Workshop Techniques

From AptivateOER

BMO Training KENET

Contents: Contents; BMO Training KENET; Timetable; Training Objectives; Documentation
Appendix: Participants

[edit] 1 Action Mapping

Draw a grid of actions against people. Useful for getting people to understand how they will put things into practice.

Who/When	Next week	Next month	Next year
Me	Buy socks	Install socks	Clean socks
Mother	Buy cooker	Install cooker	Clean cooker

Do It Yourself (2007), The Trapese Collective, p. 133

[edit] 2 Brainstorming

Ask for ideas and write them all down in a list. Don't try to filter or judge ideas. No idea is wrong or bad. Encourage all contributions and discourage discussion. Good for generating as many ideas as possible.

[edit] 3 Card Sorting

Write things (problems, ideas, solutions, actions) onto separate cards. Get people to sort the cards into groups or clusters that belong together.

Perhaps may be useful after brainstorming to organise the resulting ideas.

Participatory Appraisal Handout (Trapese Collective)

[edit] 4 Consensus

Introduce issue
Brainstorm possible solutions
Questions or clarifications
Discuss options, modify or eliminate, short list
State the proposal or choice of proposals
Discuss the pros and cons of each proposal (PMI)
If there is a major objection, discuss pros and cons again, or discuss options again
State the decisions and test for agreement
Acknowledge minor objections and incorporate friendly amendments
Check for consensus
Celebrate

On Conflict and Consensus (2007), C. T. Lawrence Butler, Amy Rothstein. Also Seeds For Change:

[Flow Chart]
[Decision Making]

[edit] 5 Fishbowl

A way of controlling discussions in medium -large size groups where there might otherwise be many participants.

In essence a small group (e.g. 4 people) sit (or stand) in small group and discuss an issue while the others listen/watch without participating.

In a large group with the speakers on stage or at the front, this might be the same as a panel disussion. With smaller groups, place speakers in a ring, in the middle and others around in an outer ring.

Basic fishbowl: discussing group is fixed, e.g.

invited speakers or
volunteers.

Useful to establish time limit so that non participants know their need to be heard will be met: helps them to sit quietly.

Outer ring may observe the discussion and take notes. At the end, go around the outer group and ask for observations.

Consider a leaky bowl where inner group members can stand up and leave the inner group, joining the outer one, and members of the outer group can stand up and sit on an empty seat in the middle. Consider having an empty seat: When someone joins the inner group, someone has to leave before discussion can continue. Or two empty seats, one must always be empty (increases choice and allows two to join at once).

Time limit allows the observers to feel comfortable that their views will be heard. Facilitator establish the ground-rules before, responsible for time keeping to enable observers to be sure they will get their chance to be heard.

[edit] 6 Go Round

Ask each member of the group in turn to say something or present something. E.g. to introduce themselves or tell people about a topic. Encourages participation by all. Good for getting to know everyone. Consider whether to explicitly allow participants to say nothing.

Tools for Interaction, Seed For Change training handout

[edit] 7 Impact Ranking

Draw a grid of impact potential against ease of implementation. Useful for identifying the high-impact actions which are also easy to achieve.

Impact/Ease	Easy	Medium	Hard
High			Buy new socks
Medium	Stop wearing socks		Steal clean socks
Low		Buy new socks	Steal dirty socks

Participatory Appraisal Handout (Trapese Collective)

[edit] 8 issue lines

All stand up
Standing on a line with YES at one end, NO at the other and NOT SURE somewhere in the middle.
Read a statement
Invite to move to where they feel they belong
Ask someone standing at the ends to explain why
Ask participants to reposition themselves

Consider breaking in to smaller groups to allow everyone to speak.

Reference: Do It Yourself Trapese Collective, p128.

[edit] 9 logical framework analysis

Logframe Matrix:

Project Summary	Indicators of Achievement	Means of Verification	Important Risks and Assumptions
Goal:
Purpose:
Outputs:
Activities:

Goal - what results do we expect?
Purpose - why are we doing this?
Outputs - what are the deliverables?
Activities - what will we do to deliver the outputs?
Indicators of Achievement - how will we know we've been successful?
Means of Verification - how will we check our reported results?
Risks and Assumptions - what assumptions underlie the structure of our project and what is the risk they will not hold?

Reference: Bond Logical Framework Analysis

[edit] 10 Open Space Technology

Applicable when creativity needed to capitalise on the strengths and knowledge of participants.

Need:

large room for circle
breakout spaces of some kind (e.g. within the large space or other rooms, trees to sit under, etc.)
large notice-board (for marketplace of ideas) and for reporting back

Procedure

Start in a circle, facilitator addresses and welcomes everyone, states the "theme" or problem for the session and explains the structure of the day and the rules
Participants invited to propose topics for work/discussion (small groups) that they would be willing to attend.
Such a proposal involves writing the topic on a piece of paper, standing up and reading it aloud and saying who you are. Then put the paper on the big noticeboard
When a number of proposals are complete participants break circle and go to the marketplace/wall and indicate their interest by writing their names on the papers there to indicate interest (not commitment)
Together the participants move the topics into a prepared space indicating timeframe and location (e.g. large table) to create an agenda for the day.
When agenda established, start immediately with people going to the place where their interesting topic will be at that time. but observing the rules:

Rules

Whenever it starts is the right time
Whoever comes are the right people
When it's over, it's over
Whatever happened was the only thing that could have happened

The Law Of Two Feed:

If you're not contributing and you're not learning, then you're needed elsewhere.

