assignment workshop

A step-by-step guide to planning a workshop

Going from a mere idea to a workshop that delivers results for your clients can feel like a daunting task. In this piece, we will shine a light on all the work behind the scenes and help you learn how to plan a workshop from start to finish.

On a good day, facilitation can feel like effortless magic, but that is mostly the result of backstage work, foresight, and a lot of careful planning. Read on to learn a step-by-step approach to breaking the process of planning a workshop into small, manageable chunks.

Design your next session with SessionLab

Join the 150,000+ facilitators  using SessionLab.

How to plan a workshop in four phases

We have divided the process of designing a workshop step-by-step into four sections. This structure is inspired by the insightful design methodology known as Dragon Dreaming, as codified by John Croft. The framework is an invitation to move in a structured way from dreaming to designing, from designing to doing, and from doing to celebrating and learning. In this workflow, we will go through similar steps, albeit much simplified and adapted to this specific example. If you find this categorization intriguing and you’d like to learn more, here is a page about Dragon Dreaming project design . The methodology originated in Australia, and you can see a wink to its origin in how the design turns counterclockwise!

Illustration of the steps of workshop planning

Each phase (vision, design, action and learning) is divided into subsections defining specific actions you need to take in planning your workshop. Each also includes a checkpoint with the client . These four meetings, plus a facilitation team meeting to draft the agenda, are described in detail in the accompanying Workshop Planning Template . In the template, you will find ideas and inspiration for five one-hour meetings in which to:

draw out the overall vision and desired outcomes;
define a draft schedule;
get buy-in for the workshop agenda;
check-in for a briefing before the actual workshop;
run a retrospective after the event is over.

I see this process as a dance between working alone and co-designing with a client. In this dance, two different ways of working interact, from being alone at the desk surrounded by sticky notes, to talking things over and getting feedback, into a new iteration of the design, and so on. Successful workshops all start, as most things do, with a vision, and a conversation. Let’s take the first step!

Phase 1 – Vision

Every project begins as an idea in somebody’s mind, which really starts to take shape once it’s shared with someone else. In the first part of the process, we cover how to lead conversations that will move the idea from the abstract to a more concrete realm. This process starts with a kick-off meeting attended by the facilitator, the client and, if applicable, other members of the team. To help you set it up, we have prepared a dedicated template complete with a workshop structure you can use to collect all the information from this visioning stage!

What are the desired outcomes of the workshop? Who will be the participants or what is your target audience? Once you have some initial answers to these questions, you can use them to shape a concept note, sign agreements, contracts and/or an MoU (memorandum of understanding).

Sharing intentions

According to the State of Facilitation in 2023 report, a majority of facilitators find negotiating with clients and stakeholders quite the challenge. In the survey on which the report is based, we asked over 1100 professionals what was hard for them in the previous year. While the top challenge reported was “keeping up with the trends”, a series of matters more related to difficulties negotiating, designing and getting buy-in from stakeholders emerged as well. We hope the following workshop planning tips can help you overcome such obstacles. Learn more about trends in facilitation in 2023 and the art of running workshops in the State of Facilitation report!

Designing based on the “why” is a necessary premise to design workshops that will prove meaningful to participants and clients. Often, though, this “why” is not entirely clear from the get-go. A skilled facilitator will use a range of communication skills such as probing questions, active listening, and appreciative inquiry to clarify intentions. In most cases, it’s a matter of slowing the client down, and gently inquiring into their motivations. Run a mini-workshop with your client and transparently share what you are looking for. Time spent on this now will save time and resources by minimizing the risk of misunderstandings and re-writes later! There are four key elements I check for when looking for desired outcomes with the client at this very early stage:

(1) Non-negotiables. These are the boundaries for your design, the things that are set and cannot be changed. This might be, for example, the duration of the workshop, the location, or the list of participants.

(2) Tangible outcomes (aka deliverables). What needs to be produced, concretely, by the end of the workshop? Is it an action plan? A set of decisions? A report? Try to get as many details as possible on this requirement. If this point is not initially clear, invite your client to explore the future with their foresight and imagination: at the end of the workshop, what do they want to have that was not there before the start?

(3) Intangible outcomes. What intentions are connected to the workshop in the immaterial world of communications, connections and emotions? Mark down the keywords you hear your client use. Is it a matter of increasing networking opportunities and connections? Deepening trust? These “soft” outcomes can inspire and direct your choices of activities, setting and style.

(4) Levels of participation. If you are planning a workshop rather than a training event, I have found it very useful to introduce the concept of the ladder of participation to clients, early on in the design stage ( here is a version relating to citizen engagement ). This involves probing how much power is allocated to participants into shaping future choices. Will proposals selected by participants in your workshop be adopted directly? Is this a consultation process someone else will turn into a decision later? Or, perhaps, the workshop is meant to inform and get buy-in on choices that have already been made? All these scenarios are possible and valid, but it’s important to know which one your workshop falls into, so as to minimize the risk of disappointment or confusion.

Once you have collected this information, you probably have an idea of where you want your workshop to focus. All you need now is to figure out who is it for before drafting a concept note and initial agenda.

Defining the target audience

Once you have clarity about the desired outcomes, it’s time to focus on your hypothetical participants and your target audience. You may already have a list provided by the client, or it may be a completely open invitation. In any case, it’s a good idea to spend some time focussing, after the “why”, on the important question: “who?” Things that can be useful to consider doing at this stage, depending on the specific situation, include:

Creating a “persona” for the workshop. Who will benefit? What are their needs, pain points, interests? Why will they come? This work will initially be based on your assumptions only, but it could lead to an exchange of information with your client to learn more. Here is a canvas from MediaLAB Amsterdam that can help you create a persona for your event.

Design persona #frame insights #create #design #issue analysis Following a similar structure of the Persona method, give your design personality by creating a design persona. This can be through visual design, copy, and interactions. To be used w hen it is time to focus on product experience.

Having interviews with potential participants that match your target audience to collect more information on their wants, needs and expectations. If you are able to contact participants before the workshop, aim to talk to a few. If key decision-makers will be in the room, it’s definitely a good idea to ask for a half-hour chat with them!

Start by clarifying that you are talking to a few people in order to better prepare your workshop. Next, kick-start your exploration by asking them what their motivation for attending the workshop is. Listen carefully and take notes! It’s good practice to have a list of questions that will be the same for all your interviewees, but also let the conversation flow naturally.

End the conversation by asking your interviewee whether they know of someone who should definitely be at the workshop, and add them to the list of potential invites!If time does not allow for 1:1 interviews, you can also consider sending your questions out via email. Finally, check back in with the client to ensure they have considered who should be there and whether any important stakeholders or potential workshop participants are being overlooked.

In my personal practice, I do hold a commitment to widening representation and will often reach out to my clients with questions, for example, on gender balance or including underrepresented groups. Can we get more women’s voices in a conversation about the future of logistics and mobility? (The answer turned out to be yes!). In this urban planning process, will someone be speaking with the interests of elderly citizens in mind? And what about the children’s? At this stage, it’s also important to start making notes of any special needs. Does your persona include, for example, families with small children? Or people with mobility concerns? These considerations have a bearing on such key planning elements as your choice of venue, location, and timing. Successful workshops are those in which the needs of target attendees are considered and steps are taken to ensure participants can take part.

Drafting the initial concept

Once you know the “why” and something around the “who” of a workshop, it’s time to start designing the “what”. What is needed at first is some clarity as to the main points of the agenda, not a detailed run-through. The client will probably have more feedback once things start to look concrete, and it’s not particularly fun to have to revisit the entire thing and do work twice. That is why I have found it good practice to keep the agenda still quite open at this stage. An initial concept draft for a successful workshop should contain:

A summary of the desired outcomes;
A list of benefits for participants (what are their pain points that this workshop will solve?);
A list of learning/key objectives;
A description of the main activities or building blocks of the workshop.

At this point, you’ll need to circle back to your client, share the draft with them and ask for feedback. In my experience, it’s a good idea to approach this step lightly, with curiosity, knowing you have done your homework but ready if necessary to change your entire concept around and pivot to something different. And if you still feel yourself having rigidity towards feedback, check out some useful feedback tips by learning expert Skye Suttie .

Signing agreements

By the end of the vision phase, facilitators and clients should share a feeling of commitment and alignment. This is made visible and concrete through signing agreements, contracts and/or a memorandum of understanding (MoU). What exactly these contain varies greatly depending on circumstances and location, but here is a useful summary, complete with template examples of what your MoU might look like, from Malia Josephine over at the startup Facilitation Jobs .

Phase 2 – Design

So now you have a draft outline of the workshop and an idea of who will participate. The next section is all about the nitty-gritty details of planning. Think of any other event, such as a family gathering or a wedding: there are a lot of things to consider so that everything will be ready when attendees arrive in the space you have designed and set up for them. It can be a very creative phase, if a bit solitary at times for the workshop leader!

In the design stage, we are aiming to answer the question: how will this happen? This includes choosing dates and venues, drafting an agenda, creating a communication plan so that your workshop attendees will get the invite and join, populating a participant list, and refining your draft agenda into a detailed script.

Establishing time and place

A workshop begins to feel like it’s really going to happen once the date and location are decided upon.

Whether you are scouting for a location yourself or not, you still need to clarify and communicate a list of requirements clearly. Don’t give anything for granted! List any needs such as accessibility, type of space, and equipment such as tables or presentation equipment. No location is going to be perfect, but the clearer your request, the closer to ideal you might get.

If you’re running a virtual workshop, you still need to put it in the calendar and arrange for a virtual space to hold it in, such as a Zoom account and a whiteboard space. And if it’s hybrid, you’ll need to do both: scout for a location (with great wifi and acoustics, here you can read more about why that’s important ) and set up online resources as well. If you don’t know yet what kind of room setup you will need, take a look at our detailed guide here.

Once the location has been chosen and booked, make sure you have an understanding with the location manager of how your session will work and what they can expect. Will you be using masking tape to hang posters on the wall? Is that ok? How early do you expect to be at the location, and who will be there to open the doors? Will you need breakout spaces for smaller groups to work in? Will participants be milling around using outside spaces, which, and when? What about wifi use, passwords, and other tech needs?

a person placing pins on a map of a city

Having a persona in mind might help establish a schedule. Is this a personal development workshop that people sign up for as individuals (that will probably mean running it in the evening or on weekends?) Or is it going on at the workplace? When are employees free to attend, and what will not clash with previous engagements? Will it be a one-off thing or a series? Successful workshops take all this into account to ensure workshop participants can actually be there! If you are working on a series of meetings for participatory planning and would like to encourage a diverse attendance , it could be a good idea to switch times and dates around quite often, so that people with different jobs and schedules can fit at least one meeting in. And get a babysitting service, or have someone who works with youth set up a related workshop with the young ones.

Drafting the workshop agenda

So now the word is out, and there is probably some time to wait before the workshop kick-off. This is the moment to sit down with yourself and work on the facilitation design. For many trainers and facilitators, this is a favorite part of the process. Here is where we create a detailed schedule, choose activities and methods and assemble them into a coherent flow. You’ll seek to create a workflow flow that balances group discussions, experiential activities and different learning styles in order to meet your workshop’s purpose. Proper planning and a structured process is a proven way of turning a workshop idea into a reality.

Using a workshop planning tool like SessionLab can make the task much easier and save you time in your process. A successful workshop is one with a clear structure that supports the learning process. With the Session Planner , you can easily drag and drop your content blocks to quickly build an effective flow.

I like to start by creating a skeleton of each item in the workshop agenda and then adding additional content once I feel confident in the flow.

SessionLab also ensures you stay in control of time while creating your workshop agenda. Add timing to each block to confidently plan for the time you have available. And when you make changes, SessionLab will automatically calculate your timing. It’s easy to iterate and plan the most effective workshop flow for your participants.

Need inspiration? Research and exploration into the methods library can help you find suitable activities for your session, as well as other online repositories of ideas such as this one by Untools.

The actual process of creating a draft agenda is quite personal. You may be working on it completely alone (hopefully, with a hot or cold beverage of your choice, and plenty of time!) or with a co-facilitator.

Results from the State of Facilitation report indicate that facilitators like to work directly with online tools, such as SessionLab, others, me included, prefer to start with pen and paper… or by taking voice notes while taking a walk!

However you approach the matter, you are likely to do all of these things (and more!), while not necessarily in this order:

Create a timeline, showing when your workshop starts, ends, and how long each section will last;
Check your notes from meeting with the client, refer back to desired outcomes both tangible and intangible;
Refer back to your interviews with participants, or any other information you may have collected from them, to pinpoint main needs and expectations;
Brainstorm activities you believe will meet the client’s and the participants’ needs;
Pick among those activities: which are “must-haves” and which are optional?
Assess how much time each activity will take, and add a bit of buffer to account for the unexpected;
Check that your activities are diverse enough to include people with different styles and approaches (e.g. by having both individual and group activities);
Add essential opening and closing activities such as icebreakers and introductions at the beginning and feedback and drawing conclusions at the end
Arrange them in a timeline;

And whatever you do, don’t forget to schedule some breaks! A successful workshop ensures that the workshop facilitator and all participants are able to participate and maintain their energy levels will learning new skills.

person working on a whiteboard with sticky notes

Refining the agenda

Once you have a solid agenda, it’s time once more to check in with the client. Run through the agenda together, checking that you share an understanding of what is going to happen, and making any needed tweaks and changes as you go. I always aim to share my reasoning with clients and share tidbits of facilitation along the way.

If you’re using SessionLab, you can invite clients and stakeholders directly to your agenda so you discuss and co-create in real-time or asynchronously. Collaborating in one-place can really help ensure your workshop preparation is smooth and that your session will meet your goals.

Refining the agenda is the subject of the third client/facilitator meeting detailed in the template that goes with this piece. The first thing to do is restate the high-level purpose and objectives of the workshop, before going into a review of details. This process encourages clarity and alignment, as well as enabling the facilitator to check whether the proposed agenda is fit for purpose.

This is also the stage in which, if I am facilitating a group discussions on a topic I am not familiar with, I’ll be doing research into that topic. Opinions about how knowledgeable, if at all, a facilitator should be about the topic under discussion vary greatly. Personally, my attention is on the dynamics of their conversation rather than on the content. Because of this, I don’t mind working with groups or companies who are talking about something I am not informed about.

At the same time, I find it useful to have at least a beginner’s understanding of the discussion. To enable this, I will ask clients to send me some papers or links to study. Mainly, I will be looking for jargon and terminology: I want to have at least a sense of what people are talking about and what terms to use myself. I also try and get a sense of what in the field is clear, and what is contested or up for debate. Research can lead to changes to the agenda: in a recent workshop I chaired, reading some documentation led me to assume that terminology being used in the field was still not well-defined. Different stakeholders were using different terms to indicate the same things, or the same term to indicate different things! I checked in with the client to verify if this was indeed the case and we decided to add a section discussing terminology at the beginning of the workshop. We did not aim to settle the argument once and for all, but rather to share with participants the current state of the art in this particular industry and agree on what terms we would use for the duration of the workshop. This is also a great time to reconsider the implications of your setting. If you’re running a virtual workshop, how will you encourage participants to take part and explore ideas in such an environment?

Creating a communications plan

Whether you are opening the workshop for participants to enroll or whether it’s the host preparing a list of attendees, it’s likely someone will be working to create a buzz around the event.

Often this is not handled by the facilitator directly but rather by a communication agency or office. That said, do your part by preparing material for dissemination and helping make sure the news reaches the right ears. If you are not doing communication and enrollment yourself, avoid missteps (such as the advertising sending a message that is not aligned with your intention and design) by preparing such a brief well in advance. A basic communication plan for your workshop should include:

How will people find out about the workshop? Where will it be advertised? Are there networks, groups or individuals that should be reached out to?
What should people know about the workshop in advance? Create a one or two-sentence description of the workshop to go out in communication channels and invitations. What is the workshop’s unique value? How can you entice people to be excited to join?
How will people enroll in the workshop? And how can they find out more? Who should they contact to register, is it you, or the client, or should you set up an automatic registration service (such as Eventbrite )? What information do you need to collect upon registration? Do participants need to sign authorizations (e.g. for audio-video use)? Will they get a confirmation email? Automatically or through you/the client?

Establishing who will be there

Many hands make light work: now that you have your detail agenda or script set out, you should have a clear sense of whether other people are needed to make it work. Will you need a tech host? An assistant to help with the practicalities? A video-maker? Photographer? Visual practitioner? If you need to assemble a team, it makes sense to onboard them once you know the agenda and tasks they will take on.

The other aspect of establishing who will be there is having a final (or “almost final”… there are usually last-minute surprises!) participant list. Registration can also be an interesting opportunity to collect information on your workshop attendees that might inspire some final details of the design. When registering participants for a short (3-hour) leadership workshop for the international organization C40, besides asking for basic information such as names and emails, I added three optional questions concerning people’s motivation for joining, interesting initiatives they might like to share, and a blank space for “any other communications”. This process was useful for me to start to get a sense of who was going to be in the room and adapt my choices and language to the audience. Furthermore, these questions can kick-start the workshop long before it begins by asking participants to start reflecting on a certain topic.

Phase 3 – Running the workshop!

As the moment of running a workshop draws closer, there are some tasks to do that are very practical, having to do with implementing what has, up to now, existed in words only. This is the phase for getting things done : assembling materials, briefing your team and any speakers, taking care of your inner work and preparation and then, in a leap of faith…Trusting that all you’ve done is enough, finally doing away with plans, and going with the flow!

Running workshops can be tough work, so in this section we’ve collected some tips for managing workshop attendees (and yourself) that should help running the workshop easier!

Assembling materials

Shopping time! The stationery shop is like a second home to most facilitators: it’s time to get your gear together and fill up boxes of sticky notes, posters, and marker pens. Now things are getting real! (And if you used SessionLab to plan your session, you’ll find a handy list of materials consolidated on the information page !) As the date of the workshop approaches, make sure you have all the materials you need ready at hand. This might include your presentations, virtual whiteboards, or physical goodies. I have found myself roaming Rome at dawn to get photocopies of materials in a neighborhood with no such services. Not fun!

I often wonder how important is it to give participants printed handouts. On the one hand, let’s admit it, such materials don’t often get read. Printing is a waste of energy and paper and my sustainable-minded self would rather avoid it.

On the other hand, printed materials might be a useful reference a long time after the workshop is over, and many people like to have something physical to hold onto and take notes on. You can also consider the option of having digital-format handouts to send to everyone before or after the workshop.

Briefing team and speakers

A few days before the workshop, set a briefing call with the client, your team and, if applicable, speakers or other guests. I have sometimes avoided doing this for the sake of efficiency… and usually regretted it. Even though it seems like everything is clear and smooth, by talking a workshop through, even in a brief 30 min meeting, something might emerge that needs attention.

If you have external speakers joining, e.g. for a keynote or presentation, remember they have not dedicated the amount of time and attention to this event that you have! Brief them on the intention behind the workshop and on the participants in the room, and discuss what will happen before and after their speech. As your star guests, they should feel welcome and well prepared. This will improve alignment and the overall experience for participants. When running a workshop with a team, it’s very important to know who will take care of what. Take the time to clearly define roles and responsibilities and add to the script the name of the people who will be, for example, presenting or tech hosting at a given time.

You might also have pre-workshop communication you want to send out to participants, perhaps to remind them of logistics or do some prep work. Always include a way to contact you (or someone from your team) if something happens at the last minute!

Personal energy management

Once all the design and preparation are done, so much rests on the facilitator’s personal stance and attention. Here are some examples of things facilitators I know, or myself, do in terms of personal energy management:

No work the day before and/or after an important event;
Meditation and focussing activities;
Spending time in nature, taking walks;
Coaching session with trusted colleagues or a professional coach;
Taking time to reflect on possible biases and on personal intentions.

What do you do to prepare yourself before a workshop? Do you take time and space before the start to tend to your own needs? We’ve also been sharing this conversation in SessionLab’s community space: join us here.

Going with the flow

Step by step, you have now reached this exceptional threshold. People have assembled in a physical or online space, which is equipped with all they need to learn and grow together. The workshop is about to begin!

This is what all the preparation work was for: take a deep breath and delve into the agenda. Skilled facilitators know how to read the room, trust their instincts, and stick by the plan, or change it, depending on what is needed in the moment, here and now.

Phase 4 – Learn

The workshop may be over but the work is not! Learning, celebrating and reflecting should take just as much of your time, energy and commitment as any one of the other phases. This is the step where we truly grow and become, with time and experience, wise and excellent facilitators! In this learning phase, we aim to close a cycle mirroring how it was opened. This means continuing a dialogue with our client and making time to think back together. Such reflections are too often swept aside in the hustle of business cycles. Yet, the more space we can make for them, the better. As we learn together, we consolidate trust and strengthen partnerships. Furthermore, reflecting and celebrating builds momentum for the next workshop cycle, which is often just around the corner!

Agreements taken with your client might include your contribution to drafting a final report. And even if they don’t, it’s still a great idea, for your own records, to take some time to look back and write up a summary of what happened. It will be invaluable in time, e.g. when two years down the line a client calls you back to know: “Could you do that workshop again?” “What made this a successful workshop and what would you change in any future workshops?” A workshop report generally includes two main parts: one is about information, the other is focussed on learnings.

Report Part 1 – information on the workshop

The first is a collection of data about the workshop: when and where was the workshop held? How many people attended? What was the schedule?

Workshop concept
Agenda (you can use SessionLab to include a handy printout of the session agenda!)
Data on attendees (e.g. how many people attended, and whatever data about them is relevant and can be shared)
Pictures from the event

Report Part 2 – learnings from the workshop

The second part of the workshop report is more subjective. This is the place in which to include reflections on how it went , a summary of key conversations and discussions, recommendations, notes on methodology

Reflections on the methodologies chosen
Facilitator’s notes and observations
Feedback received
Key recommendations or decisions taken.

Following-up

Presenting a report, and opening it for final revisions, is a great excuse to set up that precious follow-up meeting with your client.

Reserve a chunk of time to look back at your work together and reflect: what went well? What would you change next time? This is a time for constructive feedback, expressing appreciation, and really taking care of the relationship. You can find some inspiration on what to include in such a meeting in the last part of our Planning a Workshop template .

