Workshop Facilitation Tools & Techniques

Would you like to design more interactive and engaging workshops, presentations, classes, and speeches? Facilitating Groups: Teaching, Learning & Engaging is a series of online video workshops designed to help you better facilitate events and meetings so that participants learn, are engaged and get more accomplished. You will will see high-impact activities that work for a variety of group sizes. You will learn how to use best practice techniques and tools to more confidently, actively, and successfully facilitate others.

This program on Workshop Facilitation & Design is great for people who need to teach something or get collaborative results with a group. Workshops will introduce tools and techniques for facilitating group discussion and activities. Participants will engage in different types of facilitation, discussion, and identify the challenges that they expect to face and develop solutions using the tools presented. This is relevant for both students and professionals.

Outcomes – You Will Learn How To…

Use workshop facilitation techniques. Design more interactive & engaging workshops, presentations, and speeches. See how to facilitate a live group or webinar.

• Use verbal, paraverbal and nonverbal skills to better communicate with your group.
• Foster group relationships while accomplishing a task.
• Use various specific tools & activities to create an interactive session.
• Design and lead a facilitated session.
• Use the Experiential Learning Cycles to guide participants to reflect.

This workshop facilitation and design program launched at Dartmouth is for people who lead workshops or discussions and need to teach, facilitate, engage, and get results with a group. Workshops will introduce tools and techniques for facilitating group discussion, ideas, and activities.

Included Workshop Modules:

• Facilitating Groups Part I: Facilitation Theory
• Facilitating Groups Part II: Facilitation Techniques
• Facilitating Groups Part III: Facilitation Tools
• Facilitating Groups Part IV: Facilitation In Practice

View the Facilitation Online Course

What do people learn and do as a result of this online course on facilitation tools and techniques?

Read some of the comments we’ve received:

“I found this workshop to be both interesting and helpful. I think that after this workshop I am going to be able to keep a small group workshop or discussion fun and interesting for the people involved. One of the activities I think is going to be the most helpful is the reverse poll because it gets people involved right away and they might be more willing to participate afterwards because they already have and will be more comfortable. This workshop was very easy to follow and all of the activities and topics were very well explained with examples with them.”

“This online workshop gave me the tools needed not only to give a more interesting workshop, but also a more valuable one. I learned that activities are important to make sure everyone enjoys the discussion, and also retain the information better. I thought that the methods of engagement were extremely important and the greatest facet of this online workshop. I plan on using several of these activities in my round table discussion in order to increase how comfortable people are and get more ideas involved. I think the Think-Pair-Share is going to be a great way to get the group interacting with each other and as a whole.”

“Through this online workshop, I have gained valuable tools and methods to help facilitate a group. The strongest aspect of the workshop was discussing the various methods I can use to keep the group engaged. Using the reverse poll method you can keep people moving around and staying active and using the Think-Pair-Share I will be able to divide the group down into smaller sections and allow everybody to let their voice be heard. As shown in the cone of learning section of the lecture, being an active participant can increase how much you remember and how much you get out of a group round-table.”

“I really enjoyed these online workshops and found them very helpful for me as I will be presenting my own roundtable discussion soon. For my own presentation I think I will utilize introductions to engage people from the start and make them feel comfortable sharing their ideas. I also think I will incorporate the Think Pair Share technique in order to make the group smaller and allow everyone to brainstorm their own ideas about how the Divergent Series ties into leadership. I will also try to use the role play strategy to give people the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of the Divergent characters and use their leadership styles. Overall this workshop really helped me feel confident about presenting my own roundtable discussion.”

“After watching this workshop, I now have the tools to be more confident when presenting these kinds of talks. Every second was very detailed and it showed the tips and tools that were discussed. For example, every sentence was easy to understand and I learned a lot about facilitation. Every aspect about these modules ere fantastic and I’m really thankful to be using them during my round-table discussion. Thank you.”

“After watching the online series I have learned about myself, others and that leadership is truly everywhere. Strong points about the videos are that videos were broken down simply and expressed leadership qualities as tools. Tools that always can improve increase and help to better the community around you. The speaker clearly loves doing what he does and does a good job at it. Simple things such as eye contact can drastically increase effectiveness in groups and interactions. In my own life I can apply these values in group projects and at work. Speaking effectively and clearly, giving everyone a chance to present their thoughts and concerns. The main point that I have taken away from these videos is the power of engagement and getting people involved in whatever you do. One thing I would like to see more of is interaction and a couple more visuals in the videos. But for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed these videos and are just as helpful as, or even more so than actual meetings. This in the sense that I can pause videos and soak in the information. Thanks!”

“These videos really opened my eyes to the importance of group facilitation. More specifically I learned the value of the role of group leader to really build relationships and comfort within the group to complete tasks. I really felt like I picked up some useful tools to get my group to not only pay attention, but to work together in a positive way to achieve a goal. I really liked his strategy of dividing the overall groups into smaller groups because it is more effective and it forces people to be attentive and contribute, but also makes them feel more comfortable in sharing their thoughts, reflecting and retaining them. I also, really learned some helpful tips about verbal, para-verbal and nonverbal language. For example, in the past I have tried to use big and verbose words during presentations and the audience was very confused. So in the future now I know to use words at the 8th grade level. Lastly, I really liked his reverse poll, and round horn techniques, because by first engaging the bodies of the group members the mind will be easier to engage within the group. The round horn technique I think is the best to build the comfort level of the group which is essential.”

