the space you'll be using, if possible. If the space is your own, you can choose the room or place that would be best and set it up beforehand.
If you're being assigned space in another facility, you may be able to request a particular type or size of room, or may be able to get it set up in a certain way chairs in a circle, comfortable furniture, etc. You need to think about how you'll use the space: Will people need to move around a lot? Will there be bulky equipment to move around? Do you need a screen or a blackboard or whiteboard?
The more you can learn about the space and the more you can set it up for your needs before participants arrive, the smoother your presentation will go. If the role you intend to assume is that of facilitator rather than authority figure, you'll want to make the space as welcoming and informal as possible.
Sometimes that simply can't be done; a school classroom with desks bolted to the floor yes, they still exist, although there aren't many of them isn't particularly flexible, for instance. But where you can, arranging chairs in a circle or similar configuration, where everyone can see everyone else and there's no head of the table, can do a lot to set a tone as soon as people walk in.
Bring everything you need. Don't assume any of it will be there unless you've specifically arranged for it see no. Even then you can't be sure. Don't forget about food, coffee, etc. You either need to arrange beforehand to have what you need in the room when you get there, or your coffeemaker, coffee, creamer, paper cups, etc.
Get the doughnuts fresh in the morning. Arrange well beforehand for any equipment you'll need overhead projector, VCR and monitor, computer, etc. If you're bringing it, make sure you have a backup in case the one you're planning on isn't working.
Make your arrangements well beforehand in writing as well as verbally, if possible , and check a day or two before the workshop to see that everything is in order. Get there early enough to check on it on the day of the workshop.
Assume that if anything can go wrong, it will, and that, even if it's not your responsibility, you'll have to fix it anyway. Make materials and hand-outs as attractive and interesting as possible so that participants will return to them. Be overprepared. If you think a block of the workshop will probably last 30 minutes, be ready with at least an hour's worth of material for it. In some groups, you may only use what you thought would take 15 minutes; in others, you may use all of it and wish you had more.
It's far better to be overprepared than underprepared: the longer the workshop, the more important this becomes. Without knowing the individual participants beforehand, and often even then, you can't really make accurate assumptions about time or the reactions of the group. If they're already a group a program staff, for example , they'll already have their own leaders, assumptions, and norms, and those will determine to some extent how they'll react verbal or nonverbal, engaged or unengaged, etc.
If they're a random group, leaders may emerge, but also may not. As discussed earlier, why they're there, what their background and training are, and simply who they are as individuals will determine how they respond to your presentation. With some groups, no one may speak for the first hour or more, or at all. With others, you may have difficulty getting a word in after the first five minutes. No matter how many times you've presented a particular workshop, it's best to be prepared for anything.
Make up an evaluation form that people can fill out quickly at the end of the workshop, but that covers the areas you really want to know about. Many conferences prepare evaluation forms for each workshop, in which case you don't have to. The standard for this sort of thing is usually a multiple choice form that either asks participants to rate each area from 1 to 5, or to check off one of 5 choices ranging from "strongly agree " to "strongly disagree.
There may be other specific questions you have about your particular workshop. Just be sure to keep it short enough so that people will actually fill it out. Finally, get a good night's sleep the night before and allow yourself plenty of time to get where you're going, so you don't feel rushed and frazzled. If the workshop is far from home, and you have the option of staying somewhere near it the night before, take it. If you have the time to relax before the workshop, you'll be more relaxed in the course of it as well.
Planning and preparation are done. You're incredibly organized; you have all your handouts color-coded and arranged in the order you want to distribute them; you have activities planned down to the second, with plenty of extras if they don't fill the time completely; you have the room arranged so it will welcome participants and work for the activities you have planned.
Now all you have to do is actually pull it off. A workshop, especially a longer one, has distinct phases. There is the introduction, which covers the time from when the first participant walks into the room to when the first topic-related activity begins; the substance of the workshop includes the presentation and activities; and closure involves review, reflection, evaluation, and ending.
We'll discuss each of these, with some ideas about how to make them go smoothly. This part of the workshop will let people know what their experience is going to be like.
By the time the workshop actually starts, participants often have a strong inkling about whether they're going to like it or not. Thus, it's important to set a positive tone and to make people feel comfortable and interested; to give them some familiarity with you and with one another; and to make sure that they know what 's coming in the rest of the workshop.
Setting the tone. There are some steps you can take to make participants comfortable as soon as they walk in, and to establish the workshop as a community of learners. There may be circumstances under which you might not want to make people comfortable. At a conference, a workshop called "Separate Tables" divided participants up as they came in, with the majority asked to sit on the floor.
