Difficult Dialogues: Workshop

Opening Section ( approximately 15 minutes)

• Introductions: Each facilitator introduces themselves. Each facilitator's background information, preferred pronouns, and experience can be briefly provided.

• Context and Goals: Explain the reason for the workshop and the principles of the Difficult Dialogues, which are that deep listening and structured interactions greatly help us to understand each other better.

• Share: If there is time and the facilitator(s) feel comfortable, then it is beneficial to share a personal experience around the effectiveness of the workshop material. 

• Propose Group Agreements: Propose to the group some basic agreements that have worked in the past. The group can modify these by adding or subtracting from them, but they should be agreed upon by everyone before moving forward. Respectful communication cannot occur without every person's consent, so if the group cannot come to a consensus on the agreements, then the workshop should not be ended. Basic agreements are listed below. 

  • We will speak for ourselves and from our own experience.

  • We will not criticize the views of other participants or attempt to persuade them.

  • We will listen with resilience, “hanging in” when what is said is hard to hear

  • We will participate within the time frames suggested by the facilitator.

  • We will not interrupt except to indicate that

Core Content Section (approximately 1 hour)

• Warm-Up Activity (15 min for activity and 5 min for reflection): The first activity should be something that activates the participants' memories, feelings, and thoughts on the topic of the workshop. Often this can be done by asking them to reflect on a past experience, and then these can be collected through a whiteboard or a Jamboard (or something similar) if online. A good time frame is to allow 15 minutes for the activity and 5 minutes for reflection. The first activity of the SSM workshop asks participants to reflect on past experiences, one positive and one difficult, and to provide specific examples.

• First Main Activity (30 min): The main activity is where new learning is introduced. Now that the participants are emotionally and mentally focused on the topic, the facilitators can present them with new ways of thinking about these types of situations and techniques for successfully managing them.  

  • Explain the basic material, in this case ground rules (5 min). Explain what they are and how they are created and implement. Share examples. Do not spent too much time on explaining.

  • Break the participants into small working groups and assign them a task (10 min). In this case, the task was to create model ground rules for FYS studio hour.

  • Discuss as a group (5 min). Review what each group developed, in this case ground rules. The facilitator(s) should make sure that key points are highlighted during this discussion if the groups missed some of them.

  • Practice (8 min): All activities that introduce new materials and ideas should incorporate time for practicing them. This can be done through role-playing, but in this case the facilitators used a “collectively create” model, in which participants practiced making ground rules as a group by coming up with methods for introducing them to FYS studio hour. 

  • Summary (2 min): Finish the activity by summarizing key points. 

• Second Main Activity (30 min): The second activity should complement the first. They should both be tried together conceptually and expand in different ways on the same basic idea. In this case, the second activity was on the topic of what to do if a conflict arises in spite of ground rules. This was explored using the PAIRS model (Pan, Ask, Interrupt, Relate, Share). The second activity follows the basic format of the first activity, although slight adjustments can be made for timing, and a different practice activity should be used so that the participants have a range of experiences.

  • Explain the PAIRS concept (5 min). The time frame in the script file assigns 20 minutes to these first two steps, but it does not make clear that most of the time should be spent on the second step in a group interactive discussion of each step.

  • Interactively discuss each step as a group (13 min). For each step, the participants should come up with examples from their experiences after the facilitator(s) present them. 

  • Practice (10 min): For this activity role-playing was used for the practice portion of the activity. The role-play scenarios that were given to the participants for this activity were:

    • Scenario 1: SSM with student who has camera on

    • Scenario 2: SSM with student who has camera off

    • Scenario 3: SSM with professor

  • Summary (2 min): Finish the activity by summarizing key points. 

Conclusion Section (approximately 15 minutes)

• Concluding Remarks (5 min): Summarize the most important ideas from the workshop. 
• Questions and Answers (5 min): It is a good idea to leave some time for participants to ask question activity.
• Feedback (5 min): This is a good time to administer any survey while the material is still fresh in everyone's minds.