Planning & Facilitating Valuable Workshops (Part Two): How to Structure a Workshop for Maximum Impact
(Image: Safe Space aggreements made during my CLPP 2012 workshop, “The Revolution Starts with Me”)
This is Part Two in a four part series in planning, facilitating, and evaluating a workshop, designed to assist you if you’re new to the world of workshop facilitation or want to find more ways to improve what you’re already doing.
In Part One, we focused on essential things to consider before planning your workshop. For Part Two, let’s discuss workshop flow and how best to structure your workshop for maximum impact. Many of the considerations from Part One will be sprinkled throughout Part Two, so be sure to check out Part One.
Before We Begin…
You need to know the topic of your workshop, how you want to get your information across, and as much about your participants as possible. Here are some important questions to think about. Knowing the answers to these questions beforehand will guide you in breaking down your workshop:
Are you facilitating a broad overview of a topic, or are you facilitating a workshop on a particular aspect of it?
Are you expected to focus more on skills building or behavioral change?
Are you facilitating a workshop for volunteers, service providers, or people who are directly impacted by the service or work?
Is attendance mandatory or do the participants have more control over their attendance (i.e., at a conference?)
Are you presenting a new concept that the participants may have some knowledge on, or will the participants be at a more advanced level?
Now that you have the answer to these questions, let’s look at the following scenario, and turn it into a workshop: You are facilitating a workshop on a college campus. Based on statistical data provided by the campus’ health services center, more first-year students are being tested for HIV, yet the percentages of HIV testing are lower for female first-year students.
Remember WWWWWWH? Using the example above, let’s focus on the WHO, WHY, and WHAT:
*WHO: Female first-year college students
*WHAT: HIV testing
*WHY: The percentages of HIV testing are lower among female first-year students
Our topic: HIV testing among first-year female college students
Now that we have our topic, let’s look at how we can develop this into a workshop. Below is a workshop breakdown template that I’ve been using for some time now. Let’s explore it while thinking about our topic. Having a workshop breakdown template comes in handy and can guide you in focusing more on developing your content, and less on figuring out what to do: (more…)