Besides following up with your client, you also may have some follow-up actions to take towards participants. Here are some ideas of what that may include:

Sending certificates of attendance with the number of hours spent at the workshop and the main topics covered;
Sending lists of extra materials, bibliographies, and resources ;
Collecting feedback through a questionnaire;
Inviting people to subscribe to your mailing list, follow you on social media, or in any case providing ways for them to stay in touch.

And of course, if you haven’t done it yet, it’s also time to do that bit of life admin and send an invoice!

Collecting learnings

The follow-up and reporting steps are mostly outward-facing, that is, you are writing for others . While you do that, probably some ideas and learnings will emerge that are about your work and practice. A collection of personal learnings can be the outcome of your own reflection or, if you are part of a community of practice or professional development program, of time spent debriefing the workshop with your peers, coach, or mentor.

I don’t always have as much time as I would like to properly debrief and collect learnings. At the very least, I take 15 minutes to think through this quick “Regret, Celebrate, Learn” process I learned from the Mediate your Life program. To do that, I quickly jot down some notes or a mental map in response to the following three questions:

Regret – what happened at the workshop that I regret, am worried or sad about? How did I feel about that? Do I know why I did it (what needs was I trying to satisfy?)
Celebrate – what happened at the workshop that I really celebrate and am glad about? How did that feel? What needs of mine were met?
Learn – with those things in mind, are there any learning points I want to draw and remember?

I might, for example, regret answering a participant’s question rather brusquely, and realize I did that because I was feeling rushed for time. At the same time, I might celebrate that I did take that person aside to check in with them during the break. This may lead me to remind myself to invite people who have off-topic questions to “park” them on a poster to answer at a later time.

You may want to add some notes next to certain tools or methodologies you used: most workshops present an opportunity to do something slightly different next time. If you are using SessionLab, you can add these to a certain activity’s card, so you’ll find them waiting for you next time you pick the same method from your personal library .

Celebrating

Celebrating can mean different things to different people. If I am traveling to/from the workshop, I consider that time spent on the train on my way back, taking notes on my diary, part of celebration.

Plenty of other actions might help you feel like the circle is closed: taking a relaxing break, going out for dinner with your team members, buying yourself a little gift… whatever helps you keep your energy level high and integrate the experience into the flow of your life. Processing your reflections and giving them some time to settle is likely to lead straight to the next great idea. How about we took this learning from this workshop and did that with it? Time to start taking notes, because these thoughts are the sign that a new cycle of ideation is about to begin!

Processing your reflections and giving them some time to settle is likely to lead straight to the next great idea.

In closing

When I asked our in-house designer to come up with the illustration on the top of this article, it felt very appropriate to summarize the complicated process of designing a workshop into a single, perfect circle.

Now that it’s done, I realize it’s really not a circle at all, because once all the work is complete nobody, neither client nor facilitator nor participants, is in the same place they began from. The process of designing a workshop is actually like a spiral , that widens and opens each time we go around. By the end of all these steps, everyone will have changed in some way. Relationships will have formed, new ideas defined, and lessons learned.

At the start of the spiral, there is only an idea, which becomes a design as it is shared, consolidated and refined. The facilitator’s job is to turn it into an agenda, and go through all these steps, alone or with a team, to make it happen. By learning from all that took place, the flow will, in time, become more natural, fluid, almost second nature. My hope in setting it down in this piece is that it will help you along the journey.

Want to see an entire workshop journey in action and get help in putting together a water-tight agenda? Explore our workshop planning template to go through a proven agenda design process that will help you dazzle potential attendees.

Does this process describe how you have been designing your workshops? Did it give you new ideas? Leave a note in the comments, and join the discussion in our Community !

Design your next workshop with SessionLab

Join the 150,000 facilitators using SessionLab

Utility Menu

Writing Center
Writing Program

Resources for Teaching Fellows

Harvard Writing Project consultants can help teaching fellows learn how to encourage their students to write better, more persuasive papers. HWP consultants are available to consult with teaching fellows on any aspect of their teaching relevant to writing instruction—grading, commenting, assignment design, classroom activities, etc.

In addition to consulting with teaching fellows, the HWP offers the following services:

HWP consultants can conduct TF training workshops on grading, commenting, teaching writing process, or designing writing assignments. Workshops can be designed for particular courses, departments, or teaching practicums.
The HWP Brief Guide series offers concise advice on various aspects of teaching writing.
With the support of the course head, HWP consultants can help design exercises, classroom activities, or writing guides for courses.
The HarvardWrites Instructor Toolkit website offers concise advice about best practices for teaching writing and an array of customizable lesson plans and exercises that are available for download.
The student resources section of this site lists writing instruction resources aimed at a student audience.
Pedagogy Workshops
Advice for Teaching Fellows
Guides to Teaching Writing
HarvardWrites Instructor Toolkit
Additional Resources for Teaching Fellows

Columbia College

Strategic Plan
My Columbia College Journey
Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
News and Updates
Visit Columbia College
The Classes
Registration and Policies
Awards and Prizes
About the Core
Undergraduate Writing Program
Current Bulletin
Archived Bulletins
Academic Coursework
Academic Advising and Support
Academic Opportunities
Academic Honors, Awards and Prizes
Academic Integrity
Academic Affairs
Berick Center for Student Advising
Career Advising
Fellowship Advising
Financial Aid Advising
Global Programs Advising
Major Advising
Preprofessional Advising
Financial Aid
Learn About Columbia
Visit Columbia
Apply to Columbia
Undergraduate Student Life
Student Resources
Supporting the College
Writing Resoures

Workshop Recordings & Materials

Check out our schedule of upcoming workshops and events here .

Planning and Preparation Strategies

Semester planning.

A step-by-step process for mapping out your writing assignments and planning your semester

Semester Planning Session Workshop Slides
Plan Your Semester Workbook

Transitioning into UW

How to apply what you already know about writing to the context of University Writing

"Transitioning into UW" Workshop Recording, September 2021
Transitioning into UW Workshop Slides

Essay Exam Preparation

Strategies for preparing and studying for timed essay exams

"How to Prepare for an Essay Exam" Workshop Recording, December 2021
Essay Exam Prep Workshop Slides
Essay Exam Prep Worksheet

Decoding Prompts

Strategies to read and interpret your assignment's instructions and instructor feedback so you know what you’re being asked to do, what your instructor expects of you, and how to apply it to your draft

"Decoding Expectations: Prompts and Feedback" Workshop Slides, September 2022
"How to Decode Assignment Prompts" Workshop Slides, February 2022
Sample Prompts PDF - examples used in the workshop (Feb 2022)

Juggling Multiple Assignments

Strategies for prioritizing tasks & making it easier to jump in and out of projects.

"Juggling Multiple Assignments" Workshop Slides

Reading & Research

Reading strategies.

Different strategies for different reading goals - and how to use them

Full Workshop Recording
Close-Reading
Reading From the Outside In
Reading Across Texts
Reading Strategies Workshop Slides

Close-Reading & Notetaking (with ODS)

Close-reading methods for making and organizing observations for textual analysis — in collaboration with the Office of Disability Services

"Reading & Notetaking Strategies: Close-Reading" Workshop Recording, February 2022
Close-Reading & Notetaking Workshop Slides
Close-Reading Checklist (PDF)

Reading for Research: From the Outside In

Strategies for reading sources to effectively and efficiently navigate the research process

"Reading for Research: From the Outside In" Workshop Slides, March 2022
Reading from the Outside In Notes Sheet (fillable PDF)

Specifying Research Questions

Strategies for generating and developing specific questions to guide and give direction to your research

"Specifying Research Questions" Workshop Slides, March 2022

Outlining and Drafting

Outlining for the scattered mind.

Nonlinear outlining strategies to capture ideas, structure drafts, and more easily move between different stages of the writing process

"Outlining for the Scattered Mind" Workshop Slides, February 2022
Use the above link to make a copy of the Google Sheets document; you will then be able to edit, download, or duplicate your copy to use in your own projects.
If you receive a "request access" message, make sure you are logged into your Google Drive account.
All of the templates in the Sheets document are also shown in the workshop slides PDF above!

Kickstart Your First Draft (with ODS)

Concrete strategies to make it easier to enter the drafting process and "hack" the blank page – in collaboration with the Office of Disability Services

"How to Kickstart a First Draft" Workshop Recording, March 2022
How to Kickstart a First Draft Workshop Slides

Getting Writing Done: How to "Sit Down & Write"

Hacking the brain's dopamine system to make it easier to initiate writing tasks

"How to 'Sit Down & Write'" Workshop Recording, November 2021
How to 'Sit Down & Write' Workshop Slides

Make Writing Easier for the Brain: Working Memory and Writing

How to use what we know about working memory to make the process of writing easier

"Make Writing Easier For Your Brain!" Workshop Slides, April 2022

Elements of Argument

Creating a conversation & using evidence effectively.

Unpacking the "conversation essay" genre with strategies for using multiple sources effectively

"Creating a Conversation & Using Evidence Effectively" Workshop Slides, October 2021
Choosing an Exhibit PDF Handout
How and When to Quote PDF Handout
Beyond Plagiarism: Doing Justice to Your Sources PDF Handout

Developing Claims

Strategies for developing strong, interesting arguments

"Developing Claims" Workshop Slides, September 2021

Introductions & Conclusions

Strategies for crafting introductions and conclusions, especially for long-form research projects, like UW's Progression 3 essay assignment

"Introductions & Conclusions" Workshop Slides, April 2022

Revision and Editing

Implementing feedback.

Strategies for interpreting and applying reader feedback as you revise your draft

"Implementing Feedback & Revision Strategies" Workshop Slides, December 2021

Clarity & Style

Strategies for revising on the language level

"Revision: Clarity & Style" Workshop Slides, October 2021

The Core Curriculum

Art Humanities
Contemporary Civilization
Frontiers of Science
Literature Humanities
Music Humanities
University Writing
Core as Praxis
Consultant Biographies
Workshops and Events
Faculty Resources
Working at the Writing Center
Frequently Asked Questions
Antiracism Statement
Applying to Teach
The Morningside Review

Skip to primary navigation
Skip to main content

Baruch College Writing Center

Understanding Assignments Workshop Lesson Plan (Online Adaptation)

Learning goals.

At the close of this workshop, students will be able to:

Identify the larger goals of the academy and discipline within which they are writing.
Identify the specific goals of the classroom, and professor for which they are writing, as revealed by an assignment.
Generate a list of writing tasks to respond successfully to an assignment, and in particular, be able to respond to the verbs of an assignment with specific, sequenced writing steps

For facilitators

Facilitator slides

For students

Student slides

Handout 1 : Understanding Assignment Instructions

Handout 2 : Sample assignment ( Psycho )

Handout 3 : Reference sheet for sample assignment

Summer Hours of Operation

In-person office hours: Monday-Thursday: 10AM-5PM

In-person sessions available: Mondays, 10AM-3PM

Online sessions available: Monday-Thursday: 10AM-7PM

Writing Studio

In-class workshops.

The in-class workshop information page has moved! Please visit our combined In-Class Workshops and Brief Introductions page to submit a request for either service.

Writing Studio workshops are designed by our consultants for use in the classroom. These workshops focus on different elements of academic writing and have the following goals in mind:

to encourage students to reflect upon their writing habits
to introduce students to writing exercises and strategies that they can use in courses across the curriculum, and
to enhance discussion of discipline-specific writing practices among students and faculty.

Each workshop runs approximately 45 minutes and includes a discussion of writing strategies, a consultant-facilitated conversation with the instructor and students about writing conventions relevant to the course, and at least one writing activity. We are happy to present up to two workshops per class, per semester.

Instructors are important participants in the workshop conversations, and should plan to contribute relevant materials and be present on the day of the workshop. Several of the workshops are designed to work in conjunction with a class assignment.

Please fill out our In-Class Workshop Request Form to request a workshop.

Available in-class workshops, transitioning to college writing workshop.

This workshop is designed mainly for 100-level courses. It is most appropriate toward the beginning of the semester shortly after students have received the prompt for their first formal writing assignment. The workshop encourages students to be aware of the conventions of academic writing and attentive to its differences across disciplines. With the assistance of the instructor, we discuss academic writing as a form of conversation with the ideas of others, the role of disciplinary differences in college writing assignments, and the demands of the course for which the students are writing. The workshop ends with an exercise that helps students interpret their writing assignment and begin making a plan to complete it. The course instructor will need to provide a paper prompt.

To learn more about this workshop and the materials required for it, consult the Transitioning to College Writing workshop script .

Brainstorming workshop

This workshop assists students to find traction and focus during the brainstorming phase of the writing process. Using a prompt provided by the instructor, we work through several exercises designed to help students generate new ideas and then sharpen and develop the most promising. The course instructor will need to provide a paper prompt.

To learn more about this workshop and the materials required for it, consult the Brainstorming workshop script .

Revision workshop

This workshop assists students with the revision of a paper they have already drafted, focusing on large-scale concerns like argument, analysis, and structure. We work through three revision activities, beginning with a brief exercise in which students rearticulate the main claims of their papers, followed by an exercise designed to identify organizational problems. For the third activity, the instructor may choose one of four exercises, allowing the instructor to tailor the workshop depending on the nature of the assignment or goals of the course. The course instructor will need to be sure students bring an essay draft to class.

To learn more about this workshop and the materials required for it, consult the workshop Revision workshop script .

Thesis Statements workshop

This workshop focuses on understanding the characteristics of a strong thesis and how to write one, as well as the conventions of academic argument more broadly. Using a prompt from the class or a sample prompt, students will begin drafting their own thesis statements. A discussion about how to argue for one’s thesis rounds out the workshop. The course instructor will need to provide a paper prompt and sample bad thesis statements for that assignment.

To learn more about this workshop and the materials required for it, consult the Thesis Statements workshop script .

Using Textual Evidence workshop

This workshop discusses the ways analysis of quotations can be used as support for argumentative claims. Students will evaluate, discuss, and revise their own use of textual evidence in a draft. The instructor plays an important role here in helping the students understand what constitutes good evidence, and use thereof, in his or her discipline and course. The course instructor will need to be sure students bring an essay draft to class.

To learn more about this workshop and the materials required for it, consult the Usuing Textual Evidence workshop script .

Organizing Research Papers workshop

This workshop is designed to be implemented after students have already gathered most of the materials they will require to write their research papers. The workshop helps students impose order on their materials and formulate a plan for integrating the research into their papers. Using an organizational grid, students will focus on meaningfully categorizing and evaluating their research in light of a focused research question. The course instructor will need to be sure students bring their research materials to class.

To learn more about this workshop and the materials required for it, consult the Organizing Research Papers workshop script .

Writing Case Studies and Ethnographies workshop

This workshop focuses on two parts of writing case studies and ethnographies. First, students discuss the importance of neutral and detailed description when conducting field work, taking time to practice writing or revising their own field notes. Second, following a discussion of how ethnographies and case studies drawn upon field notes as evidence, students will begin drafting sentences that use their observations to warrant claims and tie their notes to course concepts. Course instructors may request this workshop either before or after students have conducted fieldwork.

To learn more about this workshop and the materials required for it, consult the Writing Case Studies and Ethnographies workshop script .

Co-Teach Workshop Option

We know that our list of in-class workshop scripts does not fit every need. If you’ve looked through our existing workshops and do not see what you’re looking for, we would love to work with you to create a workshop to meet your needs, facilitating it alongside you.

If you’re interested in working with us to develop a workshop, please select our new “ Co – Teach Workshop ” option on the request form. After we receive your request, we will co nnect you with a full-time staff member who will co ntact you to set up an in-person meeting. For all such co – teach requests, we recommend requests be placed a month in advance, at minimum, allowing time for at least one required planning session between the co urse instructor and Writing Studio representative.

Some examples of customized workshops include a peer review session tailored to a specific assignment, a session focused on citation co nventions in a particular field, a workshop focused on co nstructing a co mpelling scientific narrative, and a multimodal co mposition workshop on podcasting.

Important Considerations for All Workshop Requests

Our workshops are meant to be highly collaborative, and involve significant individual student and small group participation. Because of this, we ask that there be no more than 35 students per workshop consultant.

If you would like to schedule for a class larger than 35, please contact our workshop coordinator directly at [email protected] . Specific arrangements for all workshops will be made by email correspondence. In order to access certain content on this page, you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader or an equivalent PDF viewer software.

Search form

Table of Contents
Troubleshooting Guide
A Model for Getting Started
Justice Action Toolkit
Best Change Processes
Databases of Best Practices
Online Courses
Ask an Advisor
Subscribe to eNewsletter
Community Stories
YouTube Channel
About the Tool Box
How to Use the Tool Box
Privacy Statement
Workstation/Check Box Sign-In
Online Training Courses
Capacity Building Training
Training Curriculum - Order Now
Community Check Box Evaluation System
Build Your Toolbox
Facilitation of Community Processes
Community Health Assessment and Planning
Section 4. Conducting a Workshop

Chapter 12 Sections

Section 2. Designing a Training Session
Section 3. Delivering a Training Session
Section 5. Organizing a Conference
Section 6. Organizing a Teleconference
Section 7. Organizing a Retreat
Section 8. Choosing a Consultant
Section 9. Serving as a Consultant
Main Section

You've probably been a participant in a number of workshops. You may have been at a folk festival where a famous performer held a guitar workshop and demonstrated some of his techniques. You may have been at a conference where there were workshops on surfing the internet, or on selling to reluctant customers. There are workshops on subjects ranging from cake decorating to treating schizophrenia, all of which are limited in time, meant to teach practical skills or techniques or ideas, and conducted by people like you.

Now it's your turn to conduct a workshop. You may be training staff or volunteers for a new organization, presenting at a conference, or trying to show the world this terrific new method your organization has developed. Whatever the case, you're going to have to entertain, educate, and edify a group of people you've probably never met before. That may sound frightening, but running a workshop is really very much like anything else: if you prepare well, stay relaxed, and respect the participants, it'll go fine.

What is a workshop?

There are probably as many answers to this question as there are workshops and workshop presenters but, in general, a workshop is a single, short (although short may mean anything from 45 minutes to two full days) educational program designed to teach or introduce to participants practical skills, techniques, or ideas which they can then use in their work or their daily lives. Most workshops have several features in common:

They're generally small , usually from 6 to 15 participants, allowing everyone some personal attention and the chance to be heard.
They're often designed for people who are working together, or working in the same field.
They're conducted by people who have real experience in the subject under discussion.

A presentation doesn't have to be limited to one person. Co-leaders or co-facilitators are not only common, but can greatly expand the possibilities of a given workshop, and can make everyone's job easier. Each co-leader might be responsible for particular parts of the workshop, or all may work together throughout, depending upon the structure and purpose. In any case, finding one or more co-leaders or co-facilitators is always an option if you're planning a workshop.

They're often participatory , i.e. participants are active, both in that they influence the direction of the workshop and also in that they have a chance to practice the techniques, skills, etc. that are under discussion.
They're informal ; there's a good deal of discussion in addition to participation, rather than just a teacher presenting material to be absorbed by attentive students.
They're time limited , often to a single session, although some may involve multiple sessions over a period of time (e.g. once a week for four weeks, or two full-day sessions over a weekend).
They're self-contained . Although a workshop may end with handouts and suggestions for further reading or study for those who are interested, the presentation is generally meant to stand on its own, unlike a course, which depends on large amounts of reading and other projects (papers, presentations) in addition to classroom activities.

Why would you give a workshop?

Why choose a workshop, when you could use some other method like a study circle, a course, on-the-job training, etc.? Because there are a number of different ways to teach people things, and because people learn things in different ways, a workshop has some advantages (and some disadvantages, too, most notably the lack of time it provides) over these other methods that make it a good choice in certain circumstances.

A workshop provides a way to create an intensive educational experience in a short amount of time, when the time for a more comprehensive effort may not be available. Participants may be working, they may be too far apart to gather together regularly, or may simply be unwilling to commit large amounts of time. A workshop can introduce a new concept, spurring participants to investigate it further on their own, or can demonstrate and encourage the practice of actual methods.
It's a great way to teach hands-on skills because it offers participants a chance to try out new methods and fail in a safe situation. Failure is often the best teacher, and failure in this instance doesn't carry a cost. At the same time, feedback, from both the presenter and peers in the group, helps a participant understand what she can do to avoid failure in a real situation.
A workshop is a way for someone to pass on to colleagues ideas and methods that he has developed or finds important. Teaching a graduate course may not be possible, but he may be able to reach large numbers of people by conducting workshops in various situations.
Especially for people who work together, a workshop can help to create a sense of community or common purpose among its participants.

When would you want to conduct a workshop?

A workshop, as explained above, is valuable in certain circumstances. When do those circumstances arise, and when might you choose to conduct a workshop over other methods of education or training? There are a number of situations in which a workshop would be the best choice:

The beginning of something new. If your organization is adopting a new method, or your community initiative is taking a new track, there are often new pieces of information or ways of functioning that people must learn. A workshop, or series of workshops, is a way to introduce these in a short time and get people ready for the change.
The initial training of staff or volunteers. Workshops are often a good way to train new staff members or volunteers in the philosophy, methods, and functioning of your organization, or in techniques they'll need to do their jobs.
The in-service or ongoing training of staff or volunteers. Workshops in different issues, techniques, etc. are a good way to keep staff and volunteers fresh and thinking about what they're doing.
Staff development. Workshops are often used as a way of honing professional skills and learning about new developments in the field.
The demonstration of a new concept. If someone in an organization has been exposed to a particularly exciting new idea or technique, he may want to conduct a workshop on it for his colleagues, or the organization may want to bring in someone to do so.
The explanation of something to the public. An organization may conduct a public workshop on its issue, in order to make sure that people are informed about its cause or about what it is doing. An adult literacy program may hold a workshop on illiteracy in its local area, for instance, or a shelter might hold one on the causes and consequences of homelessness.
The availability of a knowledgeable presenter. If you have particular expertise in a subject, you may be asked to present a workshop to staff or members of another organization, to the public, at a conference, etc. Well-known people in a given field are often invited (and paid) to travel long distances to present workshops.

How do you conduct a workshop?

Even if you've never done it before, you can conduct a good workshop by paying attention to all the phases of the process. There are three phases to conducting a workshop: planning, preparation, and implementation (actually doing it). In addition, once you're done, it's important to follow up with participants to get feedback on the workshop, so you can improve it the next time. We'll look at each of these phases separately.

