- Time: 1.5 - 2 hours
- Participants: 4-100
- Difficulty: Medium
- Facilitators: 1+
Objectives
- Develop Learner-Centered Designs: Participants will design workshops that are fully aligned with learner needs, motivations, and outcomes by applying backward design and creating detailed learner personas.
- Effectively Manage Cognitive Load: Using the Workshop Design Canvas participants will design workshops that minimize extraneous cognitive load, organizing information in manageable chunks and integrating multimodal learning approaches (e.g., visual and verbal) to enhance memory retention.
- Incorporate Differentiated Learning and Feedback Mechanisms: Participants will integrate differentiated learning strategies to meet diverse learner needs and create formative and summative feedback loops that provide actionable insights for learners.
- Align Activities with Assessment: Participants will align their workshop activities with assessment points, ensuring that all activities contribute to achieving clear and measurable learning outcomes.
- Create Engaging Learning Arcs: Participants will structure workshops using learning arcs that guide learners through key moments of engagement, ensuring a cohesive and impactful learning experience from start to finish.
When should this session be delivered?
This session is best delivered when teams or individuals are preparing to design or redesign workshops, courses, or training programs, with the goal of creating engaging and effective learning experiences.
Who can facilitate it?
This workshop can be facilitated by learning professionals, educators, trainers, or team leaders who are interested in improving their workshop design skills.
Facilitators do not need to be experts in backward design, cognitive load management, or learner-centered approaches, as these concepts will be introduced and developed during the workshop.
Materials
Voltage Control have created a video walk-through along with a downloadable PDF of the Workshop Design Canvas for facilitators to guide the participants through the design process.
Check out the template details including step-by-step plan with instructions, timings, printable schedule and more
About the authors
Douglas Ferguson
Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur, educator, and human-centered technologist. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play.
Erik Skogsberg
Erik Skogsberg trained as an educator, designer, researcher, and change agent, he brings significant teaching, design, mentoring skills from across higher education, non-profit, and industry contexts. Whether working with individuals, teams, or organizations, he helps people design lasting growth and innovation.
About the company
Voltage Control
Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops collaborative leaders through certification programs for product innovators, executives, consultants, and educators. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change.
We believe that you have the answers and abilities for the change you seek, so our experiences are designed to help you discover and unleash them.
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