In my August post I compared the art of group facilitation and teaching to cooking and promised more articles on the key ingredients that make group work and learning successful.   As with cooking, facilitation is an art that involves a combination of practice, observation, knowledge of theory and creativity. Effective facilitators act as a [...]

Today I am returning to the blog after a few weeks offline due to Tropical Storm Irene.   Our little village of South Newfane, Vermont and many neighboring towns were hit hard by flooding during Irene. Some of our neighbors lost their homes. Power, phone and Internet were gone for many days and our roads [...]

My last two posts have focused on methods for positively influencing learning outcomes with groups through strong beginnings. I shared some of my favorite activities for starting off with style and creating a “hook” to engage participants from the moment they walk through the door including the use of postcards, objects and quotes.   These [...]

This is the second post in a series that offers ideas for actively involving learners from the first moment they enter the room for a workshop, training or classroom lesson. In my last post I shared information put forward by neuroscientists promoting the idea that the first few minutes of an experience or lesson are a key time to hook and engage learners (See March 12th post).

The activities presented in this series are some of the “tried and true” methods I have used to increase engagement, help participants transition into the learning space, make positive connections with their peers and introduce and review the academic material at hand.

“The beginning is the most important part of the work”. -Plato   Starting Off with Style: Research on the brain and learning is demonstrating that the events or activities experienced the first time learners are exposed to information greatly impact their ability to retain the information. John Medina, author of Brain Rules states: “If you [...]

  In my last post I described how I have been re-purposing the well-known ice-breaker Have You Ever? into Anyone Who as a strategy to engage participants in reflecting on or reviewing content from a lesson. I recently had great success using this game in adult staff training days, in guidance groups and in a [...]

This is a follow up on a popular post from last fall that offered ways to actively engage learners in the classroom, boardroom, training or group counseling setting.   Research on the brain and learning emphasizes the importance of breaking up lecture and direct instruction with activities that involve learners socially, emotionally and physically as [...]

Can a Lecture Be Experientiall? While in graduate school, I had an interesting conversation with Dr. Jasper Hunt my professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. We were filling out conference proposal forms for an experiential education conference. He commented about the “check box” on the application form requesting us to identify which portion of the [...]

“A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary” – Thomas Curruthers When I work with educators from all backgrounds I often find myself encouraging them to reflect on the idea of  a “student centered ” or  “participant centered” approach to teaching and group facilitation.  In this approach an educator thinks of themselves as a [...]

If you are reading this post, chances are you believe it is important to find ways to actively engage learners in your classroom, boardroom or group counseling setting.  However, when we have a lot of material to cover in our lesson plans or agendas some of us might find ourselves forgetting just how important movement [...]