Workshop Design
Definition
Workshop design is the planning discipline that precedes facilitation in the room — the choice of objective, the structuring of time and energy across the session, the selection and sequencing of methods, and the material preparation (room, materials, handouts, pre-work) that makes a workshop run.
It is the difference between a workshop that ‘happens’ and one that ‘works’: the design is what binds the techniques to the objective and the audience, and turns a list of participatory exercises into a coherent arc that produces a concrete output by the end of the session.
Practitioner guides (CLACSO’s Talleres de Capacitación manual, the ALFORJA technique catalogue, the IAFREP / ICAZ training-of-trainers curriculum) treat the designer’s first question as what should the participants be able to do or know at the end of this session that they cannot do or know now — every other design choice is downstream of that question.
Full page: [[workshop-design]]. [source: workshop-design] [source: clacso-talleres-capacitacion]
FAQ
What is workshop design?
Workshop design is the planning discipline that precedes facilitation in the room — the choice of objective, the structuring of time and energy across the session, the selection and sequencing of methods, and the material preparation (room, materials, handouts, pre-work) that makes a workshop run. The full-page version of this definition lives on [[workshop-design]].
What is the difference between a workshop that happens and one that works?
It is the difference between a workshop that happens and one that works: the design is what binds the techniques to the objective and the audience, and turns a list of participatory exercises into a coherent arc that produces a concrete output by the end of the session. The design is the binding step that the in-room facilitation cannot compensate for.
What is the designer’s first question?
Practitioner guides (CLACSO’s Talleres de Capacitación manual, the ALFORJA technique catalogue, the IAFREP / ICAZ training-of-trainers curriculum) treat the designer’s first question as what should the participants be able to do or know at the end of this session that they cannot do or know now — every other design choice is downstream of that question [source: clacso-talleres-capacitacion].
Why is the end-state question the designer’s first question?
The end-state question is first because it makes every other design choice answerable. Without a clear end state, the choice of methods, the time budget, the materials, and the room setup are all arbitrary; with a clear end state, the methods are chosen because they produce the end state, the time is budgeted because the methods need it, and the materials are prepared because the methods use them.