Can you think of a workshop that was engaging? One that was boring?
What did you like or not like about it? Maybe these sound familiar:
welcoming
organized
relevant info
interactive
practice opportunities
feedback
appealing materials
unwelcoming
disorganized
irrelevant info
not interactive
no practice opportunities
no feedback
boring materials
Planning Your Workshop
Imagine a workshop that you might create. What would it be like?
🕵🏼♀️ Who's your audience?
🎯 What do they need to learn or be able to do?
📍 What do they already know?
💡 How are you going to help them learn what they need to know?
❓ How will you know if and to what degree they've learned what you set out to teach?
How To Plan An Engaging Workshop
In traditional lesson design, you decide what info to cover, plan activities, and then make an assessment.
However, backward design leads to more engagement and transferable learning.
Steps in backward design:
Define learning outcomes: identify what learners need to be able to do by the end of the workshop.
Create an assessment to measure learning.
Plan activities that prepare learners to successfully complete the assessment.
Quiz
In which order should you plan the following steps in backward design?
What Kinds Of Activities Make A Workshop Engaging?
Having some structure to your workshop can help learners get and stay engaged. The main parts of a workshop include the beginning, middle, and end.
Here are questions to consider for each of these main stages. How you are going to...
Beginning
Welcome participants
Get their attention
Share objectives
Check background knowledge
Middle
Present new information
Involve learners
Apply knowledge/skills
End
Check understanding
Review key information
Wrap up
What About Online?
Is it possible to have an engaging workshop that's fully online? Of course! It does take some extra planning, though.
Things to consider:
Have you used the web conferencing platform to host a workshop before? If not, familiarize yourself with the tools and settings you'll need to facilitate an online workshop.
Do you want to ask someone to be a co-host, at least the first time you host an online workshop, in case something goes wrong?
How are you going to welcome participants? Will you run an ice breaker activity?
How are you going to invite them to interact? Chat? Poll? Breakout rooms?
Take Action
So, what can you do to plan engaging activities for a workshop? Try these ideas:
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