Blog
Explore design & facilitation of learning
Call for Expressions of Interest
I’m looking for subcontractors who can support learning design and development projects on a sporadic, as-needed basis throughout the year, with immediate upcoming project-based needs. Specifically I’m seeking: senior learning/instructional designers with a graduate...
Learning is All Around Us
When I think about learning opportunities, I often think of the learning that happens in formal settings first. The workshop. The course. The virtual training session. But what about the learning opportunities that occur as we go about our day? What about the broader...
Five ways to give Design to Engage to your faculty or staff
My clients often buy more than one copy of my book, Design to Engage: How to Create and Facilitate a Great Learning Experience For Any Group, for their groups of faculty, facilitators or staff. Now is a great time to be thinking of whether you could do this for the...
The power of facilitation
A number of years ago I facilitated a meeting for an organization with which I was very familiar, to help them have a conversation about a certain area of their work. I led about a dozen people through several Liberating Structures, one of which was the activity...
Behind the scenes creating the Facilitating on Purpose podcast
The Facilitating on Purpose podcast launches next Wednesday, September 14 - woot! It's a podcast for people who design and facilitate learning experiences. Enough people have asked me about the process of creating the podcast that I thought I'd write about it. So, for...
Get ready for the Facilitating on Purpose podcast
I've been working on an exciting project for a while, and I'm very happy to let you know that it is almost ready. I'm launching a podcast called Facilitating on Purpose and it will be all about designing and facilitating learning experiences. You'll be able to listen...
A checklist for returning to in person facilitation
In May I facilitated a half-day workshop at a Vancouver-area college and it marked my first in person facilitation since the pandemic took hold of us all in March 2020. I was thrilled to be back in a physical room again and revelled particularly in the sound of...
Top Six Tips for Facilitating Virtual Sessions
I got a lovely email recently from someone who said that she has so appreciated my book because it's full of great ideas. She asked me if I would share my top five or ten most important points for people to consider when teaching virtually, which I was doing long...
Creating an e-learning course in Culturally Safe Advance Care Planning
As a learning designer I get the chance every year to work with great organizations to build courses on interesting topics. Every topic is worthwhile of course, but sometimes one comes along that also has direct relevance to my own life. This happened last year when I...
Hone your workshop lesson plans with constructive alignment
Recently I was working with a client in a 1:1 consulting session and we were looking at their emerging lesson plan for a 2-hour workshop. I noticed some misalignments between the draft learning outcomes they’d written and the content and activities they’d designed...