Once you know what your topic will be, planning a workshop ultimately means figuring out what you want to do to guide participants through the experience, and what you hope they'll learn from it. In order to do that, you have to consider a number of factors:

Consider your topic. The first element of planning a workshop is to know what you're talking about. No matter how interactive and participatory your workshop will be, you still have to have a good command of what you're presenting. Do your homework, so that you're confident you can deal with most questions and issues that might come up. That doesn't mean you have to know absolutely everything about the topic, but that you have to know a reasonable amount about it, and understand it well enough so that you can help participants fit it into the context of their own jobs and lives.

Consider your audience. Your audience, the people who will actually be part of the workshop, is probably the most important piece of the puzzle here. Understanding them and their needs will do more than anything else to help you decide what to do and how to do it.

What do they already know? If you expect most of the participants to be familiar with certain background material, or to have had certain kinds of experiences, that will greatly affect how and to what extent you choose to present material.

You can sometimes do some research here. If you're presenting for a particular group or organization, you may be able to find out either from your contact person or from participants themselves who your audience will be, where they're starting from, what their experience has been, and what they want from the workshop. Asking about the audience is part of what a careful presenter is expected to do. In other circumstances at a large conference, for instance, there may be no way to anticipate how much knowledge participants have. In this case, it may make sense to prepare a range of materials and activities, and then begin the workshop by asking people what they know about the topic. By doing that, you can gear your workshop to most participants' needs, and be sure you're neither going over anyone's head nor putting anyone to sleep.

Is this material out of their field? Knowing the context of participants ' experience can help you understand how to present material.
What is their field? People in some fields may be expected to be more verbal or introspective or outgoing than those in others. You're more likely to find a group of social workers willing to discuss their emotions than you are a group of construction workers, for instance. It also might take more creativity to bring the construction workers to an understanding of why this kind of discussion might be a good idea. It's important to find ways of presenting material that both makes sense to the participants in this particular workshop, and doesn't pull them too far out of their context.

In reality, any group can either be very quiet or very volatile, extremely apathetic or extremely responsive, or (most likely) somewhere in between. It depends to a great extent on one or two individuals who set the tone, whether or not the group is one whose members all know one another. What kind of group you have has a lot to do with what kind of workshop will be successful. If the group is very quiet, for instance, discussion may be deadly, but activities based on movement may work well. If the group is argumentative, you may be able to take advantage of that by splitting people up into small groups and having them hash out made-up problems on the topic. Understanding that you can't predict will help you to plan for several different possibilities.

Do they know one another and/or work together? If so, you can perhaps dispense with introductions (it depends on how well they know one another), and can plan a workshop that speaks to common concerns.
Will they come in with a particular attitude toward the workshop? They will if you're offering material that flies in the face of what they think they know is true. Are you introducing a new concept or method that conflicts with what they've already been doing or with their previous training? If so, the first thing you have to address may be their hostility or skepticism. On the other hand, they might also be biased in your favor if you're offering what seems to be a solution for a difficult problem.

This is not to imply that intentionally challenging people's beliefs in a workshop is a bad idea. Assuming you can do it without being disrespectful, like telling them they're stupid, this kind of workshop is often the most powerful, and results in the most significant learning for participants. Most people find change and new ideas uncomfortable to deal with, but are stimulated by them as well. If you can present something new so that participants will consider it, you've more than done your job.

Under what circumstances are they attending this workshop? Did they choose it from among several possibilities (as at a conference)? Did they request it? Is it a requirement of their job, or to fulfill requirements for certification, licensure, or some other credential? Is it part of their job (training, retraining, or staff development, for example)? Is it to learn something they absolutely need to know to do their job properly? Each of these reasons implies a different attitude, a different level of interest and commitment, and a different approach on the part of the presenter.

Consider the workshop size. If the group is an ideal size for most purposes (about 8-12) you can arrange activities that involve participants as individuals, in small groups (2-4), and in the whole group. If the group is larger than about 15, you'll probably want to split it up for many activities. If it's smaller than 7 or 8, you might be better off having the whole group work together for most of the workshop.

The reason 8-12 is an ideal size is that it's small enough so that everyone has an opportunity to have his questions answered and to get some individual attention from the presenter, but still large enough to generate some lively discussion. If the group is larger than 15, the voices of some people, usually those who are quieter, tend to get lost; if it's smaller than 6-8, there may not be enough opinions, questions, and ideas flying around.

Consider the time available . Workshops can run from as little as an hour or less to as much as a day or even longer. It 's important that your goals for the workshop match the time available. This means not only planning out your presentation to fill the time appropriately, but also matching the amount of material you'll cover to the time available. Especially if it's all new to participants, they'll need lots of time for clarification, questions, etc. in order to understand it.

A general rule about time is that you should try to block out the time for each part of the workshop in advance. Rehearse different parts to see how long they'll take, or how long you want them to take (e.g., if you're going to ask people to write about something, try it yourself and see how long it takes you). You'll seldom be 100% accurate, but you can come close, and you'll then have an outline of the workshop and a reasonable sense of what you might expect to do in the time you have.

Short workshop: 45-90 minutes. A workshop this short is even shorter than it seems. People may be late by between five and fifteen minutes, and you'll lose more time if you're distributing materials, using equipment, etc. That means you'll have to ruthlessly pare the material you want to present down to what's actually important. Although it's always wise to overprepare (see Preparation, below), the reality is that you seldom get to everything you expect to do. A workshop of this length is probably best used as a means of introducing and discussing a new concept or an issue of concern. It makes little sense to try to teach a specific skill unless it's very limited. If it can be learned in five or ten minutes, and practiced in the same amount of time, it's worth a try. If it's any more complicated than that, you need a longer workshop.

If a particular skill or technique or method is really important for participants to learn in order to do their jobs, or - especially - if its incorrect use will have serious consequences (as in the case of many emergency medical procedures), it is probably unwise to present it in a workshop this short. That could lead to participants believing they know more about the topic than they actually do, and causing real harm as a result. Use your common sense and be guided by what's really possible.

Medium-length workshop: 90 minutes to 3 hours. At this length, a workshop can begin to address ideas and concepts in some depth, and teach some skills. Some considerations about a medium-length workshop:

Vary activities . This type of workshop is more than long enough for participants to get bored or overwhelmed. Two or three consecutive hours of a talking head can send many people out the door screaming for fresh air. Breaking up the time by involving participants in a number of different kinds of activities is far more conducive to their learning than asking them to sit still and do one thing for the whole time.

Attention span: Studies have shown that most people start to lose concentration after 20 minutes to half an hour. By the end of an hour, their level of attention has fallen by more than 50% (and in some cases by a great deal more than that). Attention can be renewed by changing activities, changing topic, changing methods of presentation, etc. Even the short pause in the workshop caused by moving from one activity to another is enough to refresh people and keep them interested.

Vary the seriousness of the material . Interspersing activities and ideas that are fun or humorous with others that are more serious can not only keep participants awake and on their toes, but can aid learning as well.

Plan a break . This will speak to the attention-span issue and allow participants a chance to get coffee, go to the bathroom, etc. without disturbing the flow of the workshop. But also be aware that breaks always take longer than planned. Add another five or ten minutes onto the time that you ask people to take? you can be sure that by the time everyone wanders back into the room and settles down, they'll have spent at least that much extra time.

Even a long workshop isn't as long as you think, carefully reflect on the amount of material you can present adequately in this length of time, and on the amount that people can actually absorb. You might use the time to present a relatively small amount of material in a number of different ways, so that participants will leave with a clear understanding of it. Or, you might select what people really need to know about your topic and concentrate on that, trying to give them enough so that, even if they don't fully comprehend it, they will be intrigued enough to follow up on their own and learn more.

In addition to considering how much is appropriate for the amount of time you have, think about how much you know about the topic. Sometimes, the most successful workshops are conducted by presenters who know only slightly more than the participants. In those circumstances, presenters aren't as apt to try to fit in too much or get too technical. Remember how long it really took you to learn this stuff, and to become comfortable with it: it may have been months, or even years, before you understood it completely. Try to recall your introduction to the topic and what you really absorbed, then plan your workshop.

Participants need time to talk and connect with one another . The opportunity to get to know others and to exchange ideas is one of the main values of a workshop for many people, and shouldn't be shortchanged.

Long workshop: over 3 hours. A long workshop has some drawbacks, but it does allow you to present material in some depth and to conduct a number of activities. Six concentrated hours of work a day is about as much as most people can deal with. Be sure to allow for plenty of breaks, both because of the need to stretch and use the bathroom, and because of attention span. Some thoughts about long workshops:

You can go into more detail on specific issues. Here's where you have the opportunity to follow group interest, to explore ideas that are relevant to participants' particular situations, or simply to present ideas in greater depth.
You can allow longer blocks of time for activities and single topics. It's important, however, to be aware of the need for breaking up long segments of the workshop. You have to be aware if participants' eyes start to glaze over, and be prepared to switch quickly to something else (particularly something active and fun) if that happens.
You can allow more time to practice new skills and more time for discussion about activities. Perhaps the greatest advantage of a long workshop is that it can allow participants the time to reflect, both individually and with others, which is a crucial part of the learning process.
You can allot more time to and follow up on participants' questions. (It can be tempting, on the other hand, to get into a conversation with one participant about her interesting question while the rest of the group goes to sleep. Be careful to guard against that tendency.)
You can present both the context and the specifics of the topic (e.g. characteristics of the HIV-infected population and techniques of community AIDS prevention).
You can provide or encourage food and drink. It helps keep people alert, sets a relaxed and friendly tone, and sustains interest over the long haul by eliminating the need to think about being hungry or thirsty.
It's harder to estimate how long workshop segments will take in a long workshop because presenters tend to let activities go on if they're going well (after all, there's plenty of time), and often find that they can't get to much of what they planned. You need to decide whether you want to stick to your plan and, thus, limit activities to approximately the time you planned for them, or to go with the flow, and let things go on longer if participants seem to find them important. Neither of these options is the "right" or "wrong" way: it depends on the needs of the group and the presenter. Checking in with the group is usually a good way to decide which way to go.

Consider the purpose of the workshop. Workshops are given for many purposes, and each implies some specific methods of presentation and other details. Some common purposes and their implications:

Teaching participants a skill which they then might have to use or will use in the future (a first aid workshop for child care workers, for instance). This kind of workshop will generally be light on talk and heavy on activity. If people are going to use what they're learning, it's obviously important for them to practice it, and that is probably what you'll want the workshop to focus on.
Giving participants a chance to practice and receive feedback on techniques and concepts they already know. Again, the emphasis here is likely to be on action, on actually doing whatever is under discussion and getting advice and reflection on their performance from the presenter and others in the group.
Enhancing participants' current knowledge of concepts, techniques, and methods (new research, improvement of techniques, etc.). A new technique will have to be practiced; a fresh take on a familiar concept might involve only discussion.
Teaching participants a new concept that they can then apply to their work (for instance, a workshop for street outreach workers about how gangs act as substitute families for their members). The presentation here might be more discussion oriented, since people will need to assimilate the new ideas and talk out how they connect to and might affect what they do.
Familiarizing people with material important for, but not directly connected to, their jobs (Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA] regulations, for instance, or privacy laws). A workshop of this type will probably involve direct presentation of information, with perhaps some problem solving practice and discussion (Person X comes to your organization with this issue; how do you handle it?) It may end up as a question and answer session, partially because laws and regulations are often confusing, and partially because they cause so much anxiety.
Providing, or helping to provide, a job-related credential for advancement or initial employment, for instance or for some certification or licensure. This category could include anything from CPR instruction to cultural sensitivity training, and thus might include any number of activities or methods of presentation.
Using a workshop as a way of helping participants feel comfortable with one another and/or their situation. Often used in college orientations or in employment-related team building, workshops of this type usually consist of a large number of rapid-fire activities, often eliciting laughter or cooperative problem solving, or both. Any talk is usually beneficial to understanding the activities and their effects on participants.
Introducing people to a way of looking at the world, either as an adjunct to their jobs or volunteer situations, or as public education (a workshop on theories of moral development, for example). This kind of workshop can allow for tremendously varied activities: direct teaching, discussion of hypothetical situations, trying to solve moral dilemmas, role playing, etc. In general, the more different ways people can experience the concept, the more likely they are to understand it.

Consider your presentation . The style of your presentation both your personal style and the actual methods of presentation you employ will do much to determine the effectiveness of your workshop. Some of this will depend on your own personality and experiences, but there are some general guidelines that can be useful:

Facilitation. Workshop presenters are often referred to as facilitators. A facilitator (from Latin facile , which means "easy") is someone who smooths the way for others. She's not a leader, exactly, or an authority figure, but more of a guide: someone who walks beside you and helps you figure out which way to go. In general, facilitation is more useful in a workshop than "instructing." It's called a workshop because participants generally get a chance to do something, to actually interact on their own terms with what's being presented. A facilitator can help make it easier for them to have that experience, where an instructor might be more apt to tell them about the experience, or to structure it for them.

The author's prejudice is undoubtedly apparent here. Virtually all good teaching is really facilitation, at least to some extent. In order to learn anything, and especially to learn it at the deepest level, one has to experience it, wrestle with it, reflect on it, live with it. A good facilitator makes it possible for each participant to relate to new learning in his own way and sort it out for himself, rather than telling him what he's supposed to think or how to approach a concept. Participants are far more likely to stay tuned in throughout the workshop if you act as a facilitator and if you're personally accessible. This is not to say that there's never a place for leadership in teaching, as long as it doesn't dominate the workshop. If the presenter is a "star" in her field, participants may in fact want to hear what she has to say, more than to be facilitated.

Consistency of presentation and the workshop's theme. Your method and style of presentation should, to the largest extent possible, mirror the topic. If you're conducting a workshop on experiential education, for example, it should be experiential, not a lecture. A workshop on ADA regulations should be held in a physically accessible space and demonstrate sensitivity to the concerns of the disabled. A technique being introduced should be practiced in presentation as well as in activities. In a well-presented workshop, participants learn as much from methods and style of presentation as they do from workshop contents.
Direct involvement of participants. Workshops are much more effective and enjoyable if they involve participants in activities, discussion, and interaction with others, than if they merely shower people with information. There are many opportunities for practicing skills, small and large group discussions, reporting out of discussions, problem solving as individuals and as small and large groups, etc. that will give everyone in the group an opportunity to take an active role.
Include some sort of hands-on activity where people can be physically active.
Include both group and individual activities.
Activities should be entertaining and interactive. Avoid being a "talking head" as much as possible.
Include various kinds of audio-visual material, such as video, motiongraphics, and audio recordings
Include innovative ways of presenting material directly: a play, an interactive skit, a song, a cartoon, etc.
Always include practice of a particular technique or method that's being presented, even if only for a short time, to give participants the chance to see what it feels like.

The more creative you can get here, the better. Activities in which participants work with physical objects are often great learning tools. There are the obvious ones (workshops for teachers include lots of "manipulatives," objects to demonstrate concepts with), but there are an infinite number of options. The author attended a terrific workshop on multiple intelligences that involved small groups designing and building villages out of legos and other blocks. Think as outrageously as you can.

Things to take home. Make sure participants get print copies of any overheads or slides that contain important information, as well as some summary of the main point(s) of the workshop, and anything else you think might be important. It will help them to remember later what the workshop was about, and will assist them in passing the ideas on to others.
Reflection time. Reflection is the key to learning. If part of the style of your presentation is to ask participants to reflect on or discuss each activity, you 'll help them learn in two ways: by giving them the time to reflect on the activity and talk about it with others in the group, and by demonstrating how important it is to reflect on what you've done and learned.
Time to talk to, socialize with, and get to know the other participants. Much of the value of a workshop is in the experience of forming a community of learners. The shared experience can lead to professional collaboration and can enrich the learning that goes on.

Preparation

Now that your planning is done, you need to prepare for the workshop. Planning is about the delivery of the workshop itself; preparation is about logistics, making sure you have the actual stuff and time you need to make the workshop a success. That means both putting together whatever materials you'll be using and getting whatever information is necessary for you to do the best job you can.

Find out about the space you'll be using, if possible . If the space is your own, you can choose the room or place that would be best and set it up beforehand. If you're being assigned space in another facility, you may be able to request a particular type or size of room, or may be able to get it set up in a certain way (chairs in a circle, comfortable furniture, etc.). You need to think about how you'll use the space: Will people need to move around a lot? Will there be bulky equipment to move around? Do you need a screen or a blackboard or whiteboard? The more you can learn about the space and the more you can set it up for your needs before participants arrive, the smoother your presentation will go.

If the role you intend to assume is that of facilitator rather than authority figure, you'll want to make the space as welcoming and informal as possible. Sometimes that simply can't be done; a school classroom with desks bolted to the floor (yes, they still exist, although there aren't many of them) isn't particularly flexible, for instance. But where you can, arranging chairs in a circle or similar configuration, where everyone can see everyone else and there's no head of the table, can do a lot to set a tone as soon as people walk in.

Bring everything you need . Don't assume any of it will be there unless you've specifically arranged for it (see no. 3 below). Even then you can't be sure.

If you're going to ask people to write something, or if they might want to take notes, make sure you bring enough pencils and paper for everyone.
Make and collate at least twice as many copies as you think you'll need of any printed material you want to hand out.
Bring easels, newsprint, and markers for recording ideas, questions, comments, or for documenting what goes on in small groups.
If you're making overheads, lists, an agenda, etc., do it well beforehand, not the night before your presentation.
If you have to take it all somewhere (i.e. if your presentation is anywhere but in your own space) put it in your car the night before. Make and use a checklist to be sure you don't forget anything.

Don't forget about food, coffee, etc., if you're providing them or having them provided. You either need to arrange beforehand to have what you need in the room when you get there, or your coffeemaker, coffee, creamer, paper cups, etc. should be in your back seat along with everything else the night before. (Get the doughnuts fresh in the morning.)

Arrange well beforehand for any equipment you'll need (overhead projector, VCR and monitor, computer, etc.) or plan to bring it yourself. (If you're bringing it, make sure you have a backup in case the one you're planning on isn't working.) Make your arrangements well beforehand (in writing as well as verbally, if possible ), and check a day or two before the workshop to see that everything is in order. Get there early enough to check on it on the day of the workshop. Assume that if anything can go wrong, it will, and that, even if it's not your responsibility, you'll have to fix it anyway.

Make materials and hand-outs as attractive and interesting as possible so that participants will return to them .

Use color where you can.
Easy-to-read charts and graphs are useful for a lot of people (although not everyone), as are pictures.
If it's appropriate, organize printed material so that it's easy to read and digest. Outline form, bullets, and the use of color or pictures can all be helpful here.
Try to keep the amount of material you hand out under control, unless it's a situation where people really need and want a lot of information (state regulations, for instance, which they may need as a reference over time). It can be helpful to print different handouts on different colors of paper so that both you and participants can easily keep track of them ("Turn to the blue sheet?").
Actual "things" people can take home (AIDS ribbons, miniature model breasts for practicing self-examination) can serve to keep the learning of the workshop in their consciousness.

Be overprepared . If you think a block of the workshop will probably last 30 minutes, be ready with at least an hour's worth of material for it. In some groups, you may only use what you thought would take 15 minutes; in others, you may use all of it and wish you had more. It's far better to be overprepared than underprepared: the longer the workshop, the more important this becomes.

Without knowing the individual participants beforehand, and often even then, you can't really make accurate assumptions about time or the reactions of the group. If they're already a group (a program staff, for example), they'll already have their own leaders, assumptions, and norms, and those will determine to some extent how they'll react (verbal or nonverbal, engaged or unengaged, etc.) If they're a random group, leaders may emerge, but also may not. As discussed earlier, why they're there, what their background and training are, and simply who they are as individuals will determine how they respond to your presentation. With some groups, no one may speak for the first hour or more, or at all. With others, you may have difficulty getting a word in after the first five minutes. No matter how many times you've presented a particular workshop, it's best to be prepared for anything.

Make up an evaluation form that people can fill out quickly at the end of the workshop, but that covers the areas you really want to know about. (Many conferences prepare evaluation forms for each workshop, in which case you don't have to.) The standard for this sort of thing is usually a multiple choice form that either asks participants to rate each area from 1 to 5, or to check off one of 5 choices ranging from "strongly agree " to "strongly disagree." Some areas you might want to cover include:

The clarity of your presentation.
The usefulness of each of the various kinds of activities you included, especially in the context of the participants' jobs or lives.
How interesting and relevant the content was to participants.
Your command of the material (i.e. how well you knew your stuff).
How well the workshop kept people's interest.
How well you were able to set and sustain a comfortable tone.
General comments, if any.

There may be other specific questions you have about your particular workshop. Just be sure to keep it short enough so that people will actually fill it out.

Finally, get a good night's sleep the night before and allow yourself plenty of time to get where you're going, so you don't feel rushed and frazzled. If the workshop is far from home, and you have the option of staying somewhere near it the night before, take it. If you have the time to relax before the workshop, you'll be more relaxed in the course of it as well.

Implementation

Planning and preparation are done. You're incredibly organized; you have all your handouts color-coded and arranged in the order you want to distribute them; you have activities planned down to the second, with plenty of extras if they don't fill the time completely; you have the room arranged so it will welcome participants and work for the activities you have planned. Now all you have to do is actually pull it off.

A workshop, especially a longer one, has distinct phases. There is the introduction, which covers the time from when the first participant walks into the room to when the first topic-related activity begins; the substance of the workshop includes the presentation and activities; and closure involves review, reflection, evaluation, and ending. We'll discuss each of these, with some ideas about how to make them go smoothly.

Introduction

This part of the workshop will let people know what their experience is going to be like. By the time the workshop actually starts, participants often have a strong inkling about whether they're going to like it or not. Thus, it's important to set a positive tone and to make people feel comfortable and interested; to give them some familiarity with you and with one another; and to make sure that they know what 's coming in the rest of the workshop.

Setting the tone. There are some steps you can take to make participants comfortable as soon as they walk in, and to establish the workshop as a community of learners.

