20 Facilitation Toolkit Activities
Full list of facilitation toolkit activities that can be used to build facilitation skills
Dear collaborative discussion friends,
This week we are sharing the full list of 20 facilitation toolkit activities for easy reference. These activities can be used to help support facilitation skills. All the activities in the toolkit have an activity key that indicates the level of the activity (beginner or advanced) and other characteristics using icons. Activities that help build facilitation skills are denoted with the following icon.
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20 facilitation toolkit activities that can help support facilitation skills
1) Activity 1.1 What is Collaborative Learning?
Activity 1.1 What is Collaborative Learning? It is said that, “the many are smarter than the few,” but under what conditions? This activity encourages participants to reflect upon their own collaborative successes and failures for the purpose of determining which factors help to achieve effective collaboration.
2) Activity 1.2 Developing Collaborative Perspective
Activity 1.2 Developing Collaborative Perspective. This activity opens up the conversation and makes visible the need to gain a broader perspective of issues in order to effectively explore and address them. What we individually know and experience is important, what we can’t see is just as important in understanding a complex issue.
3) Activity 1.3 Anticipating Conflict and Forming Group Guidelines
Activity 1.3 Anticipating Conflict and Forming Group Guidelines. This activity empowers group members to anticipate potential conflict in group discussions and create guidelines that will address these concerns and bring out the best characteristics of the group.
4) Activity 1.5 The Role of Values in Collaborative Discussion
Activity 1.5 The Role of Values in Collaborative Discussion. This activity encourages participants to reflect upon and identify their personal values and to explore the role that values play in group discussions.
5) Activity 1.6 Understanding Values in Context
Activity 1.6 Understanding Values in Context. This activity highlights how the ordering of values can change according to context. Often, discussion groups are not in conflict over the existence of specific values, but they are in tension about how these values are ordered differently for different discussants.
6) Activity 1.7 Taking Inventory of Collaboration Skills
Activity 1.7 Taking Inventory of Collaboration Skills. This activity introduces key collaborative discussion skills and invites participants to reflect upon their own skill development. Participants have the option of working in small groups to support one another in skill development. The survey can also help facilitators support individual or group needs.
7) Activity 1.8 Evaluating Your Discussion Style
Activity 1.8 Evaluating Your Discussion Style. This activity is designed to help discussion participants reflect on their own styles and needs during a discussion. It can also serve as pre-discussion preparation for facilitators. The survey can help facilitators better understand and support individual and/or group needs.
8) Activity 2.1 Promoting Curiosity
Activity 2.1 Promoting Curiosity. This activity illustrates how curiosity can be enhanced by the use of prompts to exercise the mind. These prompts are designed to explore dimensions of an issue which may not be evident upon initial review.
9) Activity 2.6 Building on the Ideas of Others
Activity 2.6 Building on the Ideas of Others. Improvisational comedy has developed a rule of thinking which is called “Yes, and ….” The idea is that you accept what is said and then you add to it. The “yes” confirms the other speaker while the “and” builds on the idea. This process can create an environment of collaboration rather than competition.
10) Activity 3.1 Critical Thinking in Discussions
Activity 3.1 Critical Thinking in Discussions. We often associate the practice of critical thinking with reading and examining text. How do we practice critical thinking in real time while actively engaging in dialogue with others? This activity is an adaptation of the CLUE approach and designed to encourage critical dialogue.
11) Activity 3.5 Seeking Divergent Thinking
Activity 3.5 Seeking Divergent Thinking. This activity describes how to systematically examine a topic from a multi-dimensional approach. It encourages divergent thinking by asking participants to generate different questions and viewpoints about a single area of concern, deepening appreciation for complexity.
12) Activity 3.8 Mapping Complexity
Activity 3.8 Mapping Complexity. Complicated issues can overwhelm a discussion group. Discussants can feel daunted by the complexity of a topic or they can rush to a conclusion without fully exploring its complexity. Both approaches fail to constructively engage the topic. This activity introduces tools for mapping complexity.
13) Activity 4.5 Nurturing Intentional Empathy
Activity 4.5 Nurturing Intentional Empathy. This activity helps participants practice intentional empathy by viewing a situation from someone else’s perspective and diving deeper into what they are thinking and feeling.
14) Activity 4.6 Asking Questions to Promote Curiosity
Activity 4.6 Asking Questions to Promote Curiosity. This activity focuses attention on the intentionality of asking questions. A good question can help promote a rich and meaningful discussion and goes beyond talking “on the surface”.
15) Activity 4.7 Recognizing Power Imbalances in Decision Making
Activity 4.7 Recognizing Power Imbalances in Decision Making. This activity makes visible the ways in which power works in society but more particularly, in the context of joint decision-making. It examines how power reinforces stereotypes, but it also offers opportunities to challenge traditional power dynamics.
16) Activity 4.8 Expressing Beliefs with Confidence & Humility
Activity 4.8 Expressing Beliefs with Confidence & Humility. This activity helps participants develop strategies for better expressing their ideas in group settings with confidence but, also, humility. Participants will practice how to respond to disagreement productively and learn persistent but non-threatening discussion practices.
17) Activity 5.1 Identifying Your Civic Passion
Activity 5.1 Identifying Your Civic Passion. This activity provides an opportunity for participants to reflect on which civic issues are most important to them individually and how they might negotiate or advocate for these issues within a larger group. It uses a playful, competitive model to get groups thinking together.
18) Activity 5.2 Developing an Awareness of Stakeholders
Activity 5.2 Developing an Awareness of Stakeholders. This activity is designed to help participants think deeply and methodically about who has a stake in the conversation and should be included at the table. It expands thinking and encourages greater inclusivity.
19) Activity 5.3 Identifying Your Communities
Activity 5.3 Identifying Your Communities. This activity opens up the conversation and makes visible the many different understandings of the term “community.” Its meaning is often taken for granted. Participants also explore how they feel in relation to certain communities or how they exclude certain people from communities they are a part of.
20) Activity 5.4 Seeing Communities as Partners
Activity 5.4 Seeing Communities as Partners. This activity helps participants think of communities as partners, rather than recipients of funding, information, or external expertise. Instead of seeing them as having problems that "we'' need to solve, it enables participants to see a community’s existing assets and capacities to solve problems.
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Looking forward to collaborating,
Ritu Thomas & the Collaborative Discussion Team