We were recently reflecting on a project that we worked on with a small company a few years ago and thought we’d share the brief story here, because it illustrates the type of consulting we love to do with organizations.
A company approached us to help their staff improve the design and facilitation of their virtual workshops. The project began with a three-hour workshop we facilitated, titled Creating Effective Virtual Learning Experiences. Afterward, we provided 1:1 consulting with each of five staff members to offer personalized support for the virtual workshops they were designing.
Initially, the staff members relied heavily on a “telling” approach—presenting lots of information but offering little engagement. Their sessions were more focused on delivering content than creating an interactive learning environment. Through our consulting, we helped them shift their focus to defining measurable learning outcomes and incorporating activities that actively involved participants in achieving those outcomes.
This shift—from simply telling to truly facilitating—resulted in a more participatory experience for their learners. By designing sessions that required participants to engage with the material, they were better positioned to foster the behaviour change they were aiming for. And you know what? They also designed sessions that were more fun!
One of the specific areas we addressed with the folks was their use of slide decks. Many of their visuals, while aesthetically pleasing, were unrelated to the content. We encouraged them to include only meaningful, content-related images and to be intentional in their use. Additionally, we helped them reduce their reliance on slides overall and advised them to move away from filling slides with bulleted content to present at participants. Instead, we encouraged them to design slides that supported interactive discussions and activities, making the content more engaging and relevant.
The most impactful change came from their understanding of learning outcomes. Once they recognized how powerful outcomes were for guiding their design, they were able to cut out a lot of unnecessary content that didn’t align with their goals. This streamlined their sessions, making them more relevant and interactive for their audience.
In the end, the staff came away with a new approach to virtual workshop design—one that emphasized interactivity, relevance, and meaningful engagement with their participants. Overall, we taught them how to “design to engage”—and it’s not a coincidence that that’s the title of Beth’s book!
Want to dive deeper into a couple of the topics mentioned in this post? Read Using Images Effectively or Designing Effective Slide Decks with Pain BC for more tips.
