Course Content:
This course is divided into nine chapters, each one based on a different aspect of workshop design. The text is designed to be read from beginning to end, and a reasonably good understanding of the material presented in any chapter is required to fully appreciate the next. For the casual reader who only wants to review chapters of most interest, however, references to important points in previous sections are included where required for full understanding.

Chapter 1: Do You Really Need A Workshop? guides you through the options and decision-making process for choosing the right training approach to meet your learning needs.

Chapter 2: Developing Workshop Goals and Objectives presents a strategy for developing and sharing clear workshop goals and session objectives so that your workshop is relevant and can be evaluated properly once it has been implemented.

Chapter 3: Developing an Agenda into a Learning Experience shows you how to organize your individual sessions into a logically unified whole that relates all of the workshop elements in a meaningful way. It also provides several tips for ordering your agenda in ways that respect human nature and the natural rhythms of the workshop experience.

Chapter 4: Preparing Presenters and Presentations provides advice for preparing and managing visiting presenters, experts and other trainers so that every workshop session contributes to the overall success of the workshop.

Chapter 5: Choosing and Using Short Workshop Exercises introduces the concept of “experiential learning” and illustrates how an understanding of this process provides the basis for preparing and successfully running any type of exercise. The chapter also provides an overview of many short exercise types that are appropriate for use in workshops.

Chapter 6: Designing Role Plays and Skills Training Sessions explains the basics of designing and using role plays and skills-building exercises in an effective way, while avoiding several common problems associated with these type of exercises.

Chapter 7: Designing Tabletop Simulations provides an overview of simulation exercises that can be implemented in the workshop training room. It illustrates their uses and provides advice on how to design and run them in the workshop setting.

Chapter 8: Designing Field Simulations explains the advantages of field simulations over other exercise types and lays out the steps for their design, development and implementation. Many tips and tools are provided to help you efficiently organize and manage your own field exercise.

Chapter 9: Learning and Improving from Each Workshop emphasizes the importance of taking the time to develop workshops properly and then to evaluate every workshop event. Advice on designing workshop evaluations is provided along with some insights into the interpretation of workshop evaluations