These rules and law are intended to prevent participants wasting time waiting for others, or complaining about how things are going or in post-mortem discussions about sessions. In order to avoid unpleasant sessions, the law of two feed enables and encourages participants to move rather than stay where they feel they are not being productive.

Each group should record its outcomes and present them
- on the wall on paper
- typed into a computer and presented on line or printed and pasted on the wall

The agenda making process may be repeated e.g. at the start of each day, to make sure the agenda is still topical and in line with progress.

[Open Space World]

[edit] 11 Paired listening

AKA diads.

Work in pairs
Take turns to speak on a subject or to finish a sentense -- particularly useful for speaking of feelings or problems that might otherwise be uncomfortable for speaker or listener
Speak for a fixed time, e.g. 2 min or 5 min each, then swap over
A speaks and B only listens (does NOT speak at all) then B speaks and A only listens. No discussion takes place, not even in the changeover.

This is useful for the speaker to learn about themselves. Listeners are requested not to speak, if the speaker stops, the listener might feel compelled to speak (particularly after 3 seconds of silence) or to give encouragement. Ask them to continue to pay attention but not to speak. Given the attention, the speaker may find they are able to say things that don't normally get said. This works well when the subject is how one feels about something.

One way to do this is to invite the speaker to finish an open sentence such as:

Having watched that short move I feel...

People often ask me to do things I don't like such as ...

Feedback can be given in a larger group with all pairs combined. Use a go round or other process where everyone is listening. This creates a safer environment for discussion as the whole group didn't just listen to the person speak and they can report what they think/feel was their important learning from the process.

[edit] 12 Pairwise Ranking

A kind of card sorting

Items/Ideas/Concepts/suggestions are written on separate cards/papers and compared in pairs against some criteria or fitness function.
Comparison continues like bubble-sort to establish maxima/minima or even a total ordering (inefficient)

[edit] 13 Picture Sequences

A kind of story telling. Encourages alternative approaches to resolving a scenario.

Present, or invite participants to draw, images that represent start states (e.g problem and happy resolution).
Invite them to fill in the sequence between with drawings that form the sequence or tell the story.

Variation:

Use 5 discrete positions
Complete in this order

- No 1: Current State -- where are you now
- No 5: Desired state -- Where do you want to be, what is that like, draw in detail to be clear about what you want
- No 3: Half way there -- what does it look like?
- No 4: Almost there -- what does that look like?
- No 2: First step -- This is often the most difficult to think of but sometimes easier after visiting the others above

[edit] 14 PMI

A technique for decision making or evaluating ideas.

State the idea
Make lists of results or consequences under headings:
- Plus -- for positive
- Minus -- for negative
- Interesting -- for other: stuff which doesn't obviously fit into the above but which may influence you

Variation

Allocate scores, negative or positive for the consequences
List dependencies: something you need to do first
Additional information that would help to make the decision

Reference: Edward De Bono's Thinking Course (2007)

[edit] 15 Small groups

Break into small groups to work on/discuss a problem.
After a fixed time, re-from in large group and
Get feedback from the groups,

For feedback, could use

Go round
...

Considerations

Small groups can be less threatening than large groups for people to speak to.
Make it clear that whether the feedback is to be presented by everyone or by a spokes-person in which case remind them with enough time to select one and for he/she to prepare what she will say.
Consider giving the group a task to prepare what they will present back.
Consider how the large group will feedback to the small groups
Consider how groups are formed: will they be familiar cliques or randomly chosen? If you do many groups in a session, do you want to keep them the same (to build on trust and progress gained) or mix them up (to capitalise on variety and diversity)

[edit] 16 Timelining

Prepare cards or papers describing events
Organise them into a line representing time or some other logical sequence

Variations

Position cards on a map (see territory mapping)

In order to get clear on the sequence (and possibly causality) of events, an individual can lay down their personal time line on the floor, e.g. from birth to present day, and by standing on different points either recall events or see an issue from different perspectives based on what they knew at the time.

[edit] 17 Dotmocracy

Voting or passing judgement using small adhesive dots.

This is a great way to get general feedback and learn about opinions of a group: Each member is given a number (usually the same number) of sticky dots which they can attach to wall-charts to indicate a judgement.

Use different colours to mean different things, e.g. red = bad, green = good, or three colours to indicate PMI

Works as a kind of poor anonymous voting if everyone is busy thinking about where they put their own dots and not watching each other voting.

I have used this after anonymous brainstorming forms of activism like this: red dots mean "I cannot imagine myself ever doing this", green dots mean "I have already done this", and blue dots mean "I might do this". Reviewing the dots afterwards we learned that there was a mix of willingness to do different things in the room.

Consideration:

make sure there is lots of physical access to the voting space to avoid crowds forming and people with the longest arms being able to vote.

