The Facilitation Survival Guide

The Educationalist. By Alexandra Mihai

Welcome to the April issue of “The Educationalist”. Last week I started teaching my course on "Managing Learning and Development at the Workplace". It is a kind of hybrid course where the theory part follows a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) methodology (learning the concepts through solving close to real life cases) and the practice part is a small project where students act as consultants and write a report providing practical suggestion for L&D practice in an organisation of their choice. The mix of PBL and project-based learning means that my role is not so much that of a “traditional” teacher: we have no lectures, only small group tutorials and work in project teams. So what is my role then? I see myself as a facilitator, my main responsibility being making sure learning is happening. Obviously, this is much easier said than done. Taking a step back and not being in the centre of attention, while actually guiding the discussion or learning process, can sometimes take more effort than ex cathedra teaching. That’s why I started looking back at my resource collection on facilitation techniques and decided to share it here, alongside some of my thoughts and ideas. I hope you get to try some of them and find them useful. Have a nice rest of the week!

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Facilitation is a very important part of our work life and the more skilled we are at it the more effective our work becomes, whether we talk about teaching, administrative tasks or even research-related duties. It is all about working with people, bringing structure and purpose to the discussion and encouraging engagement. It requires a sharp analytic but also synthetic mind, as well as the skill to navigate different, sometimes diverging opinions and work towards a common understanding. So whether you are planning the group assignments for your next course, organizing a meeting or designing a workshop, this newsletter is for you!

When do we use facilitation techniques?

Facilitation tools and techniques are very versatile. To give just a few examples, here is when they come in handy:

• Teaching: more concretely, the active learning elements of a course, like group work, debates or simulations can be run using some of the facilitation techniques you can read about in the resources provided below; in these activities, the instructor plays the role of a coach or a facilitator; be it chairing the discussion of reading materials, having a structured debate in class or suggesting weekly group exercises for the students, it is very important to keep the discussion on track, make sure all students are engaged, which sometimes requires specific efforts to reach out to the shy students and, generally, just make sure the learning objectives you set for your course are followed through;

• Workshops: this format is often used at conferences and in the context of various projects; unlike a series of presentations or an open discussion, a workshop is supposed to take a “hands on” approach, with participants playing an active role in the respective tasks. Here too, the workshop leader or facilitator has a very important part, from the design stage- by designing engaging activities- up until the wrap up stage, where all pieces of the puzzle (should) come together;

• Meetings: facilitation techniques can be used in all types of meetings; whether you are brainstorming ideas for a new project, trying to reach a consensus or reconcile diverging views, you can use some of the exercises and tools below to support you in your endeavour. Meetings need not be boring or unproductive,

  they can also be intellectually stimulating, fun and especially efficient;

• Conference panels: while they are a more traditional, and arguably more passive format, panels are still the most used conference setup; that is precisely why the role of the chair is extremely relevant and can “make or break” a conference panel. Beside keeping track of time, which is a key task, chairs need to constantly link the contributions and bring them back to the panel theme, encourage the audience to react and ask interesting questions and, last but not least, be flexible and always have a plan B, in case speakers do not show up, there is no audience, technology is not working, etc;

Facilitation in teaching

Let’s focus more on how we can use facilitation techniques in teaching, because here I can use my experience both as teacher, using active learning with my students, and as faculty developer, where I train future tutors who in turn will have to act as facilitators in the classroom.

To better understand the roles a teacher- facilitator has, we can start with the simple definition of the verb “to facilitate”: to make an action or a process easier. So essentially, we are the guides in the learning journey, making sure to keep the right balance between student agency and providing support. Often this role is paired with that of a coach, as we help students learn how to navigate uncertainty and train essential skills.

