Now that your proposal has been accepted for this year’s Institute, we would like to share with you some tips for designing a creative and unique session that is interactive & participatory. There are many approaches to and methods for making learning events participatory. Popular education, based in social justice struggle, is one source for such things. The tips that follow are drawn from popular education work. And we encourage you to use the comments feature to share other approaches and resources that you think might be helpful.

Points to consider in the design of a creative and unique session that is interactive & participatory:

• How do you plan to open and close your session?
• How have you built in participation into your session?
• Do you plan to use an introductory activity? Or an energizer/warm-up?
• How will you evaluate your session?
• What methods of information sharing will you use?
• What methods of dialogue will you use?
• Will you be using small group activities?
• Have you planned for a break?
• What are your needs for recording & documenting your session?

The success of any workshop depends in large part on two closely related aspects of teaching and learning: workshop design and facilitation method or style. Workshop sessions vary widely, of course, and some are more engaging and some less. Dominant educational practice treats learners mostly as passive recipients of information who, once full of information, can be considered educated. Despite much evidence to the contrary regarding how people learn best, authoritarian methods of sharing information, teaching and learning remain the norm throughout the world. However, numerous practices and theories of education have emerged to resist this global norm. Feminist and anti-racist education have a long history of engaging learners in dynamic ways that recognizes learners as full human beings and not as empty slates. Popular education, folk education and many other forms of participatory education have also arisen to support people in struggles against oppression to learn from their experience and to have greater democratic control over their learning than is characteristically supported by mass systems of education (whether primary, secondary, post-secondary and professional).

A bit of theory can help us make more sound design decisions. And one important piece of  theory of learning compares the banking model of learning to a spiral model of learning. The “banking model” refers to the notion that a learner is like a bank account: empty or full according to how much is deposited. A learner starts out as an empty account, is given new knowledge and is then educated, i.e. full of this new knowledge. A different model theorizes learning as a spiral which acknowledges that learners (or any group participants, for that matter) always enter a process already full of knowledge and experience, hope, fears, desires. Learning is a process of action-reflection-action, the ‘Spiral Model’ represents the flow of this process.

All group sessions, whether about learning or not, have a beginning, a middle and an end. All sessions must open and all must close. By considering the various elements of a session you can create a design that is dynamic and that balances the need to impart information and foster dialogue and participation. These elements include: the opening,  introductions, process review (including agenda, objectives, expectations, guidelines for participation), energizers/warm-ups, information presentation, dialogue, analysis and synthesis, small group activities, the break, time and pacing, documentation/recording, evaluation, the closing. Of course, not all these elements are relevant for every session. But all are worth considering.

The more active people are in their learning the deeper the learning. This means that those of us with an abundance of great information need to be mindful about how to balance sharing this information with devoting time to dialogue and process. Most people need time to process information (i.e. connect it to their experience, test it, compare it with how other people are taking it in and so on) in order  to learn.

Some other sources for workshop design:

• Tools Notebook (PDF): This Catlayst Centre publication is a notebook to support your research into various group methods. The notebook identifies numerous types of group methods and gives you a structure with which to note them down and annotate them for your own use.
• Not Just a Bag ‘o Tricks (PDF): This Catlayst Centre publication is a’zine that includes activity descriptions for energizers, evaluations and more
• Ending Poverty in Ontario (PDF): This manual produced by the Income Security Advocacy Centre and Campaign 2000 includes over a doaen activity descriptions for a workshop on ending poverty. It also includes workshop plans for one, two, three and six hour versions. You can also find supporting documents on ISAC’s website on this page (scroll down to close the bottom of the page).
• Seeing the Workplace with New Eyes: this 372 page manual is awesome. While it focusses on workplace health and safety (which is always worth learning mroe about) it also includes virtual manuals within manuals – one on Committee Process (21 activities described over 65 pages).

(Image source: The image of the spiral above is from Educating for Changing Unions by Bev Burke, Jojo Geronimo, D’Arcy Martin, Barb Thomas, Carol Wall (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002) p. 57)