Variations:

Are you allowed to put more than one dot on each item?
Can you "spend" your dots as you please?

[edit] 18 Telling Stories

"Hadithi hadithi, hadithi njoo"

A kind of go round, with a topic.
Invite discussion after each story, with time limit.

Variation Collaborative story telling where each person tells a part, e.g. one sentence. This can be used as a metaphor for thinking outside the box: e.g. tell a story of a problem you have had (or encounter repeatedly) and let others unwind the narrative in a way you didn't necessarily expect.

Use the metaphor of different endings to a story to reinforce a change in behaviour.

Consider recording stories (use a digital recorder). Consider getting the group to re-tell important stories (stories grow and change over time).

[edit] 19 Mind Maps

Aka (spider diagramming)

Mindmaps encourage exploration of ideas and top-down thinking.

Consider being explicit about concepts and relationships: Computer <-- a kind of -- Apple

Variation: "Me-maps". An iconic representation of self in the middle and map the territory around and identify relationships to self.

I have used this with me-maps of the influences on behaviour: people identified parents and heroes, but also society, nature, their home country etc, as influences and characterised their influences as, e.g. positive or negative, strong or weak, etc.

See Do It Yourself Trapese Collective, p126

[edit] 20 Territory Mapping

Using a large piece of paper invite (a small group) of participants to create (draw) a map of the territory surrounding an issue. This metaphor reveals social, financial, motivational, etc. problems by placing them on a map.

"We want to be over here but we are way over here,

all this is in the way and we're surrounded by this stuff.."

[edit] 21 World cafe/ knowledge cafe

A way of having a discussion among a large group:

Arrange room in cafe mode with small tables
Sit n people at each table and invite discussion.
After a fixed time, split the groups: one person stays at each table, the others each go and join another table.
Repeat this enough times for everyone to go everywhere.

Optionally:

Let them draw/write on the tablecloths/flipchart paper

Note

Part of the value is in the relationships and discussions that were held rather then in the formation of an artefact such as a list or brainstorm chart.

I used this at an international meeting when we had one table per represented country: we put an outline world map on each table with the country coloured in and invited everyone to map their own relationships with the country or with other people on the map. The resulting webs of connections were displayed round the room for the rest of the workshop.

[edit] 22 Anonymous Brainstorming

A variation on brainstorming where everyone has a few sticky-notes and writes down their ideas in silence and sticks them up on a wall or board without their name on.

This creates safety to bring up sensitive issues.
Because people don't hear one another's ideas, there is less cross-fertilisation of ideas and "oh that reminds me" effects.

I have used this to brainstorm forms of activism, giving everyone three post-its and asking for: Something I have done, something I would consider doing, something I could never imagine doing. The post-its did not specify which was which, that was done anonymously byvoting with coloured sticky dots.

[edit] 23 Musical Gallery

A feedback technique I have used to good effect

Put several sheets on the walls with questions on the top (and make them have nice frames round so they look pretty)
Put a stack of pens or crayons in the room
Get people to mingle and write their responses to the comments on the sheets
Play some music while they do it. Something without words like Afro-Celt or Lemon Jelly works well
They get to see each other's suggestions and it triggers their own ideas.

Considerations

There is no discussion in this so it can be a good idea to have a quick go-round afterwards so people feel heard.
The feedback is anonymous

Examples

I used open questions like "I'd have liked more of..." "I really enjoyed..." and "something else I forgot to mention ..."
Another time I used 8 sheets for each of the 9 basic human needs (Freedom, Participation, Protection, Understanding, Affection, Leisure, Identity, Creation, Subsistence) and divided them each into four categories of satisfier (having/things being/state doing/activities and interacting/spaces) (OK, that was after a workshop lead by Manfred Max-Neef

[edit] 24 Supported roll-play

This is a kind of pair-wise roll play in which someone may experience a stressful situation but in a supported way.

Work in groups of 4
Arrange in a T formation like this:

(C)

(A) (B)

(D)

(A) is the subject. e.g. roll play the support operative (for BMO)
(B) is the client, e.g. angry person who can't download something
(B) and (A) roll play a scenario, (B) might be angry, (A) might be flustered and unable to respond -- this is good if the scenario is something that A thought up and which she finds herself in often and it always goes the same way but they wish it went somehow else.
(C) and (D) are supporting (A), they can speak only to (A) and may do so quietly so that (B) cannot hear. They may stand close and even touch (hand on shoulder) if that is acceptable for (A) (check before hand)
(B) may not address (C) or (D) either directly or indirectly, as far as (B) is concerned, they do not exist
During the roll play, (C) and (D) encourage (A) and give ideas, and make suggestions for alternative ways to act and things to suggest.
Rotate roles so all four play each part (this is important!) make sure you allow time for all four sessions+ feedback on learning
Between sessions, the participant do not talk about what is going on, they just switch round and play the roll
Need to be clear what the scenario is in advance so that B can play their roll accurately.

The idea is that A has an experience of the situation going a different way and has a key experience that is different and breaks the pattern. This coudl work well to help build the community of practice and support for BMO.