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I had a nervous feeling coming here to an empty padlet! Someone has to go first. I think it helps to seed with something.

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It is really difficult to facilitate a workshop that requires interaction and not a single person is interacting with you, except maybe the person who invited you to be there. There are many reasons for it, e.g. linguistic confidence when they aren’t fluent speakers of the language, or they didn't realize it would be an interactive session, or the question we ask is beyond their ability to respond to. How can we pre-design, design and intentionally adapt for this issue?

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Happens to me! Usually I have a backup internet connection to recover with, but not always! Sometimes I have a co-host, but not always. What can we do to pre-design,,design or adapt for this?

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Sometimes, despite carefully thought through agreements about ways of working together inclusively at the start of a session, one or two people start to dominate the conversation. What techniques do you have to alter the balance without dampening their enthusiasm?

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Whether the session has been amazing or slightly tougher, I think wrapping up successfully (where participants leave feeling both like they "got" something and are able to use/carry the session with them going forward) can be tricky! Building in some time to reflect, some time to plan or just time not focused on the central premise can get complicated. How do we honour the time we have to "end" the session in such a way that it feels satisfying?

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When I judge that someone may be oversharing

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When I judge that someone may be oversharing

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I was facilitating a class recently on 'somatisation' and misdiagnosis. One of my students spontaneously started to share very personal content about her experience of misdiagnosis in the large group. Her account was compelling

We had discussed "oversharing" and its impact when developing the group agreement. As the only facilitator I found this a little challenging. I was aware that no-one else was sharing their personal experiences. I could see that other students were very engaged but I was concerned about the impact of this on the student, who was sharing, particularly after the session had ended.

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I've been reflecting and realising that much of the facilitation I do is with learners who can't 100% commit to being fully present, however much they want to. They are often parents of young children or carers who are also working more than full-time and trying to squeeze some study into their very full day. One facilitator I work with always suggests in our community agreement that in our time together we will try to be as present as possible but also try to have 'soft edges', so that no one feels worried that it's too late to arrive or anxious about rejoining if they are called away for a while.

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Questioning the effectiveness of one-off workshops

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Questioning the effectiveness of one-off workshops

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This may not be a facilitation challenge per se, but when I have gone through phases of requests to offer online workshops to groups, I have sometimes doubted the efficacy of the whole undertaking. Meaning, what can I and participants (who may or may not be previously acquainted with each other), create in the space of an hour or 90 minutes that can actually build capacity or bolster knowledge? How effective can a one-off workshop be?

Knowing this to be a potential pitfall, I learned early on to ask organizers how my session will be connected to their larger goals, initiatives and programmed learning opportunities. I try to ensure that the time that I spend with participants is connected to further and previous learning. That way, at least, I can emphasize the role of process in addressing any topic or theme and make clear to participants that I am only offering a tiny sliver of experience informed by many other perspectives and voices.

Maybe the facilitation challenge is actually saying yes to an opportunity too quickly, before gaining clarity about the goals and intentions of the organizers.

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Injecting facilitation techniques into my teaching. 

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Injecting facilitation techniques into my teaching. 

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I teach a Hearing Science class in the fall. It is somewhat dry material with a lot of math and physics. Last fall was my first time teaching it and it was difficult keeping the students engaged. Very interested in learning/adopting facilitation techniques into my classroom teaching.

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There are various flavors (including facilitator connection issues in another note), but I'm thinking of all those moments when technical difficulties work to dominate the gathering, like an inability to share screens/slides or someone having audio issues. Technical difficulties can be especially disrupting if too much time ends up being devoted to these issues. Having options can help, for example: Having someone else who can share screens/slides, or providing a link to them, or being prepared to present without slides/screensharing. Having someone dedicated to helping participants solve technical difficulties one-on-one so it doesn't take over the whole gathering.

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While we may not encounter them in MYFest, there are also issues that happen in face-to-face contexts (some of which may also happen virtually). Audio can sometimes be more challenging in person as there may not be sufficient amplification, one may not be able to mute disruptive noise, alternatives like captioning may not be available. The meeting place might be too hot/cold/windy/large/small/inaccessible, or not be set up to facilitate the gathering as designed (eg, no whiteboards/equivalent, chairs bolted to the floor).