Category: course facilitation

So You Want to be a Facilitator…?

Image® by Avril Orloff
Image® by Avril Orloff

So you want to be a facilitator?  This humourous graphic illustrates the attributes of an inspired facilitator:

  • Large Ears– to listen to all things said and “spoken between the lines”.
  • Sharp Eyes –  to read body language and visual cues in a single scan.
  • Tiny Mouth –  to hold onto personal opinions, while speaking with integrity and neutrality.
  • Warm Heart – to treat everyone with respect and compassion.
  • Open Hands  – to manage process effectively with methods/questions that invite full participation.
  • Solid Feet – to be a stable force in the face of complexity, dynamics and emergence.
  • Unifying Spirit – to serve the health and well-being of the whole.

Bring our empowering facilitation courses in-house. Contact us for your discovery call.

Who Is Doing the Learning?

brain-learning

Are you a Subject Matter Expert – a recognized authority in your field – who is called upon to share your knowledge and to help others gain skills and insights in your area of expertise? If participant learning is your goal, listening to you won’t get them there.

“No matter how well planned, how interesting, stimulating, colourful or relevant the lesson is, if the [course facilitator] does all the interacting with the material, then it is [their] brain – not the student’s, that will grow new connections.” — Pat Wolfe, Neuroscience and Education

As interesting as we may believe our lectures and presentations to be, most people remember little of what they hear, especially if they don’t immediately apply the information. In the role of learning facilitator, rely less on PowerPoint delivery (while learners passively listen), and use your subject matter expertise to engage them.

How? Among various active learning strategies you might adopt, you will find that learning dramatically increases when participants have the opportunity to discuss, reflect and practice and/or apply the concepts and skills of your course.

And the most powerful strategy? – Having participants teach their peers what has just been learned. If lecturing won’t get them there, high engagement and involvement will!

Learn how to transform your instructional delivery from ‘boring’ to ‘wow’ through the adoption of facilitative methods to create learner-centered courses.