The space. We've already discussed setting up the room so that people face one another, so that there's no obvious place of authority, and so that the environment is as comfortable physically and psychologically as possible.
Music. Depending upon the nature of the workshop, you might consider having music playing as participants enter, either to establish calm or to generate energy. Music also tells people that this is likely to be a relatively informal experience. (The concern here, of course, is that people's tastes in music vary widely. Music that you play as a calming influence may set some participants' teeth on edge. Music you play to generate energy may just annoy some people. It's a risk you take, unless you know the group well.)
Greeting. As participants enter the room, a process which may cover 15 minutes or more, there is a period when, often, no one quite knows what to do. The presenter may smile and nod as people come in, but the workshop hasn't started yet, and "there isn't anything to talk about." One way to eliminate this awkwardness is to introduce yourself to people as they come in, hand them materials and an evaluation form, and ask them about their backgrounds, or about why they're interested in the workshop. New arrivals can be pulled into the conversation as they come in so that no one feels shut out. By the time everyone is in the room and the workshop is about to start, participants will be talking to one another and to you, and the awkwardness will have given way to conviviality.

There may be circumstances under which you might not want to make people comfortable. At a conference, a workshop called "Separate Tables" divided participants up as they came in, with the majority asked to sit on the floor. A small number were seated at an elegantly appointed table and served an appetizing meal. The others about 20? were given a loaf of bread and told to divide it up. The workshop continued in this vein, with the floor sitters eventually protesting their treatment. The point, of course, was to call attention to the lack of comfort that most of the world's population experiences every day, as compared to the position of those in the developed West.

Personal introductions. Especially if your workshop involves a lot of hands-on and group activities, it will go better if people are comfortable with one another. If you've started a conversation as they walked in, many participants may already have talked to others that they didn't know, but it still makes sense to introduce yourself and everyone else.

You might start by introducing yourself with a (very brief) explanation of why you're conducting this workshop (experience you've had, your familiarity with the topic, etc.). This shouldn't take more than a minute or so. Then, you might use a technique or game to introduce the members of the group to one another (you can also take part in this activity, if you think it will be helpful to your purpose).

Agenda and plan for the session. It's helpful to either hand out, or to have visible in the room, and to go over with participants, an agenda for the workshop. If the workshop will be interrupted by meals, breaks, etc., a plan for the session or day would be helpful, as well. Previewing the agenda and asking for feedback on it ("Can we spend more time on actually using the materials?") serves several purposes:

It includes participants in the management of the session, rather than making them passive receptors of information.
It gives participants a sense of anticipation, so they're interested in what comes next.
It lets participants know what will happen when lunch is (at 12:30, for example) and eliminates a certain edge of antsiness and anxiety that they often have when they don't know the plan.

This is also the time to ask people for their expectations for the workshop, which can be recorded on newsprint or in some other way, and reviewed at the end of the session. If most participants' expectations are significantly different from the presenter's, there may be room for some adjustment at this point as well.

If it's necessary for participants to reveal details of their personal lives, for instance, or if the topic of the workshop is particularly controversial, after previewing the agenda would be the time to ask the group to develop ground rules for the session. A few simple norms, such as keeping disagreement away from the personal and respecting confidentiality can make all the difference in participants' willingness to engage with others, and with the ideas under discussion.

Substance of the workshop

This is the real meat of what you're doing, the reason why you showed up this morning. What you actually do depends on your own planning, of course, but there are some general guidelines, some of which have already been mentioned, that can make your workshop more effective and enjoyable.

Keep track of time. This doesn't mean that you should be a slave to your agenda, but rather that you should be aware when you're deviating from it. In a lot of instances, it might make sense to ask the group how they'd like to use their time: "We're running way over on this activity. Is that OK with you, or are there other things that are more important to you that we should get to?" If you think what's happening is really important and shouldn't be interrupted, don't be afraid to say so.

Giving time markers every once in a while ("In 20 minutes, we'll be stopping for lunch") can keep participants going ("I'm hungry, but I can certainly wait 20 minutes"). It will also help you be aware of where you are in the session so that you can, in fact, get people to lunch on time (this may be a major concern, depending upon the facility where the workshop is being held) and conclude the activities with enough to time to close out the session properly.

Match the presentation to the content and philosophy of the workshop. As discussed earlier in this section, participants learn both from the content and the style, as well as the methods of your presentation. It's tough to convince teachers to encourage student participation by lecturing to them. If you believe in what you're presenting, you should be demonstrating that by practicing it. People are much more liable to understand and accept what you're trying to convey if it's obvious you believe in and use it all the time.
Try to present material in a number of different ways. This variation is important for two reasons: First, it helps to keep participants involved. There are many studies showing that human beings are intrinsically interested in and respond positively to variety, and it makes sense to take advantage of that trait. Second, variation speaks to differences in learning styles, and thus makes it more likely that everyone in the workshop will be able to grasp the material.

Although researchers have come up with a number of models for the ways in which people absorb information, none would disagree that individuals differ in their preferred methods of learning. Some people take in new information better through their eyes, others through their ears, others through their fingers (i.e. by doing things with their hands). Some people like to deal with the details of an idea, others with the overall concept. Some learners are systematic and logical, others are intuitive leapers. Still other differences include individual vs. group learning, and fast processors vs. slow and thoughtful ones. Varying activities in a workshop lecture /slide presentation, group problem-solving, building models, etc. can speak to at least most of the learning styles of participants, and create a more nearly complete learning experience for everyone.

Try to be, and to make your activities, entertaining. Humor is an extremely important tool, even when your topic is not humorous at all. (The TV show MASH, about Korean War surgeons who dealt with horrible deaths every day, illustrated how black humor could help to keep people sane in an intolerable situation.) It can not only set a tone that makes learning more fun, but can serve to underscore important points as well.

A college geology instructor on a field trip with his students pointed out a formation and stated, "This is called a pluck." Then, tripping lightly over to a dead crow on the ground, he pulled out a feather, and said, "This, too, is called a pluck." No one in the class ever forgot what the geological term "pluck" meant.

Be enthusiastic. If you really believe in what you're presenting, show it; it will help make participants more enthusiastic as well, and can have a huge effect on the success of your workshop.
Encourage participants to relate the workshop content to their reality. How can they use these ideas or methods in their jobs, or in their lives? How would their colleagues react? They need a chance to think about and discuss these questions. You might ask everyone to make a commitment to use something they've learned in the workshop at least once, or to apply new concepts to a particular facet of their work or home life. The real questions that both presenters and participants should be asking themselves about the topic of a workshop are"How does it fit into the world?" and "How can it be used?"
Allow ample time for reflection and discussion in all activities. People often need to think and talk through their experiences or new information in order to understand them. It's also important that participants have a chance to be heard about what they think and what they've learned. If they can share it aloud, it gains more importance and legitimacy for them. Even if the workshop content has been understood, it hasn't really been learned until it's been assimilated into the learner's understanding of the world. Reflection provides the vehicle for this assimilation.

In the final phase of the workshop, you'll need to wrap things up and give participants a chance to react to what they've just been through. You may want to go through some formal activity for this purpose, or you may want to just throw out some questions and listen to what people have to say.

Sum up and review agenda. Restate the major points that the workshop covered and revisit the agenda to identify any areas you didn't get to. Depending upon their importance, the group's interest, and actual possibilities, you could hand out or offer to send people material or a bibliography on those areas, or to hold another workshop to cover what you missed
Revisit expectations. Take a look at that list of expectations from the beginning of the workshop. Were people's initial expectations appropriate, and were they met? If not, where were the gaps?
Give participants a chance to sum up. This could be as simple as asking "What did you think?" or it could involve a more structured exercise. (One possibility: go around the room and ask everyone to state one thing she liked about the workshop or learned from it, and one thing she would have changed about it.) It's important to give participants a way to summarize for themselves the value, or lack of value, of the workshop for them.
Ask for feedback on the ideas, techniques, methods, etc. that you presented. Pay attention to participants' challenges and concerns about the material. It may be totally new to them, and may fly in the face of everything they've learned so far. They'll need time to digest it. Don't get defensive if they don't agree with everything or anything you've been promoting. You may have doubts about some of the material, too, and it's OK to say so. The purpose of a workshop is learning, and that rarely comes without some internal conflict.

If you can find a way to record all this review, summing up, and feedback, it will prove extremely helpful to you in developing other workshops, or in revising the one you just conducted. An audio recorder is one possibility. Newsprint or something similar is another.

Collect evaluation forms . Make sure you get one from everybody, it should take less than a minute to fill out, unless people have complex comments (the best kind, because they give the most specific feedback).

After the workshop is over, there are still a few loose ends to tie up.

If you agreed to send anything to participants (materials, bibliographies, etc.) you should do it as soon as possible, both so that you don't forget, and so the material is still fresh in people's minds when they get it.
If you have notes on the summation and feedback, you might want to type them up and send them to participants also, if they would be helpful to their understanding of the workshop.
Go through the evaluations and your feedback notes soon after the workshop, so that it's still fresh in your mind. What do most people think you might have done differently? What areas seemed particularly strong or particularly weak? This is the moment to think about what you'll change the next time you conduct a workshop, and there should be a next time. Start planning now!

In order to conduct an effective and successful workshop, you need to address its planning, preparation, and implementation. As you plan, consider the workshop's audience, its size, its length, its purpose, and your presentation options. Preparation includes logistics (managing the physical items involved, materials, equipment, etc.), and preparing psychologically as well. Finally, the implementation of the workshop includes attending to all three of its phases: introduction, substance, and closure. And don't forget to follow up, both by fulfilling any promises and using feedback to redesign or change parts of the workshop so that your next one will be even better.

Print Resources

Bobo, K., Jackie K., & Steve M. (1991). Organizing for Social Change: A Manual for Activists in the 1990s . Cabin John, MD: Seven Locks Press. Chapter on "Designing and Leading a Workshop," pp. 124-131.

Coover, V., Ellen D., Charles E., & Moore C.(1977). Resource Manual for a Living Revolution . Philadelphia: New Society Press. Chapter on workshops, pp. 161 ff.

The following items contain exercises and New Games that might be helpful.

Bag of Tricks (quarterly). Available from Karl Rohnke, P.O. Box 100, Hamilton, MA 01936.

The Bottomless Bag Again. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Co., 1991.

Funn Stuff, vols. I, II, and III. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Co., 1996 (vols. I and II) and 1998 (vol. III).

Le Fevre, Dale N . More New Games .

The New Games Foundation. New Games for the Whole Family .

Rohnke, Karl. Silver Bullets. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Co., 1984.

Center for Teaching

Developing collaborative assignments workshop.

Posted by Michael Coley on Thursday, October 26, 2023 in News .

Research indicates that collaborative assignments and projects can promote meaningful learning by inviting students to address complex problems while engaging the insights and perspectives of others. In this workshop, participants will develop an outline for a collaborative group project or assignment that they plan to deploy in the spring semester. Co-facilitated by Boni Yraguen (PhD, Mechanical Engineering) and Laura Carter-Stone (PhD, Teaching and Learning), participants will explore a broad range of possible formats and methods of assessment for assignments from STEM, Humanities, and Social Sciences-oriented classes. Participants will work in disciplinary peer groups to identify where this type of assignment would fit into their course, craft learning objectives, assessment methods, and other features of their collaborative project or assignment to support student learning. If you are interested in attending, please register here .

Facilitator : Laura Carter-Stone (Postdoctoral Fellow, CFT) & Boni Yraguen (Instructional Consultant, CFT) Date : Tuesday, November 7th Time : 1:00 – 2:00 pm Where : Center for Teaching Classroom, 1114 19th Ave South, 3rd Floor

Leave a Response

Teaching guides.

Online Course Development Resources
Principles & Frameworks
Pedagogies & Strategies
Reflecting & Assessing
Challenges & Opportunities
Populations & Contexts

Quick Links

Services for Departments and Schools
Examples of Online Instructional Modules

Teaching, Learning & Assessment

Assignment design workshops.

Assignment design workshops are offered regularly (e.g. see TLA CATNIP Summer Institute ). See below for past workshop materials.

For the assignment design workshops, bring an existing assignment you would like to improve or ideas for an assignment you would like to create. For the threshold concepts workshop, bring an assignment with which students often struggle.

Location: CSUMB Alumni and Visitors Center

5108 Fourth Ave, Marina, CA 93933

Interested in enhancing your course assignments and learning activities to better help students develop, apply, and transfer the intellectual skills (critical thinking, information literacy, quantitative reasoning, written communication, and oral communication)?

Then attend one or both of two Spring 2018 Planning Week workshops facilitated by the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, Communication Across the Disciplines, the Cooperative Learning Center, and the Intellectual Skills Coordinators (Judith Canner, Sarah Dahlen, Ondine Gage, Shar Gregg, and Swarup Wood).

Participants in both workshops will have the opportunity to consult with coordinators and student tutors from the Cooperative Learning Center.

Workshops are open to all faculty (part- and full-time lecturers and tenure-line) and staff. Teams from specific disciplinary or GE areas are welcome as are those interested in working in interdisciplinary groups.

Workshop 1: 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.: Better Assignments that Guide Better Student Work

This workshop will help participants design assignments that help students develop, apply, and transfer critical thinking, information literacy, quantitative reasoning, written communication, and/or oral communication skills (read more about teaching for transfer at CSUMB). Participants can work on enhancing existing assignments or creating new ones, for any type or level of course. Participants will be introduced to CSUMB's newly revised integrated rubrics, rubric guides, and assignment design guides . Please bring an existing assignment you would like to improve or ideas for an assignment you would like to create.

Workshop 2: 3:00 - 5:00 p.m.: Crossing thresholds: Helping students transfer intellectual skills across courses and contexts

This workshop will help participants design and facilitate learning activities that help students engage with transdisciplinary threshold concepts associated with critical thinking, information literacy, quantitative reasoning, written communication, and oral communication. Participants will also be introduced to strategies for helping students welcome and work through the ambiguities, confusion, and anxiety that often accompany the learning of threshold concepts. Please bring an assignment with which students often struggle.

Contact TLA at [email protected] or 582-4574

Thanks for helping us improve csumb.edu. Spot a broken link, typo, or didn't find something where you expected to? Let us know. We'll use your feedback to improve this page, and the site overall.

Criminal Justice
Design and Creativity
Digital Education in Practice
Digital Finance
Digital Marketing and Sales
Engineering
Health and Care Management
Human Resource Management
Leadership and Technology Pathway
Social Sciences Pathway
Management and Technology Pathway
People and Society Pathway
Investigation, Security and Defence
Leadership and Management
Project Management
Supply Chain Management and Logistics
Tourism and Hospitality
A-Z Databases
Browse Journals
Academic Skills Tutor Appointments

Academic Skills Workshops

Academic Writing
Critical Thinking
Digital Capabilities
Dissertation Research
Exams and Assessments
Maths and Statistics
Programming
Reading and Note-Taking
Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism
Using the Library
Fundamentals of Academic English
Academic English One-to-one Appointments
Academic English Workshops
Self Study Resources
Women's History Month 2024
Black History Month 2023
Handouts and Recordings
Library Blog
Library News
Request an eBook
Feedback To Win

Academic Skills Workshops run throughout the academic year and are designed to support you on your academic journey. To attend a workshop all you need to do is use the link below to book your place - or read on to find out more information about the different workshops on offer.

Academic Skills Workshops are available 6 days a week and in the evenings.

Academic Skills Workshops run throughout the academic year and are designed to support you on your academic journey. To attend a workshop all you need to is use the link below to book your place - or read on to find out more information about the different workshops on offer.

Workshop Schedule

View Schedulers

Workshops Show all

A Guide to Synthesis

Synthesis is an important higher-level skill in academia. Good academic essays are often described as being more than the sum of their parts, and this is largely down to their use of synthesis. This workshop explores the fundamentals of synthesis and offers practical guidance on how to balance and combine sources to show deep understanding. It also provides a space for students to practise this skill in a supportive and collaborative environment.

After this session you may want to attend: Paraphrasing, Referencing

Active Listening

Mastering active listening skills will strengthen your academic study. These skills will help with note taking, understanding lectures and feedback from Tutors.

The aim of this workshop is to explain in detail the reasons why active listening can help you in your degree. There will be top tips and advice on listening skills. This session will help students to combine numerous skills and allow active listening to heighten their existing skills.

After this session you may want to attend: Notetaking, Time Managment, Proofreading

An Introduction to Critical Thinking

The introduction to Critical Thinking workshops builds on the content covered by the introduction to Academic Writing session. It aims to provide students with a better understanding of how to progress from descriptive writing to a more critical discussion. The session looks at evaluating sources, argument construction and employing more critical language in your writing.

After this session you may want to attend: Critical Thinking and Writing, An Introduction to Academic Writing, Reflective Writing

An Introduction to Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is used to create presentations, which are a common format for assessments at university. This hands-on workshop will cover how to create a presentation from start to finish. Plus, if required, this will also cover how to record and narrate a presentation.

After this session you may want to attend: An Introduction to Microsoft Word

An Introduction to Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is used to create the majority of written assessments at university, such as essays and reports. This hands-on workshop will cover the essentials of using Word, including how to create and format a document.

After this session you may want to attend: An Introduction to Microsoft PowerPoint

An Introduction to the Library

The Introduction to the Library workshop is a basic introduction to one of the most important online platforms that you will be using during your time at Arden. It provides a basic walkthrough of how to access the library and carry out searches. We encourage students who have attended this workshop to then attend the Advanced Literature Searching workshop to improve their literature searching and building on the skills covered in the Introduction to the Library workshop.

After this session you may want to attend: Advanced Literature Searching, Understanding Research

Approaching Assignments

The Approaching Assignments workshop provides you with an overview of how to prepare and submit your assignments. The workshop covers the importance of planning ahead to get your assignment completed on time, considers some of the challenges that you might face during your studies and how to overcome them.

After this session you may want to attend: Developing Your Academic Voice

Developing your Academic Voice

Developing your academic voice workshop focuses on the use of proficient academic language essential for clearly articulating and communicating your thoughts in both your spoken and written assessments. This will enable you to express yourself with more confidence whilst noticing what makes a good example of an academic voice.

After this session you may want to attend: Academic Judgment, Reversing the Outline

Evaluating Resources

The evaluating resources workshop provides students with an overview of how to breakdown academic sources. The workshop covers the importance of using trustworthy and progressive research within academic writing and provides practical techniques for assessing and evaluating information from a range of sources. If you are struggling to understand research, find it tricky linking it to your assignments and remaining critical, or just want some hints and tips then this workshop is for you.

After this session you may want to attend: Understanding Research, Critical Thinking and Writing

Excel Drop-In

Have a quick question about Excel? Then this drop-in session is for you. An Academic Skills Tutor will be present in the session to answer all of your Excel questions! Stop by for five mins, or stay for the whole hour, it is completely up to you!

After this session you may want to attend: Advanced statistics

Fundamentals of Writing

In this workshop we will explore the ways that you can begin writing clear and effective sentences using a range of punctuation marks and sentence structures. By the end of this workshop you will have learnt about the rules for writing sentences, but most importantly you will know how to interpret those rules in order to improve the clarity of your writing and the message you want to communicate.

After this session you may want to attend: Developing your academic voice

Generating Ideas (Getting Started)

This workshop will guide you through techniques and approaches to creative and original thinking. You may have done the reading and be prepared to do the assignment but not know where to start . Together we will use techniques like mind-mapping, discussion, free-writing, and other reflective practices which you can use to unlock your ideas ready to put down in your assignments.

After this session you may want to attend: Reflective Writing, Understanding the Assignment

Improve your skills with Linkedin Learning

Do you want to learn more about how to be an effective student online? Are there IT skills that you want to improve but don’t know how? This workshop will introduce two online resources that can help you to identify and develop specific skills for study. These are available to all Arden University students! By the end of the session you will be able to develop an action plan based on your priorities, and identify relevant resources via LinkedIn Learning and the Library to help you achieve those goals.

After this session you may want to attend: IT Essentials for students

Introduction to Academic Writing

The Introduction to Academic Writing workshop is an introduction to the importance of certain practices within academic writing such as structuring, editing and proofreading your work. It highlights some of the conventions that are useful to adopt in your assignments and what to avoid. Introduction to Academic Writing is a good starting point for students hoping to improve their written work.

After this session you may want to attend: An Introduction to Critical Thinking

IT Essentials for Students

This workshop covers the essential digital skills students need when joining Arden, including: Downloading Office software for free, using your student email, Zoom, saving work and navigating iLearn.

After this session attend: An Introduction to Microsoft Word, or An Introduction to Microsoft PowerPoint.

New to University: What does it involve?

The New to University session is an introduction to university life, focusing on distance and blended learning, and aims to orientate you to the nature of academic study.

It also provides an opportunity for you to ask any questions that you may have, and for us as to share our experiences of studying at university and to dispel common misconceptions and myths around what university and academic study is. This is an icebreaker session and aims to provide some practical guidance and advice.

After this session you may want to attend: Approaching Assignments, Developing Your Academic Voice

As a university student you will need to make notes about the texts you read and the lectures you attend. This workshop will demonstrate that by taking notes you can effectively kickstart your learning, initiating the process of understanding and memorising new concepts and information from a very early stage. We will explore a few different styles of notetaking so that you can find the one that suits you best.

After this session you may want to attend: Approaching Assignments, Time Management

Paraphrasing

The Paraphrasing workshop will help you master this essential skill, strengthen your academic voice and critical thinking, and will also help you avoid plagiarism. In this workshop, we will explore the fundamentals of these techniques, and provide clear guidance on how to use them. When used correctly, these skills allow you to demonstrate the depth of your subject understanding, and your ability to combine relevant material from many sources into a unified whole.

After this session you may want to attend: A Guide to Synthesis, Referencing

Presentation Skills

You may be asked to create a presentation as part of your studies. This interactive workshop will take you through the basics of using Microsoft PowerPoint within your work and will provide you with hints and tips for making the most out of the software. If you are new to using the software or need to brush up on your skills then this session is for you.

After this session you may want to attend: Generating Ideas, Time Management, Notetaking

Programming with Java part one

This workshop builds a solid foundation into programming using Java. It covers how to define an algorithm, understand the key features of Java programming language, and develop the foundational skills to write basic Java programs. Before the workshop you will need to install VS Code with Java pack: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/java OR create a free account on https://replit.com for maximum benefit.

After this session you may want to attend Programming with Java part two

Programming: Number Systems and Storage Concepts

This workshop provides transferable knowledge applicable across computer science disciplines. It will help you to d escribe and classify the concepts of the decimal positional number systems, build your knowledge of Binary and Hexadecimal number systems, and start work with data using these systems.

