Last week's session at the IBLC (University of Hertfordshire) went well. I did a session with Rachel Forsyth and Marianne Sheppard called "Winning Hearts and Minds: tools and techniques to engage staff in curriculum change initatives".
More than 40 people took part and "gamely" tried out the Greenwich's "Snakes & Ladders" Interactive Workshop Tool and MMU's “Accreditation” game activity.
It was a whistle stop introduction to the activity, since they only had 30 mins to try it out. Even so the feedback was extremely helpful and generally positive.
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| Group 1 Activity Output |
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| Group 2 Activity Output |
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| Group 3 Activity Output |
It is clear that the Interactive Workshop Formula developed by Sally Alsford and Claire Eustance is proving to be an effective tool for getting people talking (my particular area of interest being to facilitate "creative conversations") and also as a means to convey and demonstrate how induction/transition cannot be a one off activity in the first week (Sally's area of expertise).
Contrary to some concerns voiced previously there were no comments along the lines of the “snakes and ladders” metaphor being a trifle "childish". Participants were also really interested in thinking about how it could be used in other contexts. Again the suggestion came up about post it notes, so all in all pretty positive.
Guidance on the tools with templates are (or will be) available (shortly) on JISC's Design Studio:
