Facilitating Workshops

A Resource Book for Lecturers and Trainers

Hayo Reinders, Marilyn Lewis

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137304209
• eBook ISBN: 9781350306240
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

The only book providing advice on facilitating workshops aimed specifically at lecturers and academics. Full of practical resources and materials including suggested activities, handouts and whiteboard layouts to help people tasked with running workshops in higher education settings or at conferences, even without having received specific training.

PART 1

Learning in workshops

Why workshops?

A brief history of workshops

Principles of adult learning

Adults as social learners

Adults as experiential learners

The experience of learning in workshops

Why workshops?

A number of reasons have been put forward for choosing a workshop over a lecture or a series of readings as a form of professional development. The case for using workshops as a way of giving new knowledge skills and attitudes has been summarised by Richards and Farrell (2005) in relation to one group of professionals: language teachers. Since most of the points they make can apply to workshops in general, we now use their points as headings.

Input from experts

People organising workshops often look beyond their own workplace for presenters who are seen as experts. By ‘expert’ they may mean someone who is well known in the field or who has developed some fresh ideas. Certainly if someone’s name is well known to potential workshop attenders, then this can be a drawcard. But what do people understand by the word ‘expert’?

According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, an expert is ‘a person with a high level of knowledge or skill’. As if to counter the thought that this must equal advanced qualifications, they give the following example. ‘My mother is an expert at dressmaking = she does it very well’. People may be drawn to a workshop because of a big name, but unless the person turns out to be someone who can ‘do’ the thing well, attenders are likely to be unsatisfied.

Traditionally the input was brought physically by the expert to the workshop, but technology has now reached the point where, with careful planning, one or more people can appear on the screen at different times during the day, as we shall see in the section on ‘Delivering workshops online’ (p. 123). In this case, they may not actually organise the whole day, but they do give input which informs and inspires.

Practical applications

A second feature of workshops mentioned by Richards and Farrell is that they offer practical applications of theory. While the experts referred to above may bring knowledge to the workshop, unless participants take away ideas which are relevant to their daily work, the final evaluations may not be favourable. There are various ways of making sure that practical applications can happen.

The input sessions may be separated from the applications by moving participants from one space to another where some practical work can be done. This can apply to topics as diverse as computer systems and farm equipment. During these practical parts, there may be more than one person available to give participants individual feedback on their practice. For some topics, safety requirements mean that the practice cannot be in an actual workplace. Thus transport providers such as bus companies or airlines will often spend part of the workshop teaching drivers and pilots using simulators.

Another way of practising real-life applications is through role-plays, as we shall see in the section on ‘Role-play’ (p. 109).

Motivation

There are many reasons why workshops can be motivating, starting with the fact that they are a break from the daily routine. Even being selected to attend the workshop may be motivating, if it is presented as something offered to staff who are already successful. Motivation also comes from meeting attenders from other workplaces. Group activities, such as those suggested in the section on ‘Motivation’ (p. 24), provide the chance for exchanges that go beyond the social.

Trivial as it may sound, motivation also comes from such details as the ambience of the meeting place and the provision of refreshments during the breaks. The interactions during these breaks can be an important motivator, the break being a time to set up contacts which go beyond the workshop.

The topic of motivation is revisited in the section on ‘Motivation’ (p. 24).

Collegiality

As mentioned, relations with colleagues can be built up in a way that is impossible in the daily routine. There can be other unexpected bonuses too, as this first-hand account shows.

‘Not everyone was pleased to notice that X was one of the people from our workplace chosen to attend a workshop in a distant location. They doubted that she would have much to contribute and she might not even be a good advertisement for our firm.

How wrong we were! In a different setting we saw this person in a fresh light. She had strengths that we had never noticed but which were spotted by the workshop facilitator. Our time away made a difference to workplace relationships when we all returned the following week.’

Innovations

It is common in a workplace for some people to embrace change while others resist it. When time is spent at a workshop answering objections and showing advantages, innovations can be seen in a different light. It may be unrealistic to imagine that everyone will go back convinced that the changes are a good thing, but there is more likelihood of greater understanding.

Short-term

Whereas some forms of professional development involve participants in taking lengthy time off for study, the advantage of workshops is that they are short. Ideally they cause little disruption at the workplace. This is an advantage financially as well as in other ways.

Flexibility

From the perspective of the presenter, workshops are flexible. Typically, presenters are asked to deal with topics on which they have run workshops before. However, this doesn’t mean that the content or formats are identical. This is how one presenter puts it.

‘Usually the invitation comes because people have heard about a previous workshop I have run somewhere else. However, I try not to have exactly the same input in each place, and certainly not the same flow to the time. Ideally they give me information beforehand about who is coming, so that I can tailor things to suit that group. If there are some surprises on arrival, at least I can play around with the order of the activities or the balance of time for input and application.’

Active learning

One further reason, not mentioned in the list from Richards and Farrell (2005) and perhaps the strongest for using the workshop format for introducing new ideas, is the belief that people learn better through active than through receptive learning. Yet even when lecturers or speakers believe this to be true, they do not always match their actions to their beliefs. This was shown in the results of one survey carried out by a tertiary teacher trainer. Some days before the lecturers were due to attend a workshop, she sent out a short questionnaire with three items. Here are the questions, with the teachers’ responses:

1 What percentage of class time do you spend lecturing?
ANSWER:
Average: 70%

2 Besides lectures, do you use any other methods to teach? If so, what methods do you use? Please list them below.
ANSWERS:
Top three answers were: discussion (19 teachers), use of visual aids (11 teachers), case analysis (9 teachers). (I wouldn’t call the second a method, but I’m not going to get into that at this point.)
Most of the 24 methods they listed are methods that I would say get students involved in the process of learning. But of those methods, more than half were what I would call vague or non-specific ideas, such as participation, interaction, sharing, dialogue.

3 On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a lot less and 10 being much more, do you feel students learn less, just as much, or more, when you use other methods rather than a more traditional (lecture) approach?
ANSWER:
Average … 7 (so they believe students learn more from other methods).

The workshop presenter saw a gap between what teachers believe and what they do. They believe other methods, those that get students involved in the process of learning, to be more effective, but they still mostly lecture.

She wondered whether the gap between what they believe and what they do might exist because they don’t know how to turn vague ideas into specific applications. Announcing these results at the start of her workshop would help attenders to see the point of the activities she planned to introduce.

To workshop or not to workshop

There are situations where workshops offer the ideal type of activity, and equally there are cases where a lecture or presentation may be m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Facilitating Workshops
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Notes on the authors
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Series editor’s preface
• Introduction to the book
• Common questions and workshop concerns
• Part 1 Learning in workshops
• Part 2 Teaching in workshops
• Part 3 The practice of facilitating workshops
• References
• Index