After this session you could attend Python for data mining part one; Introduction to programming: Java part one

Proofreading

The Proofreading workshop is designed to help you with the last stages of completing your assignments. Proofreading is an important part of the assignment writing process, if you find that you struggle with proofreading your work or are not sure of where to start then this workshop can help. It aims to walk you through the process of proofreading your own work and provide you with some hints and tips to improve your proofreading ability.

After this session you may want to attend: Referencing, Paraphrasing, A Guide to Synthesis

How to Write an Annotated Bibliography icon

Referencing: APA style

The Referencing workshops give an overview of some of the most common referencing styles; this workshop is specifically for APA style, which is used in Psychology and related subject areas. Referencing correctly is key to good academic practice, therefore these workshops focus on citations and how to construct some of the most common types of references. They will also highlight how to best make use of the referencing guides that are available and answer any referencing questions that you might have.

After this session you may want to attend: Paraphrasing, Paragraph Structure

Referencing: AU Harvard style

The Referencing workshops give an overview of some of the most common referencing styles; this workshop is specifically for Arden University Harvard style, which is used in Business, Social Sciences, Arts and related subject areas. Referencing correctly is key to good academic practice, therefore these workshops focus on citations and how to construct some of the most common types of references. They will also highlight how to best make use of the referencing guides that are available and answer any referencing questions that you might have.

After this session you may want to attend: Paraphrasing, Paragraph structure

Referencing: OSCOLA style

The Referencing workshops give an overview of some of the most common referencing styles; this workshop is specifically for OSCOLA style, which is used in Law and related subject areas. Referencing correctly is key to good academic practice, therefore these workshops focus on citations and how to construct some of the most common types of references. They will also highlight how to best make use of the referencing guides that are available and answer any referencing questions that you might have.

Time Management

Always leaving your assignments to the last minute? Don't know how to effectively plan your assignments? This Time Management workshop will provide you with the tools you need to stay on track and meet your deadlines.

After this session you may want to attend: Approaching assignments

Understanding Plagiarism

The Understanding Plagiarism workshop starts a discussion about academic integrity and good academic practice. It will introduce you to some of the reasons why referencing is such an important part of your academic journey and how best to maintain academic integrity so that you can avoid plagiarism. Understanding Plagiarism will introduce you to the basics of referencing but for a more in-depth look at referencing please also attend one of the referencing specific sessions.

Understanding Research

As a university student you will need to read research papers to find evidence to support your arguments. To help you make effective use of research papers this workshop will support you in being able to understand how to recognise different forms of research, the different elements that research papers may include and factors that you will want to consider when evaluating studies.

After this session you may want to attend: Evaluating Resources, Reflective Writing

Understanding the Assignment

Understanding the question is key to writing a successful assignment. By developing an understanding of an assignment question, the issues you might research and the structure you can use to write about relevant issues often become clearer. In this workshop we will look at ways to break down assignment questions and take time to practise the skills you need to start drafting clear and original responses to assignment questions.

After this session you may want to attend: Approaching Assignments, An Introduction to Critical Thinking

Using AI for Academic Purposes

Generative AI tools have the potential to make higher education more accessible to many students. However, if students use them in ways that are unethical, they may find themselves committing academic misconduct. This workshop will take you through how AI tools can be used in ethical ways for academic work, as well as ‘what not to do.’ We will also clarify how accessibility tools can be used and referenced in assignments.

After this session, you may want to attend: Referencing, Paraphrasing

Your Guide to Turnitin

The Guide to Turnitin workshop gives you an insight into how to use the software to your advantage. The workshop will take you through the basics of how to upload one of your assignments as well as walking you through, and breaking down, the Turnitin report.

After this session you may want to attend: Referencing, A Guide to Synthesis and Paraphrasing

Your Virtual Classroom: Zoom

Your Virtual Classroom introduces you to the virtual classroom where some of your teaching may take place, we offer this session on Zoom for both blended and distance learners. It provides you with some guidance on netiquette as well as giving you a chance to use some of the features provided to help you build your confidence and ask any questions you might have before jumping into your studies.

After this session you may want to attend: Presentation Skills, Time Management, Notetaking

Intermediate

An Introduction to Statistics

Are you daunted by statistics and would like to understand more about working with statistical data? If so this workshop is for you. There will be an opportunity for hands-on practice on performing descriptive statistics manually and with Microsoft Excel.

After this session you may want to attend: Using Specialist Software (SPSS), Advanced Statistics

Critical Thinking & Writing

"Your writing is too descriptive, you need to be more critical" is a common piece of feedback students receive on their essays, but what does it actually mean? This workshop explores the focus, language and approach required to produce clear critical writing. It demystifies the subject by giving practical examples of how we all use critical thinking and provides a framework for students to interact with academic texts critically and with confidence.

Before this session you may want to attend: An Introduction to Critical Thinking

How to Write an Argument

This workshop introduces the fundamentals of academic writing, and dispels some of the common misconceptions around the subject. Using practical examples, this workshop encourages students to find their own voice and to write in a way that makes the most of the available space. It explores fundamental concepts of structure, tone, gives guidance on comparison and acts as a primer to the conventions of academic writing.

Before this session you may want to attend: Approaching Assignments

Identifying a Research Topic (Dissertation)

The Identifying a Research Topic workshop is for if you are starting to think about your final year research project. Dissertations are an essential part of your degree, it is your chance to work independently on something that you are passionate about. The workshop will help you generate ideas for research topics, assess whether the topic could realistically be carried out and get you started on the first stages of researching your topic.

Before this session you may want to attend: Evaluating Resources, Understanding Research

Paragraph Structure

In this workshop we will discuss how you can begin to express your ideas effectively by constructing coherent and cohesive paragraphs. We will explore the variety of ways you can compose a paragraph and provide you with time and space to practise constructing and linking paragraphs that convey your arguments clearly.

After this session you may want to attend: How to write an argument

Programming with Java Part 2

This workshop covers the most important programming control structures and participants will learn how to write and implement simple Java programs. Before the workshop you will need to install VS Code with Java pack: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/java OR create a free account on https://replit.com for maximum benefit.

Before this workshop please attend Programming with Java Part 1

Python for data mining Part One

This workshop introduces the Python skills required for data mining operations, including file operations, modules and applications including NumPy, Matplotlib, and Pandas.

Before the workshop, ensure you have Python installed. Options include:

Download Python with IDLE from https://www.python.org .
Use rich IDEs like VS Code or PyCharm.
Explore Anaconda with Spyder and Jupyter.
Try online IDEs like www.replit.com or https://colab.research.google.com .

After this session you may want to attend Python for data mining part two

Reflective Writing

Reflection is a major part of any degree. As part of your assignments you may be asked to draw on your experiences and reflect on your learner journey so far. This interactive workshop will guide you through the process of how you can use reflective models in your practice and will provide practical tips for meaningful reflection.

Before this session you may want to attend: Academic Judgement, Developing Your Academic Voice

The Arden Writers Retreat

Sometimes we just need focused time away from distractions to finish our assignments. The aim of Arden’s Writers' Retreat sessions is to provide just that. Each online session lasts an hour, during which time you can focus on completing your current assignment, supported by an Academic Skills Tutor, Librarian or Student Coach. Though writing is a solitary activity, we encourage a sense of community by asking you to share the number of words you’ve written during each ‘sprint’ in the chat box, in order to inspire each other to reach our goals. Each hour-long session will be divided into two 25-minute writing sprints, and you are encouraged to attend all four sessions. Gift yourself that focused time and come and join fellow writers in reaching their goals.

After this session you may want to attend: Proofreading, Reversing the outline

What is a Dissertation? (Dissertation Preparation)

This workshop will introduce you to the purpose and potential of an extended research project, as well as addressing key questions: ‘How do I find a topic? What academic skills are necessary for writing a dissertation? What can I write about? What is a literature review?’. Students often feel overwhelmed at the start of their dissertation project and this session is designed to give you the confidence to start researching a topic you are passionate about.

Before this session you may want to attend: Understanding Research, Academic Judgement

Advanced Library Searching

The advanced library searching workshop will introduce you to some of the more advanced features of the Library that you can use to find sources for your assignments. This workshop will cover topics such as key word selection, search strategies and using filters to refine your search results.

Before this session you may want to attend: An Introduction to the Library, Notetaking, Understanding Research

Advanced Statistics

Have you already attended 'An Introduction to Statistics'? Are you ready for the next level? Then this workshop is for you. There will be opportunity for hands-on practice on performing advanced statistics manually and within Microsoft Excel.

After this session you may want to attend: Using Specialist Software (SPSS)

How to Format Your Dissertation

Writing a dissertation involves many skills, including the ability to present your work clearly. This workshop will help you to explore the basics of dissertation structure and will provide you with hints and tips for using Word effectively when writing your dissertation.

After this session you may want to attend: Proofreading

How to Write an Annotated Bibliography

How to Write an Annotated Bibliography will equip you with the understanding, and necessary evaluative and analytical frameworks for writing a meaningful annotated bibliography. It will also help you to develop reflective thinking techniques in order to situate your work within your broader research/subject.

After this session you may want to attend: Understanding research

Organising your references using Mendeley

This workshop will walk you through the basics of how to use Mendeley for storing and managing your literature. It will provide a practical demonstration of how to add your existing literature to Mendeley so that it is ready for use in your documents.

After this session you may want to attend: Understanding Plagiarism, Harvard/APA/OSCOLA Referencing.

Python for data mining Part Two

This workshop demonstrates the power of Numpy, Matplotlib, and Pandas for data analysis and mining, and enables you to develop skills to perform simple data analysis operations using Python. Before the workshop ensure you have Python installed. Options include:

Before this workshop please attend Pythin for data mining Part One

Reversing the Outline: How to edit your existing work

In this session you will learn how to edit your draft starting from reversing its outline. Before joining this workshop you will need to choose an existing piece of work to edit, either a draft or a resubmission paper. Be prepared to break down the paper into paragraphs, carefully consider the key topic of each paragraph and its relevance to the question; identify problems; identify themes; cut unnecessary parts and rearrange the whole paper together in an improved form.

After this session you may want to attend: Referencing, Proofreading

Using Specialist Software (SPSS) Part One

Are you carrying out statistical analysis as part of your research project? Do you want to improve your skills in this area? The using specialist software session will take you through the basics of using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) for data analysis and will ensure that you feel confident in using this versatile and responsive programme.

Before this session you may want to attend: An Introduction to Statistics

Using Specialist Software (SPSS) Part Two

Are you carrying out statistical analysis as part of your research project? Or want to upskill in this area? The Using Specialist Software (SPSS) Part Two session will take you through using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) for performing descriptive and inferential statistics and will ensure that you feel confident in using this versatile and responsive programme. Kindly download and install SPSS before the session via these links: SPSS Installation Guide for Windows or SPSS Installation Guide for Mac .

Before this session you may want to attend: Using Specialist Software (SPSS) Part One

Library Essentials: Library Workshops & Events

Your student ID card
High Use Collection
Printing, copying, scanning
Booking rooms
External & remote students
Library orientation events
Library Help & Support

Library Workshops & Drop-ins

ECU Library offers workshops for online research, referencing, EndNote, Canvas, Panopto, PebblePad and more. Recordings of our online workshops are available below.

Assignment and referencing drop-ins

Attend an assignment and referencing drop-in session to see a Learning Adviser and Librarian for a brief enquiry. No need to book; just come along at the designated times:

Weeks 1-13 (including mid semester break)

*Numeracy support available

Collie drop-ins: Black Diamond Lodge, 43 Throssell Street, Collie, WA, 6225 Busselton drop-ins: 38 Peel Terrace, Busselton, WA, 6280 Mandurah drop-ins: WOTSO, 22 Ormsby Terrace, Mandurah, WA, 6210

Digital readiness attendees click here: https://courses.ecu.edu.au/enroll/PW9WXG

Academic Skills and Library Workshops Semester 1, 2024

For a calendar view of the academic skills and library workshop schedule, see below.

In person workshops on campus at Joondalup, Mount Lawley and South West require registration as space may be limited depending on room occupancy or public health directions.

Online workshops require registration to receive an email with the session link before the workshop begins.

Library Workshop Recordings: Getting Started at ECU

This orientation session introduces you to the library catalogue and using online resources, and introduces you to the IT services and content that you can access as an ECU student.

This orientation session introduces you to the online learning environment in use at ECU, as well as etiquette and expectations for online learning. If you're new to using computers, you may find the Computing Basics for Uni session useful to watch first. You can find it available under the "Learning Technologies" heading below .

Digital Readiness slides (PDF).

Watch this session to get an introduction to how to begin assignments, from breaking down the question to researching and taking notes.

Starting Assignments slides (PDF).

Library Workshop Recordings: Referencing

Watch this session to get an introduction to referencing using APA 7th.

APA 7th Referencing slides ( PDF , PPT slides ).

This session provides guidance for ECU students referencing legal materials (such as laws and cases) using APA style. This video is not intended for law students, who should watch the video on AGLC4 legal citation.

Watch this session to get an introduction to AGLC4 legal citation.

AGLC4 Legal Citation for Law slides (PDF) .

This session provides an introduction to the concepts involved in referencing, without going too deeply into any specific style. For more information on specific styles, watch the APA Referencing and AGLC4 Legal Citation sessions.

Library Workshop Recordings: Learning Technologies

This workshop introduces you to Canvas, an online classroom in use at ECU. You will learn how to navigate Canvas to find your learning materials, submit assignments, and communicate & collaborate with your lecturers, tutors & peers.

Canvas Essentials for Students slides (PDF) .

This video introduces video recording software Panopto: how to record, edit, and submit your work.

Introduction to Panopto slides (PDF).

Watch this video for an introduction to the online learning portfolio software, PebblePad.

PebblePad Basics slides (PDF).

Learn how to use EndNote. For more information, check our EndNote guide .

If you're new to using computers and you need a little more help to get started, watch this session. For more about the specific learning technologies in use at ECU, watch the workshop recording for Digital Readiness .

Computing Basics for Uni slides to match the video (PDF).

Student Events & Activities
My Uni Start - Library Orientation Workshops Register at My Uni Start for a Library Orientation workshop: • Library Essentials • Digital Readiness • Computing Basics
Academic Skills and Library Workshops Booklet Semester 1, 2024 Full workshops booklet - go here to find the times and dates for all workshops, including the Academic Skills Centre workshops (such as paraphrasing, notetaking, and understanding assignment instructions). The booklet also includes an academic skills drop-in session schedule: go to a drop-in session for quick help with referencing.
<< Previous: External & remote students
Next: Library orientation events >>

Library Contact

[email protected]
(61) 8 6304 5525

Library Links

Library Workshops
ECU Library Search
Borrowing Items
Room bookings

Quick Links

Academic Integrity
Ask us @ ECU
LinkedIn Learning
Student Guide - My Uni Start

More about ECU

All online courses
Last Updated: Apr 8, 2024 2:58 PM
URL: https://ecu.au.libguides.com/library-essentials

Edith Cowan University acknowledges and respects the Noongar people, who are the traditional custodians of the land upon which its campuses stand and its programs operate. In particular ECU pays its respects to the Elders, past and present, of the Noongar people, and embrace their culture, wisdom and knowledge.

Writing Workshop: Helping Writers Choose and Focus on a Topic

Resources & Preparation
Instructional Plan
Related Resources

This lesson, conducted in a workshop format, helps young writers bring greater focus to their writing. Students use a timeline to break a larger topic into several events or moments; then, each student selects an event to write about from the timeline. Students first work with a whole-class topic, then apply this strategy to self-selected topics. Students share their writing and respond constructively to one another's efforts. Finally, teacher–student conferences help students incorporate feedback and work on specific weaknesses.

Featured Resources

Journal Writing Idea s : This website offers a great list of topics that students may choose from for writing workshop. Make sure to gradually help students brainstorm and develop their own topics to write about. The focus of this lesson on is helping them to focus in on a specific event.

From Theory to Practice

Even beginning writers can make decisions that affect the clarity and power of their message when they are aware of aspects that contribute to the effectiveness of a piece of writing (such as choosing a topic, making illustrations, maintaining focus, and using time sequence to organize).
Listening to the sharing of ideas and consulting charts are especially helpful to students who experience difficulty selecting a topic.
Sharing their writing helps students write with a specific audience in mind and reinforces the sense of being a part of a community of writers.

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

Flipchart with paper and markers
Pencils and crayons
Portfolio binders or folders
Journal paper with illustration box
Lined paper

Preparation

To prepare for this lesson, it is important that students have a good understanding of the structure and expectations of a writing workshop.

Students will gather at the start of each session for a short minilesson.
Students will work independently and with partners or small groups to draw illustrations and create first drafts.
As students draw and write, you will be holding one-on-one conferences to discuss each student's writing and to help with revisions.
At the end of each workshop session, students gather to share their writing.

To prepare, it is also beneficial if students have a pool of self-selected topics to choose from. If you need to develop this pool of topics with students, a good place to start might be at the Journal Writing Ideas webpage. Depending on students' needs and abilities, you could share the entire list with them or present them with a shorter version of it. Of course, you will want to teach students strategies to find their own topics for writing. In this and subsequent workshop sessions, encourage students to add to their own topic lists.

Student Objectives

Students will

Learn a strategy (i.e., timeline) to bring greater focus to their writing
Explore ideas on a topic by creating detailed illustrations
Write about selected events with focus and detail
Participate as members of a writing community, offering feedback to peers throughout the writing process
Reflect critically on their writing during conferences, making revisions in response to peer and teacher feedback

Note: This lesson should serve as part of an ongoing classroom workshop to develop writing abilities. Time estimates for each workshop segment are given in Session 1. As students become more familiar with the workshop setting and more proficient with the writing process, the session layout and the time given to each segment may be altered accordingly.

Minilesson Expect to spend about 15 minutes on the steps in this section. During subsequent writing workshops, you would spend the beginning of the session teaching other writing aspects that suit your students' needs.

Independent work. From the class-generated timeline, ask each student to select one event that he or she wants to write about. Have each student draw a picture of the event in the illustration box of the journal paper . (This should take 10–20 minutes depending on grade level and ability.) Explain that drawing is meant to help them "rehearse" for their writing. It is a chance for them to explore and work out their ideas about the event before writing. With less experienced writers, you may want to model how you move from selecting an event to creating a detailed drawing. Use the event you selected from your personal timeline as an example. Collaborative work. Have students work with partners or in small groups to share their drawings. (Allow 5–10 minutes for this step, depending again on students' needs.) Talking about their drawings further helps students prepare to write their pieces and often generates details they might not otherwise have included. Encourage students to add details to their drawings as a result of their conversations.

Sharing Gather as a class and spend 5–10 minutes having students share selected topics and drawings. Talk with students about how, in the next session, they are going to take these drawings and move to a piece of focused writing.

Independent work. Below the illustration box of the journal paper , each student should begin to write about the pictured event. Remind students to be specific and to include written details about what is happening in the story and in the picture. (As students progress in subsequent workshops, you may also want to make available additional lined paper for longer writing pieces.) Encourage students to use their drawings and their experiences for ideas when writing. What is taking place? Who's involved? Where is this happening? What sounds, sights, feelings might be involved? Collaborative work. Have students confer with one another, possibly with the same partners or in the same groups as before.

Conferences As students are writing and working together, conduct one-on-one teacher–student conferences. Each conference should take about 5–10 minutes. You may not have time to confer with every student in the same session; instead, plan to spread conferences across several workshop sessions.

Sharing Spend the remainder of the session on sharing and feedback. You may want to have students share in the order the events are listed on the timeline. Depending on the number of students in your class and their level of writing, additional sharing time may need to be scheduled in subsequent sessions. After each student reads his or her writing, make observations and provide feedback on the writing process. Ask other students to also share their feedback, which should include positive comments, thoughtful questions, and suggestions for improvement.

Having developed a shared topic and timeline as a class, it is essential that students apply these writing strategies (timeline creation and illustrations as rehearsal for writing) to topics of their own choosing. Minilesson At the start of the session, review the use of a timeline to break a general topic into several moments or events. Then, review how to consider the items on the timeline and select one to write about. (Refer to charts from Session 1 as necessary.) Timelines

Independent work. Have each student consult his or her own topic list, create a timeline on a self-selected topic, and choose a moment or event from this timeline for his or her next writing piece. If students finish early, they can try this strategy with other topics. Collaborative work. After students have created the timelines and have selected their events, have them meet with partners or in small groups to share this work and make changes.

Conferences As students work on their timelines, continue from where you left off with student–teacher conferences, keeping anecdotal records of student performance and allowing students time to make revisions. Sharing Have students share their timelines with the class. Encourage each presenter to talk about why he or she has selected a particular moment or event to write about.

Minilesson In a short minilesson, return to examples of drawing about a selected topic, then moving from drawing to writing. Again, younger writers may need modeling help with transitioning from drawing to writing. Independent/Collaborative Work Allow individual and group time for drawing and writing, as was done in Sessions 1 and 2. Depending on grade level and abilities, these steps might continue to be conducted across separate sessions. Conference s During the drawing and writing stages, continue to hold conferences with students. Sharing End the session with further opportunities for sharing and feedback.

In subsequent writing workshops, second-grade students may enjoy creating their timelines using the interactive Timeline tool. This tool allows students to sequence and describe events, and can be printed for reference before writing. If use of the online tool detracts from the purpose of the lesson (i.e., having students choose and focus on a topic), a handwritten timeline should be used instead.

Student Assessment / Reflections

Assess each student's ability to:

Narrow a general topic into several events using a timeline
Create a drawing and use it to support his or her writing
Maintain focus in his or her writing

When assessing students, refer to their written work (timelines, drawings, and drafts) as well as your anecdotal records from conferences. You will want to ask questions such as the following:

Has this student selected a topic?
Has this student used a timeline effectively and selected a more focused event or moment within the broader topic?
Has this student created a drawing that elaborates on the selected topic?
Is this student's draft a focused piece of writing?
For older students, is the piece written with added description and/or dialogue?

A rubric could be created with an area for students to reflect on questions such as those listed above and an area for your assessment of their work. Obviously, a rubric used for kindergartners will look different from one for second graders. A good rubric will be designed based on the work you have done with this particular group of students, your assessment of their strengths and needs, and the expectations you have for their writing.