If I look at my work, I can see five main aspects we need to focus on as facilitators in the classroom (and sometimes beyond it):

• Guiding students in acquiring, building and exchanging knowledge: making sure the learning objectives of your course are fulfilled while not actively teaching. Doing this well takes experience and often quite a lot of effort. We need to provide the right amount of quality resources and the appropriate level of scaffolding (to be taken away gradually as it becomes unnecessary). We need to design the contact time in a way that enables exchange, co-creation, peer feedback- but also be ready to step in when (and only when) the process needs steering. We need to provide a structure students can build on, while at the same time making sure they maintain their agency.

• Supporting students in asking the right questions: questions are the key, most of the time more important than the answers. We need to work with our students to master the art of asking good questions, and this takes a lot of practice. It also means developing an inquisitive mindset and critical thinking skills and therefore it requires creating a safe environment where students are not afraid to question things and are not focusing only on giving the right answer;

• Helping students see/ make connections: this is what I find most challenging and that is why it has been my focus recently. Making connections between new and existing knowledge, what we learn and our life experience is not something that comes naturally to all students so we do need to provide them with some support. In my course, I use mind maps to help students structure and make sense of the literature so they can eventually solve the PBL case. They do this in small groups and the from their engagement and performance in class I can see they find this useful;

• Steering the dynamic of the group: it’s not all about content though. A facilitator’s role is very much process-oriented. We need to observe the dynamic in the classroom, see how people interact, try to balance shy and overpowering participants, diplomatically solve conflicts if they arise, continuously motivate people and making sure their attention levels are up. All these are processes that run in the background: when all goes well our role is actually invisible;

• Supporting students in developing their own study strategies: actively reflecting on how students learn, what they need in order to learn effectively, talking about it openly in class- all these are also tasks performed by a facilitator. After all, we need to make the learning process easier, that is what the definition says, right? So the process is as important (at least) as the content.

Moreover, we can think about coaching/ training students to be facilitators themselves, a very useful skill not only during their studies but especially at their future workplace.

Five key things to remember

Regardless of which situation you are in, if you find yourself in the role of a facilitator, it is worth remembering to:

1. Set clear goals for the discussion, group work, workshop, panel, etc and communicate them to the participants in an unambiguous way; everyone should be on the same page from the onset;

2. Design a clear structure and make sure you follow it throughout the activity; define the rules of engagement;

3. Make sure participants listen as well as participate during the activity; active listening and active contribution are two sides of the same coin; to ensure coherent engagement, always make sure participants listen to each other;

4. Offer constructive feedback throughout; build on the various contributions, always try to find synergies and help participants make connections; also, very importantly, reframe the issues from different angles; this can often show the way out of a stalemate;

5. Wrap up the activity by summarizing the main points in a coherent manner and with a clear link to the initial goals, in order to close the circle; run a short activity on lessons learned (make sure you keep enough time for that); in case of active learning, a debriefing moment is a key part of the assignment.

Resources

Most of the resources below contain a wealth of activities that you can easily try in your next class, workshop or meeting, with detailed instructions on how to put them into practice. I suggest bookmarking them for easy retrieval when needed.

Library of facilitation techniques- a collection of interesting activities you can use, according to your goals;

Gamestorming- a set of co-creation tools that you can use in your classes, workshops or meetings;

Community building activities- a great collection curated by Maha Bali, Mia Zamora and Autumm Caines;

Facilitation Tools for meetings and workshops- another nice assortment of activities you can use in your context, grouped by goal;

How Good Are Your Discussion Facilitation Skills?- article introducing a Teacher Discussion Facilitation Instrument that you can use with your students or for self-reflection;

Liberating Structures- learn about a different way to facilitate your meetings and workshops;

Framestorming- learn more about this technique that encourages you to actively reframe a question and challenge its assumptions;

How Brainstorming Questions, Not Ideas, Sparks Creativity- more about “framestorming” and the importance of questions;

Participatory Facilitation Techniques- a selection of techniques to engage your audience;

What do facilitators do?- a short video about the role of facilitator with its different dimensions;

More resources on facilitation, group work, active listening, team roles, mediation, consensus decision-making and more.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash