Eiffel Over

Tag: ProblemBasedLearning

  • Facilitation Life – a rock solid template

    Here’s a facilitation structure (straight from our How to Run a Great Workshop Workshop playbook) that I’ve used in a wide range of contexts, from a global Zoom conference, to beer brewers in Bristol, to strategic planning sessions for infrastructure projects (usually hosted in hotel conference rooms near a motorway junction). It’s a robust facilitation method to lead a group through a problem topic to a series of possible solutions or areas of action. 

    Welcome – how is everyone arriving. 

    Presentation – open up the topic with a short presentation from someone with a more in-depth understanding of the context. This presentation sets the scene. 

    Breakout 1 – in groups discuss the topic and identify the key challenges that the topic raises. Ask groups to present two or three key challenges. 

    Guided Q&A – ask for a spokesperson from each table to simply list the challenge areas. If time, invite extra commentary or clarifying questions. 

    Co-create the agenda – collate all the challenges listed and sort them into a priority list. The sorting can be done by the facilitator or by groups voting on topics. ‘Dotmocracy’ works here where participants put sticky dots against the top topics they want to explore

    Break – During the break reset the tables and allocate one of the challenge areas to each table

    Breakout 2 – participants allocate themselves to a challenge topic that interests them. They then discuss possible responses to their self-selected challenge. Ask for a spokesperson to create a summary of the discussion.

    Guided Q&A – Hear from each spokesperson and invite clarifying questions. Look for opportunities to connect answers between the different groups.

    Conclusion – you can end the session there summarising the discussion so far, or go further and identify next actions. 

    This facilitation is particularly effective at enabling participants to steer the conversation in a structured way: the participants identify what the challenges are themselves and then decide which challenge they want to respond to. 

  • You only learn when you do difficult things

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    It now lives on the Constructivist website: read the updated version →

    Eiffel Over is now my stage for engineering-related clowning, singing, dancing and writing — you’ll find my professional writing on design and regenerative thinking over at Constructivist.

    This is my catchphrase for the start of workshops: ‘You only learn when you do difficult things.’

    It is a reminder to expect things to be difficult when we try to do something new. We often learn something in order to make something we can’t do easier. And we should expect to put in some activation energy during this process to reach a place of greater ease.

    But if left at that, this is quite a passive interpretation. 

    A more active interpretation is to use your sense of what is difficult to orientate yourself to where the learning opportunities are. And this, I think, is the sense in which this catchphrase was meant when I originally heard it. The words come from my friend and mentor in Problem-Based Learning, Prof Søren Willert.

    In problem-based learning, we are looking for problems as an opportunity for learning. In these instances, learning isn’t general, it is tightly bound to the specificity of the problem.

    Seeking difficult things might actually serve as a good compass for where to focus our learning. A place where there is work to be done, where we can hopefully make a positive contribution and learn along the way. We mustn’t expect it to be easy.