This strategy guide explains the writing process and offers practical methods for applying it in your classroom to help students become proficient writers.

Print this resource

Explore Resources by Grade

Kindergarten K

Teaching, Learning, & Professional Development Center

Teaching Resources
TLPDC Teaching Resources

How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?

Prepared by allison boye, ph.d. teaching, learning, and professional development center.

Assessment is a necessary part of the teaching and learning process, helping us measure whether our students have really learned what we want them to learn. While exams and quizzes are certainly favorite and useful methods of assessment, out of class assignments (written or otherwise) can offer similar insights into our students' learning. And just as creating a reliable test takes thoughtfulness and skill, so does creating meaningful and effective assignments. Undoubtedly, many instructors have been on the receiving end of disappointing student work, left wondering what went wrong… and often, those problems can be remedied in the future by some simple fine-tuning of the original assignment. This paper will take a look at some important elements to consider when developing assignments, and offer some easy approaches to creating a valuable assessment experience for all involved.

First Things First…

Before assigning any major tasks to students, it is imperative that you first define a few things for yourself as the instructor:

Your goals for the assignment . Why are you assigning this project, and what do you hope your students will gain from completing it? What knowledge, skills, and abilities do you aim to measure with this assignment? Creating assignments is a major part of overall course design, and every project you assign should clearly align with your goals for the course in general. For instance, if you want your students to demonstrate critical thinking, perhaps asking them to simply summarize an article is not the best match for that goal; a more appropriate option might be to ask for an analysis of a controversial issue in the discipline. Ultimately, the connection between the assignment and its purpose should be clear to both you and your students to ensure that it is fulfilling the desired goals and doesn't seem like “busy work.” For some ideas about what kinds of assignments match certain learning goals, take a look at this page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons.
Have they experienced “socialization” in the culture of your discipline (Flaxman, 2005)? Are they familiar with any conventions you might want them to know? In other words, do they know the “language” of your discipline, generally accepted style guidelines, or research protocols?
Do they know how to conduct research? Do they know the proper style format, documentation style, acceptable resources, etc.? Do they know how to use the library (Fitzpatrick, 1989) or evaluate resources?
What kinds of writing or work have they previously engaged in? For instance, have they completed long, formal writing assignments or research projects before? Have they ever engaged in analysis, reflection, or argumentation? Have they completed group assignments before? Do they know how to write a literature review or scientific report?

In his book Engaging Ideas (1996), John Bean provides a great list of questions to help instructors focus on their main teaching goals when creating an assignment (p.78):

1. What are the main units/modules in my course?

2. What are my main learning objectives for each module and for the course?

3. What thinking skills am I trying to develop within each unit and throughout the course?

4. What are the most difficult aspects of my course for students?

5. If I could change my students' study habits, what would I most like to change?

6. What difference do I want my course to make in my students' lives?

What your students need to know

Once you have determined your own goals for the assignment and the levels of your students, you can begin creating your assignment. However, when introducing your assignment to your students, there are several things you will need to clearly outline for them in order to ensure the most successful assignments possible.

First, you will need to articulate the purpose of the assignment . Even though you know why the assignment is important and what it is meant to accomplish, you cannot assume that your students will intuit that purpose. Your students will appreciate an understanding of how the assignment fits into the larger goals of the course and what they will learn from the process (Hass & Osborn, 2007). Being transparent with your students and explaining why you are asking them to complete a given assignment can ultimately help motivate them to complete the assignment more thoughtfully.
If you are asking your students to complete a writing assignment, you should define for them the “rhetorical or cognitive mode/s” you want them to employ in their writing (Flaxman, 2005). In other words, use precise verbs that communicate whether you are asking them to analyze, argue, describe, inform, etc. (Verbs like “explore” or “comment on” can be too vague and cause confusion.) Provide them with a specific task to complete, such as a problem to solve, a question to answer, or an argument to support. For those who want assignments to lead to top-down, thesis-driven writing, John Bean (1996) suggests presenting a proposition that students must defend or refute, or a problem that demands a thesis answer.
It is also a good idea to define the audience you want your students to address with their assignment, if possible – especially with writing assignments. Otherwise, students will address only the instructor, often assuming little requires explanation or development (Hedengren, 2004; MIT, 1999). Further, asking students to address the instructor, who typically knows more about the topic than the student, places the student in an unnatural rhetorical position. Instead, you might consider asking your students to prepare their assignments for alternative audiences such as other students who missed last week's classes, a group that opposes their position, or people reading a popular magazine or newspaper. In fact, a study by Bean (1996) indicated the students often appreciate and enjoy assignments that vary elements such as audience or rhetorical context, so don't be afraid to get creative!
Obviously, you will also need to articulate clearly the logistics or “business aspects” of the assignment . In other words, be explicit with your students about required elements such as the format, length, documentation style, writing style (formal or informal?), and deadlines. One caveat, however: do not allow the logistics of the paper take precedence over the content in your assignment description; if you spend all of your time describing these things, students might suspect that is all you care about in their execution of the assignment.
Finally, you should clarify your evaluation criteria for the assignment. What elements of content are most important? Will you grade holistically or weight features separately? How much weight will be given to individual elements, etc? Another precaution to take when defining requirements for your students is to take care that your instructions and rubric also do not overshadow the content; prescribing too rigidly each element of an assignment can limit students' freedom to explore and discover. According to Beth Finch Hedengren, “A good assignment provides the purpose and guidelines… without dictating exactly what to say” (2004, p. 27). If you decide to utilize a grading rubric, be sure to provide that to the students along with the assignment description, prior to their completion of the assignment.

A great way to get students engaged with an assignment and build buy-in is to encourage their collaboration on its design and/or on the grading criteria (Hudd, 2003). In his article “Conducting Writing Assignments,” Richard Leahy (2002) offers a few ideas for building in said collaboration:

• Ask the students to develop the grading scale themselves from scratch, starting with choosing the categories.

• Set the grading categories yourself, but ask the students to help write the descriptions.

• Draft the complete grading scale yourself, then give it to your students for review and suggestions.

A Few Do's and Don'ts…

Determining your goals for the assignment and its essential logistics is a good start to creating an effective assignment. However, there are a few more simple factors to consider in your final design. First, here are a few things you should do :

Do provide detail in your assignment description . Research has shown that students frequently prefer some guiding constraints when completing assignments (Bean, 1996), and that more detail (within reason) can lead to more successful student responses. One idea is to provide students with physical assignment handouts , in addition to or instead of a simple description in a syllabus. This can meet the needs of concrete learners and give them something tangible to refer to. Likewise, it is often beneficial to make explicit for students the process or steps necessary to complete an assignment, given that students – especially younger ones – might need guidance in planning and time management (MIT, 1999).
Do use open-ended questions. The most effective and challenging assignments focus on questions that lead students to thinking and explaining, rather than simple yes or no answers, whether explicitly part of the assignment description or in the brainstorming heuristics (Gardner, 2005).
Do direct students to appropriate available resources . Giving students pointers about other venues for assistance can help them get started on the right track independently. These kinds of suggestions might include information about campus resources such as the University Writing Center or discipline-specific librarians, suggesting specific journals or books, or even sections of their textbook, or providing them with lists of research ideas or links to acceptable websites.
Do consider providing models – both successful and unsuccessful models (Miller, 2007). These models could be provided by past students, or models you have created yourself. You could even ask students to evaluate the models themselves using the determined evaluation criteria, helping them to visualize the final product, think critically about how to complete the assignment, and ideally, recognize success in their own work.
Do consider including a way for students to make the assignment their own. In their study, Hass and Osborn (2007) confirmed the importance of personal engagement for students when completing an assignment. Indeed, students will be more engaged in an assignment if it is personally meaningful, practical, or purposeful beyond the classroom. You might think of ways to encourage students to tap into their own experiences or curiosities, to solve or explore a real problem, or connect to the larger community. Offering variety in assignment selection can also help students feel more individualized, creative, and in control.
If your assignment is substantial or long, do consider sequencing it. Far too often, assignments are given as one-shot final products that receive grades at the end of the semester, eternally abandoned by the student. By sequencing a large assignment, or essentially breaking it down into a systematic approach consisting of interconnected smaller elements (such as a project proposal, an annotated bibliography, or a rough draft, or a series of mini-assignments related to the longer assignment), you can encourage thoughtfulness, complexity, and thoroughness in your students, as well as emphasize process over final product.

Next are a few elements to avoid in your assignments:

Do not ask too many questions in your assignment. In an effort to challenge students, instructors often err in the other direction, asking more questions than students can reasonably address in a single assignment without losing focus. Offering an overly specific “checklist” prompt often leads to externally organized papers, in which inexperienced students “slavishly follow the checklist instead of integrating their ideas into more organically-discovered structure” (Flaxman, 2005).
Do not expect or suggest that there is an “ideal” response to the assignment. A common error for instructors is to dictate content of an assignment too rigidly, or to imply that there is a single correct response or a specific conclusion to reach, either explicitly or implicitly (Flaxman, 2005). Undoubtedly, students do not appreciate feeling as if they must read an instructor's mind to complete an assignment successfully, or that their own ideas have nowhere to go, and can lose motivation as a result. Similarly, avoid assignments that simply ask for regurgitation (Miller, 2007). Again, the best assignments invite students to engage in critical thinking, not just reproduce lectures or readings.
Do not provide vague or confusing commands . Do students know what you mean when they are asked to “examine” or “discuss” a topic? Return to what you determined about your students' experiences and levels to help you decide what directions will make the most sense to them and what will require more explanation or guidance, and avoid verbiage that might confound them.
Do not impose impossible time restraints or require the use of insufficient resources for completion of the assignment. For instance, if you are asking all of your students to use the same resource, ensure that there are enough copies available for all students to access – or at least put one copy on reserve in the library. Likewise, make sure that you are providing your students with ample time to locate resources and effectively complete the assignment (Fitzpatrick, 1989).

The assignments we give to students don't simply have to be research papers or reports. There are many options for effective yet creative ways to assess your students' learning! Here are just a few:

Journals, Posters, Portfolios, Letters, Brochures, Management plans, Editorials, Instruction Manuals, Imitations of a text, Case studies, Debates, News release, Dialogues, Videos, Collages, Plays, Power Point presentations

Ultimately, the success of student responses to an assignment often rests on the instructor's deliberate design of the assignment. By being purposeful and thoughtful from the beginning, you can ensure that your assignments will not only serve as effective assessment methods, but also engage and delight your students. If you would like further help in constructing or revising an assignment, the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center is glad to offer individual consultations. In addition, look into some of the resources provided below.

Online Resources

“Creating Effective Assignments” http://www.unh.edu/teaching-excellence/resources/Assignments.htm This site, from the University of New Hampshire's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, provides a brief overview of effective assignment design, with a focus on determining and communicating goals and expectations.

Gardner, T. (2005, June 12). Ten Tips for Designing Writing Assignments. Traci's Lists of Ten. http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/034.shtml This is a brief yet useful list of tips for assignment design, prepared by a writing teacher and curriculum developer for the National Council of Teachers of English . The website will also link you to several other lists of “ten tips” related to literacy pedagogy.

“How to Create Effective Assignments for College Students.” http:// tilt.colostate.edu/retreat/2011/zimmerman.pdf This PDF is a simplified bulleted list, prepared by Dr. Toni Zimmerman from Colorado State University, offering some helpful ideas for coming up with creative assignments.

“Learner-Centered Assessment” http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/tips/learner_centered_assessment.html From the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo, this is a short list of suggestions for the process of designing an assessment with your students' interests in mind. “Matching Learning Goals to Assignment Types.” http://teachingcommons.depaul.edu/How_to/design_assignments/assignments_learning_goals.html This is a great page from DePaul University's Teaching Commons, providing a chart that helps instructors match assignments with learning goals.

Additional References Bean, J.C. (1996). Engaging ideas: The professor's guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fitzpatrick, R. (1989). Research and writing assignments that reduce fear lead to better papers and more confident students. Writing Across the Curriculum , 3.2, pp. 15 – 24.

Flaxman, R. (2005). Creating meaningful writing assignments. The Teaching Exchange . Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008 from http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Sheridan_Center/pubs/teachingExchange/jan2005/01_flaxman.pdf

Hass, M. & Osborn, J. (2007, August 13). An emic view of student writing and the writing process. Across the Disciplines, 4.

Hedengren, B.F. (2004). A TA's guide to teaching writing in all disciplines . Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Hudd, S. S. (2003, April). Syllabus under construction: Involving students in the creation of class assignments. Teaching Sociology , 31, pp. 195 – 202.

Leahy, R. (2002). Conducting writing assignments. College Teaching , 50.2, pp. 50 – 54.

Miller, H. (2007). Designing effective writing assignments. Teaching with writing . University of Minnesota Center for Writing. Retrieved Jan. 9, 2008, from http://writing.umn.edu/tww/assignments/designing.html

MIT Online Writing and Communication Center (1999). Creating Writing Assignments. Retrieved January 9, 2008 from http://web.mit.edu/writing/Faculty/createeffective.html .

Contact TTU

Departments and Units
Majors and Minors
LSA Course Guide
LSA Gateway

Search: {{$root.lsaSearchQuery.q}}, Page {{$root.page}}

Accessibility
Undergraduates
Instructors
Alums & Friends

★ Writing Support
Minor in Writing
First-Year Writing Requirement
Transfer Students
Writing Guides
Peer Writing Consultant Program
Upper-Level Writing Requirement
Writing Prizes
International Students
★ The Writing Workshop
Dissertation ECoach
Fellows Seminar
Dissertation Writing Groups
Rackham / Sweetland Workshops
Dissertation Writing Institute
Guides to Teaching Writing
Teaching Support and Services
Support for FYWR Courses
Support for ULWR Courses
Writing Prize Nominating
Alums Gallery
Commencement
Giving Opportunities
News and Events
Archived Events
February 2014

How to Understand an Essay Assignment Workshop

Trying to decipher your first essay assignment of the term? Wondering what your professor really wants? Hoping to do better next time?

Trying to decipher your first essay assignment of the term? Wondering what your professor really wants? Hoping to do better next time? We’ll look at sample assignments and talk about how to: get the most information out of the assignment identify implied expectations and criteria break the assignment down into tasks and goals Oh, and also? There will be DONUTS.

Sponsored by the Newnan Strategies for Success Committee

Information For
Prospective Students
Current Students
Faculty and Staff
Alumni and Friends
More about LSA
How Do I Apply?
LSA Magazine
Student Resources
Academic Advising
Global Studies
LSA Opportunity Hub
Social Media
Update Contact Info
Privacy Statement
Report Feedback

DSDM : A Step-by-Step-Guide [2019]

What is Agile?
Agile Manifesto - 4 Values and 12 Principles
Why Agile Methodology?
What is Scrum?
Scrum Values
Scrum Product Owner
Scrum Development Team
Scrum Master
What is Sprint?
Sprint Planning
Daily Scrum Meeting
Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective
Product Backlog
Sprint Backlog
Definition of Done
Scrum Guide
Kanban Guide
Extreme Programming
Lean Development
Crystal Methodology
Agile Methodology
Feature Driven Development (FDD)

We already discussed some of the most popular Agile Methodologies in our previous articles, like Scrum , Lean , and Kanban . Today, we will walk you through another popular Agile Methodology - DSDM . We will talk about the following topics in this article:-

Brief History of DSDM: In this section, we will cover a brief history of DSDM and how DSDM is different from other methodologies
DSDM Principles and values: All nine principles and four values to be discussed here. We will learn how these principles and values help DSDM to deliver the product to the customer.
Roles and responsibilities
Team organization and size
Tools and techniques
Phase to rule them/ process Flow

We will explain all aspects as mentioned above of a project with the help of relevant examples

What is DSDM?

DSDM is dynamic in nature as it’s a Rapid Application Development ( RAD ) approach to software development. It is an iterative and incremental approach that emphasizes continuous customer/ Client involvement.

What makes DSDM different is, active involvement of the user and the decision making power is with the teams working on it. The teams are empowered to make decisions.

It focuses on the formula: 80% system deployment in 20% time , i.e., it doesn’t take long to achieve a working stage or to get it to a stage where you can say it will work.

This method is used mainly for the system where software delivery requirements happen in a short span. Its goal is to deliver software in time and on budget while still adjusting for new conditions or changes along the way.

Brief History:

The Dynamic Systems Development Method ( DSDM ), its base was developed in the 1990s to meet the need for rapid business, but it was officially originated in January 1994 by a non-profit group in the UK, to provide an industry-standard framework for project delivery. Its first version got finished in January 1995. And the latest version, which is currently in use is 4.2, developed in 2003.

DSDM Principles:

DSDM has nine fundamental principles revolving around the business needs:

Active user involvement: the first and most crucial principle is user involvement. User, the people who will be using the final product, must be actively involved throughout the project development. It helps in reducing the errors which may occur due to user perception and thus reduces the cost of rework as well. DSDM emphasis on working with a small and selected group of users and stay in touch with them continually, rather than meeting them occasionally in periodic meetings and review sessions.
Empowered teams: To proceed quickly and smoothly, this model encourages and empower teams to take decisions. Below are some areas where decision making as a team is very critical
Requirements decision
Prioritizing the activities and features delivery
Details of technical requirements
Which functionality needs to add in a given incremental
Frequent delivery: A frequent delivery of value to the customer ensures that the errors/bugs get identified, worked upon, and resolved/ reversed/fixed at an early stage. The source of the error and root cause is also found and fixed. It applies to all, requirement documents (user stories), working models as well as on program codes.
Fitness for business: In DSDM, our focus is to deliver software which is efficient enough to solve a business need and accepts changes or enhancement in a later iteration. DSDM focuses on satisfying business needs first and doesn’t allow to create ad-hoc software. It keeps the process flow simple and effective.
Incremental development: To keep the big project simple and less complicated, it becomes crucial to decompose it into multiple small feature projects. Every delivery ensures a new feature gets delivered to the client. This incremental development and delivery continue until the delivery of the complete set of business required features.
Reversible changes: In DSDM iteration happens through small increments. As all the stages of development are well known to developers, so changes here are reversible. Therefore, the fear of total loss of work is also very less.
Base-line the requirements: Some high-level baselines need to be set to limit the degree of freedom to make changes. During the business agreement phase, the Business and Development Team discuss and agree on the baseline when the change requests and requirements would be “ frozen ”.
Integrated testing: In DSDM, testing is done as early as in the development phase to ensure that the product does not have any technical flaws. Developers and team leads cross-check even the testing documents. It helps in fixing issues at a very early stage and reduces rework and therefore reduces cost and time.
Stakeholder collaboration: It is crucial to have an atmosphere of trust and honesty to get precise requirements and honest feedback on a resultant product. In DSDM, Business staff and developer collaboration are very crucial to deliver value. Clear business requirement and honest feedback help in fast development which further leads to timely delivery of the project.

Four values: below are the four values of DSDM-

1. Individual: Like Agile in DSDM also value people. In the end, these are the people who are working physically on the project and know the practical part better. Their experience and expertise add more value to the project as compared to tools, documents, or process flows.

2. Working software: It is very crucial that a shared understanding and a standard definition of “Working software” exists between all the parties interested in the software.

Note - Working software is the software that has successfully gone through all the stages of development and testing and ready to hit the market now. It will be the version of the software that will be used by the end-user

3. Collaboration: It is one of the essential values for effective delivery. It is because getting people in one room to make a decision will be more productive, less time taking, and efficient than sharing emails for weeks to make a decision. Here are a few examples of Collaboration -

Cross-functional team
Co-location with the client
Facilitating workshop

4. Response to changes: DSDM welcomes all the required modifications and accommodates them. It values and responds to all the changes in a very innovative way, mainly through prioritizing them.

Project structure in DSDM:

The DSDM project process flow consists of 7 phases, which are organized in a rich set of roles and responsibilities and are supported by some core techniques. Below is the part of the structure of a DSDM system process flow.

Phase to rule them/ Process Flow

Roles and Responsibilities:

There are three leading roles in DSDM -

Project level roles:

It usually consists of

Project Owners
Project Managers

Their responsibility is to control the project as a whole. They will not be working on the project but will be responsible for getting the work done and keep the business updated about the current situation. They act as a connection between the User and Development team. These are usually executive level people and work directly with the business. They are also called the Ambassadors .

Solution Development Roles:

Solution Development roles usually consist of

They work as the “ heart ” of the project. They are the main driving force as they work on ground zero and are responsible for the development of the product/solution.

Supporting Roles:

It consists of roles like

Workshop Facilitator

These people have good practical knowledge of all the areas of business. They assist and guide everyone working on it continuously throughout the project until delivery. They have a good understanding of the DSDM framework as well as of development.

Team Organization and Size:

In DSDM, a project team may consist of one or two groups, whereby one group takes the responsibility to run the tests on another group’s delivery.

As per organizational research, team size should not be less than five members, excluding external experts. External experts are the experienced executive level people who support projects externally.

And if the project is big and more work is to be delivered, then a multi-team structure is required.

Tools and Techniques:

The main focus of DSDM is that the product is delivered frequently in each iteration. Different tools, techniques, and, practices are used to support the whole DSDM process.

The Timeboxing,
The MoSCow prioritization,
Facilitated workshops,
Iterative development,
Modeling and prototyping techniques.

Here we are providing a very brief introduction to the three most common and used practices from the DSDM framework which are

Time Boxing
MoSCoW Rules
Facilitated workshop

Timeboxing:

Timeboxing is one of the most crucial core practices. It is similar to what a milestone is in tradition software development methods or what a sprint is in the Scrum Agile Method. Timeboxing is the amount of work to be done in a fixed given time.

One software development project will have multiple time boxes, and every time box is assigned one specific objective. Timeboxing helps in achieving the target in time. Usually, for a project duration of a time box can be from two weeks to a maximum of 6 weeks but not more than that.

Benefits of having Time Boxing:

Focus on delivering the product on time.

People stay focused as per priority and do not deviate, and thus improves productivity.
All members know what the other person is doing and how long it is going to take to complete that activity.
Decreases dependency and delegation of work as every member is occupied and has to give deliverables in time.

It’s like a healthy eating habit, “ Eat a tiny portion of food at small intervals ”.

