Learn on the job

Drag And Drop

Provide lots of support for your group as they plan their activity, then leave them completely alone to carry it. This strategy ensures that your participants create a good plan they all agree on before undertaking their learning activity, and gives them confidence that the plan can succeed. When they do succeed, the lack of intervention from you during the task will help them feel they did it themselves. Be aware, however, that if you are a significant part of the planning and your participants fail their task, you run the risk of being blamed.

The Questioner

Interact with the group by only using questions. As frustrating as it may be for your participants initially, by only asking questions when you interact with them, you force them to think for themselves, and empower them to solve problems while still being able to provide guidance.

In addition, by asking carefully timed questions with care, you can ‘steer’ the activity without the participants feeling like you are interfering. Asking good questions is a skill that every educator should cultivate.

Hidden Agendas

Give each member of the group a hidden goal to achieve alongside the learning activity. In the real world, it is common for people to have personal or hidden agendas alongside whatever task they are publicly trying to complete. By giving your participants their own, secret personal goals as well as the overall group goal, they can practise looking for solutions that satisfy both. The goals could be competing to introduce challenges, or they could be complementary and used to ensure the participant focuses on a particular area that would be beneficial to them.

Islands Of Safety

Allow chaos between controlled points. If you are starting from a tightly controlled environment, it can be a step too far to give your participants complete free rein. By building in ‘islands of safety’ to the activity you can allow them to act freely between points where you take back control.

These points might be times or places, but in all cases they allow you to check in with the group, monitor their progress and give them new instructions. You must be willing to accept that there may be chaos between your ‘islands’, but this is a small price to pay for the controlled freedom it gives during the activity.

Instruction Manual

Have the group create an instruction manual as they learn themselves to help others succeed.

Teaching something to someone else is a great way to ensure that you fully understand it yourself.

As your participants learn a new topic or skill by creating an instruction manual for someone else who is learning the same thing, they are forced to think the topic or process through and to understand it fully.

Be aware that this can be challenging for participants who find communication hard and it can be time-consuming, but this strategy is very powerful with the right group.

SAM MOORE and TIM HUDSON are authors of Amplifying Activities for Great Experiential Learning, available at routledge.com

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