Beth Cougler Blom

This five-week online course is a practical introduction to design of adult learning. It grounds participants in theories and tools for design of face-to-face workshops and courses. All activities will be applicable to learning in organizations and will enable participants to translate what they learn into their workplace context. Throughout the course, participants will work on designing a lesson plan/agenda for a short face-to-face course or workshop and post drafts of their plan to course colleagues and the facilitator for feedback.

This Facilitating Learning Online (FLO) MicroCourse is a short, 1-week introduction to Design with Liberating Structures. This MicroCourse will introduce you to the basics of Liberating Structures and will give you an opportunity to dip into the FLO experience and leave with something practical that can be applied wherever you facilitate: classrooms, meetings, planning sessions, team days, workshops, and presentations.

Facilitating Learning Online - Synchronous is a three-week online course that is focused on developing facilitation skills for synchronous online learning. You will learn best practice strategies to plan for, facilitate, and follow up after synchronous online (virtual) learning events. FLO Synchronous will provide you with opportunities to see and learn from examples of synchronous online facilitation and, if desired, practice synchronous online facilitation skills in a safe environment. This workshop is designed individuals who would like to increase their facilitation skills within a virtual online environment such as Zoom or Collaborate Ultra.

This one-day workshop will explore a variety of activities for your facilitator toolbox that help build trust with participants and respond to energy highs and lows. Learn opening activities that help set the tone, closing activities that help a group finish strong, and in-between activities that support transitions and tricky moments.

Working with groups takes more than just booking a time to get together and have a conversation. It takes an intentional, planned approach and effective facilitation skills and strategies to support groups through the work they need to do. Whether supporting a group to vision or plan, engage stakeholders or make decisions, a facilitator can be a crucial and effective presence. If you are interested in working with groups as a facilitator, or currently do this work and could use some extra skills and strategies to ground your practice more fully, this workshop will help you get there.

Conventional structures used to organize how people routinely work together stifle inclusion and engagement, but there is a better way to engage teams in problem solving and creative ideation. Liberating Structures are a set of 33+ “seriously fun” activities which aim to effectively bring groups together in inclusive and collaborative ways. They are processes that can be used with groups of any kind. They support engagement, collaboration, and innovation.