Let’s understand it with the help of an example. We all love our student life & we all have gone through it. During exams, even if there is a sufficient gap between the two reviews, we always used to study on the last 1 or 2 days. And our parents used to tell us to do a little every day. The correct approach would have been

Make a schedule
Divide your syllabus into small portions
Prioritize them
Assign timelines to every part
Finish portion in the assigned time

This systematic approach to finish the assigned work in committed time is called Timeboxing .

Facilitated Workshops:

Facilitated Workshops means providing a workshop where team members and developers can work on a clear pre-set of deliverables. To get access to this workshop, they coordinate with a neutral person who is called Workshop facilitator . The facilitator will be guiding the team through a process to achieve its objectives, expertly. This process that facilitator guide through includes-

Defining the objective,
Identifying appropriate participants,
Creating an agenda,
Managing the logistics and
Distributing any pre-reading to participants.

The motive behind having a workshop is to encourage collaborative working and enable team decisions in a short time. It allows knowledge sharing too.

It’s like a classroom, you can discuss only one topic from a specific subject at a particular time, and the purpose of that discussion will be focused, that is, to make the classroom understand that particular topic.

Benefits of having a Workshop include:

Provide an ideal environment for exploring new ideas and encourages quick and systematic growth of those ideas.
A broader range of stakeholders can take decisions.
Everyone is aware of discussions and decisions.
Decision making is quick & accurate.

MoSCoW Prioritization:

MoSCoW is a simple prioritizing technique, which helps in understanding and prioritizing the tasks to be performed the letters here stand for:

Must-Have: The requirements that are fundamental and must conform to the solution.
Should Have: The things that are important for the business solution.
Could Have: The requirements that are important but can more easily be left out for a short while.
Won’t Have: The requirements that can wait and include in later development.

MoSCoW prioritization is essential because there is always not enough time to do everything, and the vital things should not be left behind.

Benefits of MoSCoW are:

It allows business expectations to set at the Project level.
Ensures that the team delivers the Must-Haves first
Ensures that they deliver most or all of the Should Haves
If time allows developers may deliver some of the Could Haves too .

You want to purchase a big car with the following features-

Seven seater cars - To accommodate a maximum number of friends to go for an outing on the weekends.
The car should have a 2000 cc engine as it is essential to have powerful engines for off-roading and road trips.
The car should have functional boot space
Navigation system
Good Mileage
Your favorite color is yellow, so you want to buy a yellow color car.
You may also want to have a sunroof to enjoy the weather
You prefer to have Bluetooth connectivity for your iPod and other devices.
You may also prefer to have a child seat.

Let’s define prioritization in the above case as per MoSCoW:

Seven seater car for off-roading and road trips
2000cc engine
Navigation System
Good boot space
Yellow color car
Child seat.

Process flow:

The Development process of DSDM consists of 7 phases. The first stage is even before the project starts, and therefore, it is called Pre-project . Then there are stages where we study the project, and this phase is called the Project-study phase . Post which there are three more phases that consist of the development cycle and are iterative, these phases are repeated as and when necessary to complete the project. These three stages are known as the Development phase . Then there is the phase, where the project is delivered, reviewed, and maintained. This stage is the post-project phase .

Below are all 7 phases of a process flow in DSDM

Pre-project
Feasibility Study
Business Study
Functional Model Iteration
Design and build the Iteration
Implementation
Post-project

Feasibility-Study-and-Business-Study-in-DSDM

Pre-project Phase- Project conceptualization - It is the very first phase of the process, and here we ensure that everyone involved in the project is aware of the objectives. In this phase, we conceptualize the project and decide to start the project.
Feasibility Phase- Finding out how the project will start. In the feasibility phase, the analysis of the technical, financial, and workforce aspects happens. Here the constraints of project delivery are figured out concerning time and resources. This phase is critical as most important decisions are being made in this phase, including project cancelation.
Business study Phase- Exploring the business aspect of the project. In this stage, the identification of business aspects of the project takes place. Following questions are discussed and answered in this phase
Who will be the participants
Will the project make sense from a business point of view
Will it be profitable
What will be the best work plan
What resources are required through the development cycle
What tools and technologies will be required for building and deployment

4. Functional Model Iteration- All functional phases discussed in previous stages, all the technical requirements are decided and prioritized. A functional prototype gets created in this stage, wherein a model of one requirement after another is built incrementally. This functional prototype then checked for quality as well as for the scope of improvement by technical experts and at times by the end-users.

Below are the steps prototyping will follow

Investigate: Based on prioritization done in the previous stage, in this stage, we will identify the key functionalities that are needed.
The Project Manager will identify team members.
Team members get the tasks assigned.
Timelines will also be attached here.
Create: The developer will create the prototype/Model based on the functional requirements, test them and further improve it (if required)
Review: User tests it at his end and gives discussions about the functionalities. The areas of improvement are discussed based on the user's feedback.

5. Design and Build Phase- a product designed and implemented in iterations - Here in this stage

Software development starts
Products will be created and deployed in small iterations.

In each iteration

Decide which functionality is to be delivered first based on priority
Design that functionality
Then, deploy the functionality

The above process goes in a cycle for each iteration, and one functionality gets delivered at the end of each iteration.

6. Implementation phase - The second last phase in the lifecycle process is the deployment. In the previous stage, we did the deployment in small iterations, but here the product as a whole will get operational. After this stage, the product will be ready to get launched into the market.

In this phase

The product will be in its final stage
All the documentation gets finished
Reviews are over
Users will be trained to use the product, and it’s all set to hit the market

The implementation or deployment process has various stages.

Assemble: Assemble all the approvals and guidelines related to the projects.
Review: Evaluate and review if the delivered quality is as per the pre-defined documented quality as finalized with the business in the functional iteration phase of the development process.
Deploy: Get the product into an operational use (market) after training users on the product and doing required configuration, etc.

7. Post-project Phase - In the last phase, after the product delivery to the customer, maintenance will be required. Maintenance is usually done periodically in a cyclic manner.

For a better understanding of these development phases, let’s consider an example

The entire admission procedure is explained with the help of these phases whenever you choose a playschool for your toddler.

As parents, the first decision that we have to make is, is this a good time to send a kid to school. This decision, if the education for the kid is to be started or not, can be referred to as the Pre-project stage . Then we will check for a few more factors like:
List of Playschools near your home in which admissions are going on
Fee structure

Based on this information, we will further decide whether we should go ahead with a kid's admission or not .

2. Next, we will make a checklist, which is important while shortlisting a school

Teaching staff
Infrastructure
Daycare facility

In software development language these are called studying business aspects.

In previous stages - you have decided on high-level factors; now you will deep dive into it and collect more detailed information to finalize the school

Must be well qualified
Student Teacher ration should not exceed 1:10
Is the transport facility available?
Hygiene of washrooms, playrooms must be well maintained
CCTV installed?
Did the staff undergo the Background verification process?
Meal facility
Timings of daycare

It is called Functional model iteration. Here you will collect all the artifacts

Basis all this information, you will shortlist school and start sending out your kid on trial basis for an hour for the first week and increase time with each passing week. This deployment in phases is known as the Design and Build phase in software development terms.
After a month, considering toddler started spending a considerable amount of time in school and seems happy so we will finally decide to let him go for full time. This phase of getting fully operational is referred to as Implementation in the world of software development.
We keep on taking daily feedback from the toddler, look out for any withdrawal symptoms, check his learning curve based on which we decide whether we should continue with the same school in next term or not. It is the Post-project phase.

With DSDM approach, you will have any project faster “ up and running ” and sooner delivered to the business with leaner implementation effort.

Lean Software Development - Comprehensive Guide [2019]

MoSCoW Prioritization

What is moscow prioritization.

MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements.

The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the “W” in MoSCoW to mean “wish.”

What is the History of the MoSCoW Method?

Software development expert Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle. He designed the framework to help his team prioritize tasks during development work on product releases.

You can find a detailed account of using MoSCoW prioritization in the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) handbook . But because MoSCoW can prioritize tasks within any time-boxed project, teams have adapted the method for a broad range of uses.

How Does MoSCoW Prioritization Work?

Before running a MoSCoW analysis, a few things need to happen. First, key stakeholders and the product team need to get aligned on objectives and prioritization factors. Then, all participants must agree on which initiatives to prioritize.

At this point, your team should also discuss how they will settle any disagreements in prioritization. If you can establish how to resolve disputes before they come up, you can help prevent those disagreements from holding up progress.

Finally, you’ll also want to reach a consensus on what percentage of resources you’d like to allocate to each category.

With the groundwork complete, you may begin determining which category is most appropriate for each initiative. But, first, let’s further break down each category in the MoSCoW method.

Start prioritizing your roadmap

Moscow prioritization categories.

1. Must-have initiatives

As the name suggests, this category consists of initiatives that are “musts” for your team. They represent non-negotiable needs for the project, product, or release in question. For example, if you’re releasing a healthcare application, a must-have initiative may be security functionalities that help maintain compliance.

The “must-have” category requires the team to complete a mandatory task. If you’re unsure about whether something belongs in this category, ask yourself the following.

If the product won’t work without an initiative, or the release becomes useless without it, the initiative is most likely a “must-have.”

2. Should-have initiatives

Should-have initiatives are just a step below must-haves. They are essential to the product, project, or release, but they are not vital. If left out, the product or project still functions. However, the initiatives may add significant value.

“Should-have” initiatives are different from “must-have” initiatives in that they can get scheduled for a future release without impacting the current one. For example, performance improvements, minor bug fixes, or new functionality may be “should-have” initiatives. Without them, the product still works.

3. Could-have initiatives

Another way of describing “could-have” initiatives is nice-to-haves. “Could-have” initiatives are not necessary to the core function of the product. However, compared with “should-have” initiatives, they have a much smaller impact on the outcome if left out.

So, initiatives placed in the “could-have” category are often the first to be deprioritized if a project in the “should-have” or “must-have” category ends up larger than expected.

4. Will not have (this time)

One benefit of the MoSCoW method is that it places several initiatives in the “will-not-have” category. The category can manage expectations about what the team will not include in a specific release (or another timeframe you’re prioritizing).

Placing initiatives in the “will-not-have” category is one way to help prevent scope creep . If initiatives are in this category, the team knows they are not a priority for this specific time frame.

Some initiatives in the “will-not-have” group will be prioritized in the future, while others are not likely to happen. Some teams decide to differentiate between those by creating a subcategory within this group.

How Can Development Teams Use MoSCoW?

Although Dai Clegg developed the approach to help prioritize tasks around his team’s limited time, the MoSCoW method also works when a development team faces limitations other than time. For example:

Prioritize based on budgetary constraints.

What if a development team’s limiting factor is not a deadline but a tight budget imposed by the company? Working with the product managers, the team can use MoSCoW first to decide on the initiatives that represent must-haves and the should-haves. Then, using the development department’s budget as the guide, the team can figure out which items they can complete.

Prioritize based on the team’s skillsets.

A cross-functional product team might also find itself constrained by the experience and expertise of its developers. If the product roadmap calls for functionality the team does not have the skills to build, this limiting factor will play into scoring those items in their MoSCoW analysis.

Prioritize based on competing needs at the company.

Cross-functional teams can also find themselves constrained by other company priorities. The team wants to make progress on a new product release, but the executive staff has created tight deadlines for further releases in the same timeframe. In this case, the team can use MoSCoW to determine which aspects of their desired release represent must-haves and temporarily backlog everything else.

What Are the Drawbacks of MoSCoW Prioritization?

Although many product and development teams have prioritized MoSCoW, the approach has potential pitfalls. Here are a few examples.

1. An inconsistent scoring process can lead to tasks placed in the wrong categories.

One common criticism against MoSCoW is that it does not include an objective methodology for ranking initiatives against each other. Your team will need to bring this methodology to your analysis. The MoSCoW approach works only to ensure that your team applies a consistent scoring system for all initiatives.

Pro tip: One proven method is weighted scoring, where your team measures each initiative on your backlog against a standard set of cost and benefit criteria. You can use the weighted scoring approach in ProductPlan’s roadmap app .

2. Not including all relevant stakeholders can lead to items placed in the wrong categories.

To know which of your team’s initiatives represent must-haves for your product and which are merely should-haves, you will need as much context as possible.

For example, you might need someone from your sales team to let you know how important (or unimportant) prospective buyers view a proposed new feature.

One pitfall of the MoSCoW method is that you could make poor decisions about where to slot each initiative unless your team receives input from all relevant stakeholders.

3. Team bias for (or against) initiatives can undermine MoSCoW’s effectiveness.

Because MoSCoW does not include an objective scoring method, your team members can fall victim to their own opinions about certain initiatives.

One risk of using MoSCoW prioritization is that a team can mistakenly think MoSCoW itself represents an objective way of measuring the items on their list. They discuss an initiative, agree that it is a “should have,” and move on to the next.

But your team will also need an objective and consistent framework for ranking all initiatives. That is the only way to minimize your team’s biases in favor of items or against them.

When Do You Use the MoSCoW Method for Prioritization?

MoSCoW prioritization is effective for teams that want to include representatives from the whole organization in their process. You can capture a broader perspective by involving participants from various functional departments.

Another reason you may want to use MoSCoW prioritization is it allows your team to determine how much effort goes into each category. Therefore, you can ensure you’re delivering a good variety of initiatives in each release.

What Are Best Practices for Using MoSCoW Prioritization?

If you’re considering giving MoSCoW prioritization a try, here are a few steps to keep in mind. Incorporating these into your process will help your team gain more value from the MoSCoW method.

1. Choose an objective ranking or scoring system.

Remember, MoSCoW helps your team group items into the appropriate buckets—from must-have items down to your longer-term wish list. But MoSCoW itself doesn’t help you determine which item belongs in which category.

You will need a separate ranking methodology. You can choose from many, such as:

Weighted scoring
Value vs. complexity
Buy-a-feature
Opportunity scoring

For help finding the best scoring methodology for your team, check out ProductPlan’s article: 7 strategies to choose the best features for your product .

2. Seek input from all key stakeholders.

To make sure you’re placing each initiative into the right bucket—must-have, should-have, could-have, or won’t-have—your team needs context.

At the beginning of your MoSCoW method, your team should consider which stakeholders can provide valuable context and insights. Sales? Customer success? The executive staff? Product managers in another area of your business? Include them in your initiative scoring process if you think they can help you see opportunities or threats your team might miss.

3. Share your MoSCoW process across your organization.

MoSCoW gives your team a tangible way to show your organization prioritizing initiatives for your products or projects.

The method can help you build company-wide consensus for your work, or at least help you show stakeholders why you made the decisions you did.

Communicating your team’s prioritization strategy also helps you set expectations across the business. When they see your methodology for choosing one initiative over another, stakeholders in other departments will understand that your team has thought through and weighed all decisions you’ve made.

If any stakeholders have an issue with one of your decisions, they will understand that they can’t simply complain—they’ll need to present you with evidence to alter your course of action.

Related Terms

2×2 prioritization matrix / Eisenhower matrix / DACI decision-making framework / ICE scoring model / RICE scoring model

Prioritizing your roadmap using our guide

Try productplan free for 14 days, share on mastodon.

Prioritization templates

With Miro's prioritization templates collection, decide on the problem you and your team are trying to solve, agree on a process, and then put it into action in a collaborative way. Use one of the many prioritization frameworks and move projects forward.

PI Planning Template

Works best for:.

Agile Methodology, Strategic Planning, Software Development

PI planning stands for “program increment planning.” Part of a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), PI Planning helps teams strategize toward a shared vision. In a typical PI planning session, teams get together to review a program backlog, align cross-functionally, and decide on the next steps. Many teams carry out a PI planning event every 8 to 12 weeks, but you can customize your planning schedule to fit your needs. Use PI planning to break down features, identify risks, find dependencies, and decide which stories you’re going to develop.

Kanban Calendar

Kanban Boards, Agile Methodology, Agile Workflows

Kanban Calendar template enhances workflow visualization by integrating Kanban principles with time management. It enables teams to plan and track tasks across days, weeks, or months, facilitating efficient resource allocation and timely delivery. With customizable features and intuitive design, this template empowers teams to optimize their workflow and meet project deadlines effectively.

Kanban Successful Evolutionary Change

Kanban Successful Evolutionary Change template guides organizations through the process of implementing Kanban methodology for gradual and sustainable workflow improvement. By emphasizing incremental changes and continuous feedback, this template fosters a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability. Teams can visualize their workflow, identify bottlenecks, and implement changes iteratively, leading to improved efficiency and productivity.

121 Kanban template streamlines task management by providing a structured framework for prioritization and execution. It encourages a focused approach to task completion by limiting work in progress (WIP) and promoting collaboration between team members. With clear visualization of tasks and progress, teams can maintain workflow balance and deliver high-quality results efficiently.

Scrum Task Tracker (with CSV export)

Scrum Task Tracker template combines Kanban and Scrum methodologies to enhance project management and tracking. With features like CSV export, teams can capture and analyze task data for insights into performance and improvement areas. This template fosters transparency and accountability, enabling teams to track sprint progress, identify blockers, and adapt their approach to maximize efficiency and deliver value consistently.

Change Canvas

Kanban Boards, Agile MEthodology, Agile Workflows

Change Canvas template empowers teams to manage and visualize change initiatives effectively. By mapping out stakeholders, goals, and actions, teams can ensure alignment and transparency throughout the change process. This template fosters collaboration and communication, enabling teams to navigate change successfully and achieve desired outcomes while minimizing disruption and resistance.

Planning With Purpose

Agile Workflows, Agile Methodology, Kanban Boards

Planning With Purpose template offers a structured approach for setting and achieving goals effectively. By aligning actions with objectives, teams can prioritize tasks and track progress towards desired outcomes. This template fosters clarity and accountability, enabling teams to stay focused on what matters most and adapt their plans as needed to drive success.

agile-manifesto-pocket-sized-principles-template-thumb

The Agile Manifesto - Pocket Sized Principles

Kanban Boards, Agile Methodology, Agile Wokflows

The Agile Manifesto - Pocket Sized Principles template distills the core principles of agile methodology into a concise and actionable format. By providing a visual reference, this template reinforces agile values and principles, guiding teams towards collaborative, adaptive, and customer-centric practices. This template serves as a reminder of agile principles and encourages teams to embody these principles in their daily work.

small-business-goal-tracker-template-thumb

Goal Tracker Template for Small Businesses

Goal Tracker Template for Small Businesses empowers small businesses to set and track their goals effectively. By visualizing goals, milestones, and progress, this template fosters accountability and motivation. With features tailored to small business needs, such as revenue tracking and customer acquisition goals, teams can prioritize initiatives and make data-driven decisions to drive growth and success.

Kyrian Strategic Board V1

Kyrian Strategic Board V1 template offers a comprehensive framework for strategic planning and execution. By visualizing goals, strategies, and action plans, teams can align their efforts and track progress towards strategic objectives. With customizable features and intuitive design, this template empowers teams to optimize their strategic planning process and drive meaningful results.

kanban-planner-week-month-template-thumb

Kanban Planner 2024 Week & Month

KANBAN Planner 2024 Week & Month template provides a flexible framework for planning and managing tasks on a weekly and monthly basis. By organizing tasks by priority and deadlines, teams can optimize their workflow and ensure timely delivery of projects. This template fosters transparency and accountability, enabling teams to collaborate effectively and achieve their goals efficiently.

CHRONOGRAM TEMPLATE (project timeline) -web-1

Project Timeline Template

Project Management

The Project Timeline Template simplifies project management. Illustrating tasks, milestones, and deliverables on a calendar visually shows teams a project's progression. One of its standout benefits is its ability to foster clarity. With this template, project milestones are translated into an easily digestible format, enabling team members to quickly comprehend the entirety of the project's scope and sequence, thereby enhancing productivity and reducing potential misunderstandings.

SAFe Roam Board

Agile Methodology, Operations, Agile Workflows

A SAFe ROAM Board is a framework for making risks visible. It gives you and your team a shared space to notice and highlight risks, so they don’t get ignored. The ROAM Board helps everyone consider the likelihood and impact of risks, and decide which risks are low priority versus high priority. The underlying principles of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) are: drive cost-effective solutions, apply systems thinking, assume that things will change, build incrementally, base milestones on evaluating working systems, and visualize and limit works in progress.

Bang for the Buck Template

Project Management, Strategic Planning, Prioritization

The name pretty much says it—this Agile framework is all about helping you maximize efficiency by powering collaboration between product managers and dev teams. Together you can go over each to-do on the project agenda and evaluate them in terms of costs and benefits. That way you can prioritize tasks based on how much bang for your buck they deliver. This template is great for teams and organizations that want to make a strategic plan to tackle an upcoming sprint.

Blue Ocean 4 Actions Framework Template

Leadership, Decision Making, Strategic Planning

For entrepreneurs, so much comes down to new users—how to attract them, impress them, and convert them to loyal customers. This template, designed by the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, will help you maximize value for you and your customers alike. Using the template’s four steps (divided into easy columns), you’ll easily evaluate your products in more innovative ways and make sure money is being spent in areas that really matter.

FMEA Analysis Template

When you’re building a business or running a team, risk comes with the territory. You can’t eliminate it. But you CAN identify it and mitigate it, to up your odds of success. Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a powerful tool designed to help you manage risk and potential problems by spotting them within a process, product, or system. And you’ll spot them earlier in your process—to let you sidestep costly changes that arise late in the game or, worse, after they’ve impacted your customers and their experience.

Mitch Lacey's Estimation Game Template

Leadership, Agile Methodology, Prioritization

A wordy name but a simple tool, Mitch Lacey’s Estimation Game is an effective way to rank your work tasks by size and priority — so you can decide what to tackle first. In the game, notecards represent your work items and feature ROI, business value, or other important metrics. You’ll place each in a quadrant (ranking them by size and priority) to help you order them in your upcoming schedule. The game also empowers developers and product management teams to work together and collaborate effectively.

Cynefin Framework Template

Leadership, Decision Making, Prioritization

Companies face a range of complex problems. At times, these problems leave the decision makers unsure where to even begin or what questions to ask. The Cynefin Framework, developed by Dave Snowden at IBM in 1999, can help you navigate those problems and find the appropriate response. Many organizations use this powerful, flexible framework to aid them during product development, marketing plans, and organizational strategy, or when faced with a crisis. This template is also ideal for training new hires on how to react to such an event.

