Prepare for the beginning chaos of group design!
Yes, group design is messy, it’s crazy, and it’s sometimes chaotic. I was reminded of this recently as I worked with a group of school librarians charged with designing a 2 hour in-service to teachers in their district about new technologies they needed to know about. Our first challenge was to figure out exactly what we were trying to do in the 2 hours alloted for workshop delivery. The organizer who had brought me in to facilitate the beginning of the process had a loose idea, but wasn’t really too sure. This was really for the group to figure out.
This is where that first step in the process – Needs Assessment – is so vital. I encouraged the group to figure out just who their client is and if this client was mandating anything in particular. Thankfully, a district level administrator was on hand and brought up on the web a high level document that that identified about 8 key areas of technology that teachers should know about. There was some of the direction that the design group needed to focus their thoughts.
Identifying a client and getting a specific as possible about what they need and expect is so often gives much needed direction to a seemingly wide-open workshop. I really encourage you to push to identify a client.
In the Needs Assessment step we also worked long and hard to find an over-arching goal for the workshop. What’s the workshop’s overall goal and purpose? The group began thinking of this as the title for the workshop.
These two things- 1) identifying what the client wants out of the workshop and 2) identifying a succinct over-arching goal for the workshop, takes a lot of time and energy. And – be prepared – it can be a total mess!
Since I was only there for the first morning of a week design process, the school district organizer I worked with emailed me to tell me that the first couple of days were “extremely chaotic� but about mid-way through the process everything seemed to crystallize. The group is now designing a “Tech Quest� for teachers to work through at their own speed. “Everyone will be on a computer and we’re going to introduce a topic, give them 10 minutes to do the Tech Quest, and then move on to the next topic.�
So have faith! Expect the chaos in the beginning but look forward to the “click� when everything seems to fall into place and the design process finally picks up steam.
Remember -- it all hinges on the Needs Assessment step so please give it the time and energy it deserves!