“I’m a huge fan of these online workshops for a few reasons. They aren’t to long and can be taken at ones convenience. They are are very interesting and filled with great advice on how to get people involved in what you are talking about. Ive in the past been to presentations where the speaker was boring and seemed to talk at you, so I feel like these workshops can help a lot of speakers be more engaging but also be more engaging to different types of people. It shows you how to be more prepared ahead of time and how to deal with a shy audience. I think it can be a big help with roundtable discussions and I enjoyed it.”

“I found this online workshop to be extremely insightful. The modules were interesting and easy to watch. This work shop has provided me with valuable techniques and a better understanding of how to work with groups effectively. As a rookie to group facilitation I am excited to implement some of these techniques in the future. Thank you!”

“After viewing these videos, I have learned new techniques to use when presenting to a group or even for a project proposal. The videos were helpful to me because for me it easier to learn through videos and visuals rather than reading something off of a piece of paper. This was also helpful in teaching me how to engage group members when giving a presentation. Sometimes people may feel shy to participate in something, but these videos help teach you how to work with that. Another thing I have learned from this that I will do from now on is to strategize to engage the the audience that you are presenting to. Since I am an art major, I need to present projects to my class very often. By strategizing what exactly I will explain about my project and research outside information, my classmates will be able to understand my project better by doing this. These videos were definitely helpful!!”

“These videos about group facilitation are definitely helpful for anyone about to lead any sort of discussion or lecture. I was aware of the theories of learning pyramid before this video but what struck me is why documentaries for higher learning are not used more often since “watching a movie” was given a 50% rating. One aspect these videos did not go too in depth with is the concept of audience. I believe the speaker/group facilitator should take a more serious note of the audience they are trying to engage in, that way the whole session is more focused for everyone. Introducing people is also huge. I hate when I am in a new group and everyone is buried in their phones or too shy to even say hi. Using the “around the horn approach” is an easy and useful way to give everyone a chance to speak. While watching these videos, I thought of past BHLP events where Think- Pair-Share was used. I remember developing relationships with other students and getting more out of workshops in general.”

“These videos were extremely helpful and are very resourceful when it comes to presenting. It’s interesting to know how each person learns differently and that when we present we should use many different techniques in order to engage many different types of people. It seems very important to get all the people in a group engaged in the conversation. Thinking back I’ve realized that the better presentations I’ve been to were the ones that weren’t just lectures but also engages the audience. I also like the idea of building a comfort level, because it allows for a more genuine and real conversation within the group. One technique that I can really relate to and that I like is polling. It’s such a great way to engage a large group, or even get information from groups of any size. It’ll be interesting watching these different techniques while I’m listening to presentations. I also can’t wait to utilizing these techniques while presenting.”

“After finishing the Facilitation University Training, I am now more confident in my abilities to lead an interactive discussion because of the new techniques I learned. I know I have a lot to learn in regards to presenting, leading, and discussing and these videos highlighted certain aspects I want to learn or improve on. Watching the modules made me think back to previous workshops that I deemed extremely helpful and how I would utilize some of those ideals and transform them into my own techniques in a social situation. In a presentation, I would emphasize the importance of an introduction of myself to allow the members of the meeting to be comfortable with me and with each other to create a relaxed atmosphere among the group. In order to lead the most efficient meeting I would consider and accommodate to the size of the group and the multiple intelligences of the participants. My main goal would be the comfort of the people within the workshop and myself. This would then allow for relaxed relationships among the group. Finally, a major point I found interesting and helpful was to always keep the audience interactive and entertained whether it be with activities or with stimulating questions that could potentially spark lively discussions. I hope to use these new lessons not only in presentations or meetings, but in general everyday situations.”

“These series of videos are very well done and easy to follow. Through the videos I learned not only how to analyze and comprehend what type of learner people in my group are, but also how to cater to the needs of each individual and their specific learning type. I know personally I am a very hands on learner and I used to view of that as a burden but these videos gave me great tips to not only memorize, but actually learn and understand material. I think that some of the techniques that are referenced in these videos could be tested during a round table discussion. I think it would be helpful to do practice run of using these techniques before I try them in the real world. Nonetheless these videos are full of great ideas and I am exciting to start trying / testing them!”

“I found this workshop to be very interesting and very helpful. Personally I am a learner that gets more out of an interactive presentation than one that is just about reading and listening. I enjoyed learning tips and tools to be more effective and how to have all members engaged in an activity. I have noticed through past experiences that if you allow members to sit back and not be involved that they will do just that, but by having an interactive activity, they are more involved and take more our of the presentation. Also, something that I will consider more in the future is the group that I am presenting to and how by changing the size of the group, I can vary my presentation to that group. I really enjoyed this workshop and will implement such tools in the future.”

Develop better presentations through facilitation. Get started today with our facilitation tools & techniques online program!