Pyramid Diagram Template

Business Management, Strategic Planning, Prioritization

A pyramid diagram is a perfect tool for demonstrating concepts that can be broken down into a layered hierarchy. Each level of the pyramid builds on the one before it, clearly illustrating how certain actions lead to specific results. The Miro Pyramid Diagram template is your tool for any and all pyramid illustrations.

Ansoff Matrix Template

Leadership, Operations, Strategic Planning

Keep growing. Keep scaling. Keep finding those new opportunities in new markets—and creative new ways to reach customers there. Sound like your approach? Then this template might be a great fit. An Ansoff Matrix (aka, a product or market expansion grid) is broken into four potential growth strategies: Market Penetration, Market Development, Product Development, and Diversification. When you go through each section with your team, you’ll get a clear view of your options going forward and the potential risks and rewards of each.

Priority Matrix Template

If you need a little more than a basic to-do list, then you’d probably benefit from a Priority Matrix. The Priority Matrix template is designed to help you determine which tasks are critical so you can focus on the most urgent needs. In a 2x2 matrix, input your priorities based on whether they must be completed with high or low urgency and are of high or low importance. Applicable to project management and personal management alike, use the Priority Matrix template to improve business processes, create efficiency, remove blockers, and reduce operational waste.

Strategy Presentation Template

Presentations, Strategic Planning

Presenting your strategies is the best way to allow people to understand what the business will be focusing on in the future. Use this Strategy Presentation Template to communicate your strategic thinking and encourage collaboration.

Jobs to be Done template

Ideation, Design Thinking, Brainstorming

It’s all about a job done right — customers “hire” a product or service to do a “job,” and if it's not done right, the customer will find someone to do it better. Built on that simple premise, the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework helps entrepreneurs, start-ups, and business managers define who their customer is and see unmet needs in the market. A standard job story lets you see things from your customers’ perspective by telling their story with a “When I…I Want To…So That I …” story structure.

Product Roadmap Template

Product Management, Roadmaps

Product roadmaps help communicate the vision and progress of what’s coming next for your product. It’s an important asset for aligning teams and valuable stakeholders – including executives, engineering, marketing, customer success, and sales – around your strategy and priorities. Product roadmapping can inform future project management, describe new features and product goals, and spell out the lifecycle of a new product. While product roadmaps are customizable, most contain information about the products you’re building, when you’re building them, and the people involved at each stage.

Kanban Framework Template

Optimized processes, improved flow, and increased value for your customers — that’s what the Kanban method can help you achieve. Based on a set of lean principles and practices (and created in the 1950s by a Toyota Automotive employee), Kanban helps your team reduce waste, address numerous other issues, and collaborate on fixing them together. You can use our simple Kanban template to both closely monitor the progress of all work and to display work to yourself and cross-functional partners, so that the behind-the-scenes nature of software is revealed.

Pugh Matrix Template

Strategy, Planning

The Pugh Matrix Template is a powerful tool that enhances your decision-making process. It enables you to systematically compare and evaluate multiple options, leading to more informed and objective decisions. Using this template, you streamline your decision-making process, identify the best alternatives, and ultimately achieve better outcomes.

Decision Matrix Template

Strategy & Planning

The Decision Matrix Template is an intuitive visual tool for structuring and evaluating multiple choices against distinct criteria. Presenting options in a comparative layout helps distill complex decisions into a digestible format.

PRD Template

Product Development, Product , Management

The PRD Template by Miro is a blueprint designed to streamline the product development process. Acting as a central hub for all essential details, this template ensures team alignment by laying out clear project objectives, use cases, and design specifics. The primary benefit? Seamless communication and clarity, reducing the likelihood of missteps and fostering a smooth transition from idea conception to product launch.

Checklist Template

Project Management, Task Management

The Checklist Template is designed to organize and track tasks visually, offering workflow clarity. A key benefit of using this template is its potential to amplify collaboration, ensuring that all team members remain aligned and informed, paving the way for efficient project completion.

Fibonacci Scale Template

Agile Methodology, Prioritization, Agile Workflows

When you manage a team, you often have to estimate how much time and effort tasks will take to complete. Try what often works for Agile teams all over the world: Turn to the Fibonacci Scale for guidance. Based on the Fibonacci sequence, where each number is the summation of the two previous numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.), this template can help you build timelines like a champ—by helping make sure that work is distributed evenly and that everyone is accurate when estimating the work and time involved in a project.

SMART Goals Template

Prioritization, Strategic Planning, Project Management

Setting goals can be encouraging, but can also be overwhelming. It can be hard to conceptualize every step you need to take to achieve a goal, which makes it easy to set goals that are too broad or too much of a stretch. SMART is a framework that allows you to establish goals in a way that sets you up for success. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. If you keep these attributes in mind whenever you set goals, then you’ll ensure your objectives are clear and reachable. Your team can use the SMART model anytime you want to set goals. You can also use SMART whenever you want to reevaluate and refine those goals.

Business Model Canvas Template

Leadership, Agile Methodology, Strategic Planning

Your business model: Nothing is more fundamental to who you are, what you create and sell, or ultimately whether or not you succeed. Using nine key building blocks (representing nine core business elements), a BMC gives you a highly usable strategic tool to develop and display your business model. What makes this template great for your team? It’s quick and easy to use, it keeps your value proposition front and center, and it creates a space to inspire ideation.

Tier List Template

A Tier List Template is a ranking tool that allows teams to organize different items into specific categories, or "tiers," based on their significance, quality, or performance. This template is a visual tool that aids in making decisions and prioritizing tasks. Use it to power your brainstorming, strategic meetings, and planning.

Scope of Work Template

Project management, Planning

The Scope of Work Template from Miro brings structure, clarity, and efficiency to project planning. It's more than just a template—it's an adaptable and dynamic platform that adapts to your unique project needs. Join thousands of satisfied users and make the Scope of Work Template a part of your project management toolkit.

RICE Prioritization Template

Teams use the RICE framework to prioritize the best course of action for their business. Using the model, you assign a RICE score to different ideas and tasks. This score tells you whether that item is something to prioritize. As a result, you make better-informed decisions about growing your business.

Kano Model Template

Desk Research, Product Management, Prioritization

When it comes down to it, a product’s success is determined by the features it offers and the satisfaction it gives to customers. So which features matter most? The Kano model will help you decide. It’s a simple, powerful method for helping you prioritize all your features — by comparing how much satisfaction a feature will deliver to what it will cost to implement. This template lets you easily create a standard Kano model, with two axes (satisfaction and functionality) creating a quadrant with four values: attractive, performance, indifferent, and must-be.

Eisenhower Matrix Template

Leadership, Strategic Planning, Prioritization

Have an overwhelming list of to-dos? Prioritize them based on two key factors: urgency and importance. It worked for American president Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it can work for you—this decision-making framework will help you know where to start and how to plan your day. With our template, you can easily build an Eisenhower Matrix with a quadrant of key areas (Do, Schedule, Delegate, and Don’t Do) and revisit it throughout the day as your priorities change.

MoSCoW Matrix Template

Ideation, Operations, Prioritization

Keeping track of your priorities is a big challenge on big projects, especially when there are lots of deliverables. The MoSCoW method is designed to help you do it. This powerful technique is built on a matrix model divided into four segments: Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t Have (which together give MoSCoW its name). Beyond helping you assess and track your priorities, this approach is also helpful for presenting business needs to an audience and collaborating on deliverables with a group of stakeholders.

Innovation Matrix Template

Strategic Planning

Visualize the best way to grow your business with this Innovation Matrix template. It’ll show you how to streamline your innovation, make the right decisions about which areas of your business to innovate, and manage the entire process. So if you want to figure out the best way to innovate in your business, an innovation matrix can help.

How Now Wow Matrix Template

Ideation, Product Management, Prioritization

There are no bad ideas in a brainstorm — but some are more original and easier to implement. The How Now Wow matrix is a tool that helps you identify and organize those great ideas, as well as reinvigorates your team to think creatively and take risks (a taller order as you scale). Grab this template to create your own matrix, then rank the ideas you generated in a brainstorm as “How” (difficult to implement), “Now” (easy to implement), or “Wow” (both original and easy to implement).

Bull's Eye Diagram Template

Diagrams, Project Management, Prioritization

When you’re a growing organization, every decision can feel like it has make-or-break consequences—which can lead to decision paralysis, an inability to prioritize, inefficient meetings, and even low morale. If that sounds like you, put a Bull’s Eye Diagram to work. True to its name, a Bull’s Eye Diagram uses a model of concentric circles to help companies establish priorities, make critical decisions, or discuss how to remove or overcome obstacles.

Action Priority Matrix Template

You and your teammates probably have more ideas than resources, which can make it difficult to prioritize tasks. Use an Action Priority Matrix to help choose the order in which you will work on your tasks, allowing you to save time and money and avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary work. An Action Priority Matrix is a simple diagram that allows you to score tasks based on their impact and the effort needed to complete them. You use your scores to plot each task in one of four quadrants: quick wins, major projects, fill-ins, and thankless tasks.

SWOT Analysis Template

Decision Making, Strategic Planning, Prioritization

When you’re developing a business strategy, it can be hard to figure out what to focus on. A SWOT analysis helps you hone in on key factors. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, like your employees, intellectual property, marketing strategy, and location. Opportunities and threats are usually external factors, like market fluctuations, competition, prices of raw materials, and consumer trends. Conduct a SWOT analysis whenever you want to explore opportunities for new businesses and products, decide the best way to launch a product, unlock your company’s potential, or use your strengths to develop opportunities.

Impact/Effort Matrix Template

Growing organizations have countless to-do’s and only so many hours in a day (or weeks before a big launch) to get them done. That’s where an impact effort matrix comes in. It gives you a quick visual guide to help prioritize your tasks and know exactly what’s worth doing. Using our template, you can create a matrix that organizes your activities into four main categories: quick wins that are low effort, effort-intensive projects that provide long-term returns, fill-ins that are low effort but low value, and time-wasters.

2x2 Prioritization Matrix Template

Operations, Strategic Planning, Prioritization

Ready to set boundaries, prioritize your to-dos, and determine just what features, fixes, and upgrades to tackle next? The 2x2 prioritization matrix is a great place to start. Based on the lean prioritization approach, this template empowers teams with a quick, efficient way to know what's realistic to accomplish and what’s crucial to separate for success (versus what’s simply nice to have). And guess what—making your own 2x2 prioritization matrix is easy.

3x3 Prioritization Method Template

Operations, Prioritization, Strategic Planning

It’s all about assessing a task or idea, and quickly deciding the effort it will take and the potential impact it will have—ranked low, medium, or high. That’s what the 3x3 prioritization method does: Help teams prioritize and identify quick wins, big projects, filler tasks, or time-wasters. With nine bucket areas, it offers slightly greater detail than the 2x2 Prioritization Matrix (or Lean Prioritization Method). It’s easy to make your own 3x3 prioritization matrix—then use it to determine what activities or ideas to focus on with your valuable resources.

Conversion Funnel Backlog Template

Decision Making, Product Management, Prioritization

If you’re working on a product that has clear conversions, then it can help to structure your backlog around the conversion funnel to make sure you’re reaching your audience. Creating a conversion funnel backlog brings together information around potential pain-points in your funnel and opportunities for growth. Once you’ve identified that information, it becomes easier to prioritize. You and your team can use the conversion funnel backlog to focus on conversion, retention, and referral, or to tweak your workflow in more mature products.

Outcome Mapping Template

Diagrams, Mapping, Project Management

Use Miro’s outcome mapping template to improve your operational efficiency. Outcome mapping will help you visualize all the possible strategic outcomes for your upcoming project, allowing you to see into the black box to identify any potential challenges along the way.

Strategic Group Mapping Template

Mapping, Strategy

The Strategic Group Mapping Template is a cutting-edge visual tool designed to translate the competitive landscape of their industry. By allowing users to plot entities based on distinct criteria, this template provides an at-a-glance view of market dynamics. One standout benefit of using this tool is its ability to identify clusters of competitors and market gaps, paving the way for businesses to strategically position themselves for optimal success.

Synoptic Table Template

Brainstorming

Reduce complexity and bring clarity to your teamwork with the Synoptic Table Template by Miro. Break down abstract concepts into clear, manageable components.

Idea Funnel Backlog

Design, Brainstorming, Agile Workflows

An Idea Funnel Backlog enables you to visualize your backlog and restrict the number of backlogged items at the top. In doing sos, you can prioritize items on your list without having to engage in unnecessary meetings or create too much operational overhead. To use the Idea Funnel Backlog, break up the funnel into different phases or treat it like a roadmap. Use the Idea Funnel Backlog as a hybrid model that combines your roadmap and backlog into one easily digestible format.

Target Audience Template

Marketing, Desk Research, Prioritization

Understanding your target audience is vital to business success. How can you market yourself effectively if you don’t know who you’re targeting? Using the Target Audience template, you can review valuable data about who your customers are and what they want from your product or service.

STAR Technique Template

Strategic Planning, Prioritization

Find out how to use the STAR interview method to identify the best candidate for the role. Interviewees can also use the STAR technique to prepare detailed and thorough responses during the interview.

Join thousands of teams collaborating and doing their best work on Miro.

IMAGES

Events
5 steps to successful assignment preparation
Making Math Workshop Work
$assignment workshop$
Workshop Assignment Day 4 UHV: Your Key Takeaways Today
Top 15 tips to Write a Perfect Assignment
Tutor Training: Pre-Workshop Assignment

VIDEO

BISHOP MC. MZONGWANA
BISHOP MC. MZONGWANA
Viggo Master Class 1st class assignment Eric Salas
Creative Design Workshop Assignment
Workshop Assignment Autosaved pptx 2
Allama Iqbal Open university Admissions Open

COMMENTS

A step-by-step guide to planning a workshop
This includes choosing dates and venues, drafting an agenda, creating a communication plan so that your workshop attendees will get the invite and join, populating a participant list, and refining your draft agenda into a detailed script. The Design phase in 5 steps. Establishing time and place.
Resources for Teaching Fellows
Teaching Fellows interested in discussing the role of writing in a course, setting up a training workshop, or developing writing assignments and guides should contact Dr. James Herron, Director of the Harvard Writing Project, at [email protected] or call (617) 495-5785. Harvard Writing Project consultants can help teaching fellows learn ...
Writing Resoures
Strategies to read and interpret your assignment's instructions and instructor feedback so you know what you're being asked to do, what your instructor expects of you, and how to apply it to your draft. "Decoding Expectations: Prompts and Feedback" Workshop Slides, September 2022. "How to Decode Assignment Prompts" Workshop Slides, February 2022.
What Is a Writer's Workshop? An Insider's Guide to Attending Writing
These are events where somebody leads a group of aspiring writers to critique and workshop one another's writing. Often that somebody is a moderately successful writer, or an aspiring writer with a teaching credential. Such a workshop typically lasts an afternoon, or a full day, or is run remotely over the course of several weeks.
Understanding Assignments Workshop Lesson Plan (Online Adaptation)
At the close of this workshop, students will be able to: ... Identify the specific goals of the classroom, and professor for which they are writing, as revealed by an assignment. Generate a list of writing tasks to respond successfully to an assignment, and in particular, be able to respond to the verbs of an assignment with specific, sequenced ...
In-Class Workshops
This workshop is designed mainly for 100-level courses. It is most appropriate toward the beginning of the semester shortly after students have received the prompt for their first formal writing assignment. The workshop encourages students to be aware of the conventions of academic writing and attentive to its differences across disciplines.
Assignment workshops
These 2-hour workshops are free to all Faculty of Education students. Bookings are essential. Available workshops. Reading critically and effectively; Writing assignments in Education; Referencing and academic integrity in Education; Oral and poster presentations in Education; Register for upcoming Assignment workshops
Section 4. Conducting a Workshop
A workshop, or series of workshops, is a way to introduce these in a short time and get people ready for the change. The initial training of staff or volunteers. Workshops are often a good way to train new staff members or volunteers in the philosophy, methods, and functioning of your organization, or in techniques they'll need to do their jobs.
Developing Collaborative Assignments workshop
Research indicates that collaborative assignments and projects can promote meaningful learning by inviting students to address complex problems while engaging the insights and perspectives of others. In this workshop, participants will develop an outline for a collaborative group project or assignment that they plan to deploy in the spring semester. Co-facilitated by Boni Yraguen (PhD ...
Assignment Design Workshops
Workshop 1: 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.: Better Assignments that Guide Better Student Work. This workshop will help participants design assignments that help students develop, apply, and transfer critical thinking, information literacy, quantitative reasoning, written communication, and/or oral communication skills (read more about teaching for transfer ...
Academic Skills Workshops
The Approaching Assignments workshop provides you with an overview of how to prepare and submit your assignments. The workshop covers the importance of planning ahead to get your assignment completed on time, considers some of the challenges that you might face during your studies and how to overcome them.
LibGuides: Library Essentials: Library Workshops & Events
Full workshops booklet - go here to find the times and dates for all workshops, including the Academic Skills Centre workshops (such as paraphrasing, notetaking, and understanding assignment instructions). The booklet also includes an academic skills drop-in session schedule: go to a drop-in session for quick help with referencing.
The Writing Workshop and Its Variations
(The method can also be reversed: workshop the problematic draft of an over-confident student to help them acknowledge and address its weaknesses.) Return to sources: Ask students to bring to class all readings or sources that pertain to the writing assignment. In the midst of or near the end of the workshop, have the class locate passages in ...
Writing Workshop: Helping Writers Choose and Focus on a Topic
This lesson, conducted in a workshop format, helps young writers bring greater focus to their writing. Students use a timeline to break a larger topic into several events or moments; then, each student selects an event to write about from the timeline. Students first work with a whole-class topic, then apply this strategy to self-selected ...
PDF Signature Assignment Workshop
Learning Objectives. A learning objective (ancillary goal) is a statement that describes the specific skills or knowledge a student will be able to demonstrate as a result of completing the learning segment. It must be an ACTION that can be observed. It must be demonstrated in an artifact that can be assessed or measured using a rubric.
Creating a library assignment workshop for university faculty
The workshop instructor exchanges the assignments between participants and asks for a peer critique. Depending on the comfort level of the faculty, the exercises can 40 The Journal of Academic Librarianship be exchanged and returned using names or a table/last initial coding.
How Do I Create Meaningful and Effective Assignments?
The assignments we give to students don't simply have to be research papers or reports. There are many options for effective yet creative ways to assess your students' learning! Here are just a few: Journals, Posters, Portfolios, Letters, Brochures, Management plans, Editorials, Instruction Manuals, Imitations of a text, Case studies, Debates ...
Library Workshops & Tutorials
Workshops are one hour in length. Workshops are held online (Zoom). All include an in-class assignment. Workshops start promptly. We suggest logging in 5 minutes early to make sure your technology is working. Students who are more than 5 minutes late will not be admitted. For attendance, we will notify professors after students successfully ...
How to Understand an Essay Assignment Workshop
Search: {{$root.lsaSearchQuery.q}}, Page {{$root.page}} {{item.title}} {{item.snippet}}
DSDM Guide
The Dynamic Systems Development Method ( DSDM ), its base was developed in the 1990s to meet the need for rapid business, but it was officially originated in January 1994 by a non-profit group in the UK, to provide an industry-standard framework for project delivery. Its first version got finished in January 1995.
What is MoSCoW Prioritization?
MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements. The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won't-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the "W" in MoSCoW to mean "wish.".
Prioritization Templates & Examples Miro
Bull's Eye Diagram Template. Action Priority Matrix Template. SWOT Analysis Template. Impact/Effort Matrix Template. 2x2 Prioritization Matrix Template. 3x3 Prioritization Method Template. Conversion Funnel Backlog Template. Outcome Mapping Template. Strategic Group Mapping Template.
Brass workshop
The Brass Workshop is a Moscow-based producer of items from metal and unique designer articles for indoors and outdoors. We create, to your order, various metal (brass, copper, stainless steel) furniture items for the interior: apartments, houses, offices, and retail locations. We also make small items (plaques, door handles, air vents ...

Design your next session with SessionLab

Recommended Articles

How to plan a workshop in four phases

Phase 1 – Vision

Sharing intentions

Defining the target audience

Drafting the initial concept

Signing agreements

Phase 2 – Design

Establishing time and place

Drafting the workshop agenda

Refining the agenda

Creating a communications plan

Establishing who will be there

Phase 3 – Running the workshop!

Assembling materials

Briefing team and speakers

Personal energy management

Going with the flow

Phase 4 – Learn

Following-up

Collecting learnings

Celebrating

In closing

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Design your next workshop with SessionLab

Resources for Teaching Fellows

Columbia College

Workshop Recordings & Materials

Planning and Preparation Strategies

Transitioning into UW

Essay Exam Preparation

Decoding Prompts

Juggling Multiple Assignments

Reading & Research

Close-Reading & Notetaking (with ODS)

Reading for Research: From the Outside In

Specifying Research Questions

Outlining and Drafting

Kickstart Your First Draft (with ODS)

Getting Writing Done: How to "Sit Down & Write"

Make Writing Easier for the Brain: Working Memory and Writing

Elements of Argument

Developing Claims

Introductions & Conclusions

Revision and Editing

Clarity & Style

The Core Curriculum

Understanding Assignments Workshop Lesson Plan (Online Adaptation)

For facilitators

For students

Summer Hours of Operation

Writing Studio

Please fill out our In-Class Workshop Request Form to request a workshop.

Brainstorming workshop

Revision workshop

Thesis Statements workshop

Using Textual Evidence workshop

Organizing Research Papers workshop

Writing Case Studies and Ethnographies workshop

Co-Teach Workshop Option

Important Considerations for All Workshop Requests

Search form

Chapter 12 Sections

What is a workshop?

Why would you give a workshop?

When would you want to conduct a workshop?

How do you conduct a workshop?

Preparation

Implementation

Substance of the workshop

Center for Teaching

Leave a Response

Quick Links

Teaching, Learning & Assessment

Location: CSUMB Alumni and Visitors Center

Workshop 1: 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.: Better Assignments that Guide Better Student Work

Workshop 2: 3:00 - 5:00 p.m.: Crossing thresholds: Helping students transfer intellectual skills across courses and contexts

Thanks for helping us improve csumb.edu. Spot a broken link, typo, or didn't find something where you expected to? Let us know. We'll use your feedback to improve this page, and the site overall.

Academic Skills Workshops