A small number were seated at an elegantly appointed table and served an appetizing meal. The others about 20? The workshop continued in this vein, with the floor sitters eventually protesting their treatment.
The point, of course, was to call attention to the lack of comfort that most of the world's population experiences every day, as compared to the position of those in the developed West. Personal introductions. Especially if your workshop involves a lot of hands-on and group activities, it will go better if people are comfortable with one another.
If you've started a conversation as they walked in, many participants may already have talked to others that they didn't know, but it still makes sense to introduce yourself and everyone else. You might start by introducing yourself with a very brief explanation of why you're conducting this workshop experience you've had, your familiarity with the topic, etc. This shouldn't take more than a minute or so. Then, you might use a technique or game to introduce the members of the group to one another you can also take part in this activity, if you think it will be helpful to your purpose.
Agenda and plan for the session. It's helpful to either hand out, or to have visible in the room, and to go over with participants, an agenda for the workshop. If the workshop will be interrupted by meals, breaks, etc. Previewing the agenda and asking for feedback on it "Can we spend more time on actually using the materials? This is also the time to ask people for their expectations for the workshop, which can be recorded on newsprint or in some other way, and reviewed at the end of the session.
If most participants' expectations are significantly different from the presenter's, there may be room for some adjustment at this point as well. If it's necessary for participants to reveal details of their personal lives, for instance, or if the topic of the workshop is particularly controversial, after previewing the agenda would be the time to ask the group to develop ground rules for the session.
A few simple norms, such as keeping disagreement away from the personal and respecting confidentiality can make all the difference in participants' willingness to engage with others, and with the ideas under discussion. This is the real meat of what you're doing, the reason why you showed up this morning. What you actually do depends on your own planning, of course, but there are some general guidelines, some of which have already been mentioned, that can make your workshop more effective and enjoyable.
Giving time markers every once in a while "In 20 minutes, we'll be stopping for lunch" can keep participants going "I'm hungry, but I can certainly wait 20 minutes". It will also help you be aware of where you are in the session so that you can, in fact, get people to lunch on time this may be a major concern, depending upon the facility where the workshop is being held and conclude the activities with enough to time to close out the session properly.
Although researchers have come up with a number of models for the ways in which people absorb information, none would disagree that individuals differ in their preferred methods of learning. Some people take in new information better through their eyes, others through their ears, others through their fingers i.
Some people like to deal with the details of an idea, others with the overall concept. Some learners are systematic and logical, others are intuitive leapers. Still other differences include individual vs. A college geology instructor on a field trip with his students pointed out a formation and stated, "This is called a pluck. In the final phase of the workshop, you'll need to wrap things up and give participants a chance to react to what they've just been through.
You may want to go through some formal activity for this purpose, or you may want to just throw out some questions and listen to what people have to say.
If you can find a way to record all this review, summing up, and feedback, it will prove extremely helpful to you in developing other workshops, or in revising the one you just conducted. An audio recorder is one possibility. Newsprint or something similar is another. In order to conduct an effective and successful workshop, you need to address its planning, preparation, and implementation.
As you plan, consider the workshop's audience, its size, its length, its purpose, and your presentation options. Preparation includes logistics managing the physical items involved, materials, equipment, etc. Finally, the implementation of the workshop includes attending to all three of its phases: introduction, substance, and closure.
And don't forget to follow up, both by fulfilling any promises and using feedback to redesign or change parts of the workshop so that your next one will be even better.
How to Develop a Workshop and Presentation Tips. Thorough tips complete with step-by-step guide as well as timing suggestions for one workshop session. Various PowerPoint. Preparing a workshop will force you to think ahead of your project plan. Start planning a workshop with the end in mind. Visualise the outcome and outputs you want. Then, work backwards so your plan really gets you there. At each moment of the day, you should be able to picture exactly what you do with your audience.
The more people in the room the clearer you have to be. This is also the moment to ask yourself who should attend the session. You should also identify what state you want the group to be in, e.
The Developing phase is about creating the content you will need or sometimes, finding it, if you already have a log of content and exercises. This will allow you to remember what happened and have other team members run similar workshops. Both activities require you to focus on different things:. They require two different mindsets. You need a clear focus on one or the other. Rehearsing is a good way to gain confidence and sense-check if there are any issues in the plan.
Fortunately, you can get your team ready just by going through the plan ahead of the session. Make sure everyone is clear on what they have to do and say. You can evaluate the workshop and the process with your team or by yourself. People may have signed up to this above a lecture because the more traditional format just does not work for them. Plan activities and get people involved, and keep them engaged.
More people in your workshop means more money. Smaller groups facilitate better networking between participants. It helps them make connections, and it allows you to devote enough time to each individual.
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