• Introduction
• About this Course
• Some Background
• Propose your Topic
• Before the Workshop
• Key techniques
• Preparation
• Warm Up Exercises
• During the Workshop
• Working with Large Groups
• Documenting your Workshop
• Feedback and Evaluation
• After the Workshop
• Design your own Workshop
• Run your Workshop
• Improve this Course

About this Course

Working in the world of peer-to-peer education and free culture we often find ourselves working outside the confines of established institutions or teaching outside the traditional quarter or semester system of courses.

Increasingly informal and temporary learning spaces are being set up in many spheres. These include technology and open education conferences, counter-summits, BarCamps, hackathons and many other events.

The facilitation and planning methods governing these spaces are varied, however, the common thread that runs through all of them is an emphasis on collaboration and hands-on learning. Also, almost all of these events divide up learning into sessions which are considered "workshops" of one kind or another. Let's make the most of these spaces by making our workshops as good as we can!

This course brings together case studies of some great collaborative workshops that have been run in the past with an open invitation for you to share your own experiences with either running or participating in a workshop that worked well (or didn't). As we navigate the case studies, we will discuss and determine some common elements to a successful workshop, formulate plans to run workshops according to individual interests, and help each other in their execution - providing feedback and ultimately reflection on the workshops we run ourselves.

School of Open

This course is part of the School of Open because we cover how open processes contribute to collaboration and open resources and tools you can use to run your own workshop.

Organizers

This course is organized by Mick Fuzz and Jane Park.

Facilitation Schedule

You are free to go through this course at your own pace. For those who wish to join a group of your peers in exploring these topics, we will host a lightly facilitated version of this course during Round 2 of the School of Open which starts 5 August, 2013. Below is the rough schedule:

• 22 July - Two week sign-up period begins
• 5 August - Course starts. Review and complete sections 1 to 4 (not 4.1). 1st synchronous discussion session via Google hangout
• 12 August - Review sections 4.1 to 4.4. 2nd synchronous discussion session via Google hangout
• 19 August - Review sections 4.5 to 4.7
• 26 August - Review and complete sections 5 to 6. 3rd synchronous discussion session via Google hangout

Communication tools

How will we communicate with each other? See Communicating in this course on the left.

Credits, resources and licences

All materials are released under a CC BY-SA licence unless otherwise stated. Many thanks to Seeds for Change, Aspiration Tech for providing their resources under open licences.