Facilitation Tools & Techniques

"This workshop taught me the importance of actively engaging an audience. It is the responsibility of a presenter to not only deliver an accurate message, but also to do so in an effective manner. Hence, the presenter’s body language skill is just as important as verbal communication. Different audience groups have different ways of learning and the presenter should be able to identify it quickly. It is also important that the message delivered in a presentation sticks with the audience long after a meeting has concluded. This is a significant factor in how successful a presentation was.

With the help of this workshop, I would be able to incorporate several points into my presentations in the future to better deliver a message to my audience that would have a lasting impact."

"This was a great online workshop for facilitating groups. It was clear and concise, which made it more attractive to beginners. I learned to structure presentations towards the different learning types of individuals and became aware of the importance of different types of communication. I also thought it was quite interesting the different ways to assess and engage a group. This workshop is filled with great tools for future presentations.""This was a very helpful workshop, especially for my upcoming work when I have to collaborate with a group of people to accomplish a project. Although these tools seem to be small little things you can do, they really do make a big difference when you need to facilitate and guide people. I think its extremely important for people to pay attention to verbal, paraverbal, and nonverbal queues because I feel like most people don’t realize how much their words and body language affect people. This workshop really drew attention to communication skills and I believe it makes a difference when you need to keep your group members unified."

"These tips and tricks from this workshops was extremely mind opening. Some of these tools seems subtly or minute, but as this workshop continued it began to become clear to me why engaging facilitators make the choices that they do and why their workshops work better than a facilitator who do not chose to use these tips. It is extremely important to remain thoughtful in the choices that you make, weather it is your body language, voice tone, or eye contact. This workshop made me really think about how important these subtle tricks are. Although, group members don't necessarily realize exactly what is missing if one fails to pay attention to their verbal, nonverbal and paraverbal actions, it truly does play a huge role in keeping your group members interested and fully engaged."

"This is fraught with a myriad of tools that one can use in presenting. I think a lot of times, students are so used to the classic Powerpoint where we all sit and listen. Instead, like mentioned Module 4, why not get up and move. Moving and interacting is such a great way to keep the energy alive within your presentation. I will definitely keep in mind all of these helpful tools and tips in my future tasks as a facilitator."

"This was an extremely helpful and informative workshop! What stuck out to me the most were the different ways to approach different learning styles. I learned that it’s important to present information in a variety of ways to appeal to everyone in your audience. I also learned that group work should be varied, too, to keep people engaged and create a more dynamic environment. This workshop definitely helped me in creating a workshop, for it provided ideas on achieving high levels of audience engagement and ideas for making the workshop fun, but relevant."

"Watching this video helped me better understand the dynamics of group facilitation. I now have many different tools at my exposure (such as the BrainRain) that I can use to get everyone involved to the highest degree. I will make sure to have people reflect on their personal experiences as much as possible so that they can relate the material to their own life and others at the table, increasing the comfortability level (which will encourage others to share)."

"I know this workshop gave me a lot of really great ideas for group facilitation. For presenting a full fledged workshop, it was helpful to have ideas to let my audience get more involved instead of having me just talk at them with slides behind me. I LOVED learning about the different ways audiences take away information–it made me make my presentation as audience friendly as possible so that they could take as copious notes as they wanted. It was useful to have different activities to hand off to my audiences to give them the power of choice: that way, in most activities, everyone could step out of their comfort zone as much as possible. These online videos really helped me do my best to let my audience take away something valuable from my workshop. I can’t wait to refer to these videos in the future when designing and planning others!"

"These modules have helped me solidify many ideas about group facilitation. I was able to make analogies to dance floor theory about engaging groups and the levels of involvement. I learned many interesting activities to use during a group situation. These modules made me think more about the different learning styles and how they can effect the group environment. It also made me consider how people will show their engagement in different ways. Many individuals will be introverts who will not participate consistently but show their engagement in other ways. The theory side of the modules taught me about how your job as group facilitator doesn’t start when the workshop begins but much before it begins, in providing the environment for positive facilitation."