Five facilitation tricks that you can try TODAY

Oh oh, it's a list! Don't you love when articles are lists?

Here are a few little facilitation tricks that I like to employ regularly to maintain participant focus and engagement. Most of these are straight-up classroom management 101. They work in most situations and are worth trying in any situation. Regardless, I'll explain in italics the contexts/settings I find that they may not work.

1. Move Around

This one won't work if you are confined to a stage or a podium with a microphone, or in a tight theatre-like setting. 

Are you standing in one place, giving a lecture? Are you physically able to move around, amongst those you are instructing? By god, move!

When I have to lecture, I always make sure to move around the room, sometimes to an excessive degree. It keeps them awake; they must continually turn to see where I am in the room. It also helps to convey a sense of excitement about what I am saying. They are less likely to check-out. 

2. Use proximity to your advantage

Elements of this one rely on a power dynamic. It might not work if you are teaching those who have more power or status than you. Although, it also works through peer pressure... so try it always.

While you are moving around the room, you may notice some talkers. Move towards them. Stand beside or behind them, and keep doing your thing. All (or most eyes) in the room will focus on the general area of the talkers. Two possible things may lead to cessation of the talking: 1. They'll think "oh crap, the instructor is right here, we better stop talking;” or, 2. Somebody else will say "hey you guys, I can't hear what he's saying, can you quit talking?" 

Besides silencing any pesky side-conversation, the use of proximity is essential when participants are in group break-out activities. You should be monitoring the groups and moving to the ones that seem to be floundering or off-task. You will assist teams in need and show the participants that you are accessible to help them.

3. Lower your voice to reel them back in

If you've lost control of the room this one isn't going to cut it. 

You had the group doing some breakout activity or bio-break, now it's time to shift gears, get them back together as a full group and provide some direct instruction. By all means, use a firm, loud voice to call their attention. Give them about 15 seconds to settle down. But if that doesn't work, if there are still stragglers and talkers, then begin instruction... in a soft, low volume. The participants who are ready to move on want to hear what you are saying, they will tell you, and they will tell the talkers to "shhh."

4. Get participants up and doing things together

This one is just the gold standard. If it’s the right format and venue then do it.

Don't just lecture!! Don't just give participants small, "discuss with the person next to you" moments. Get the participants up, out of their seats, and working collaboratively. They are not going to zone out if they have to move around and constructively work together.

5. Don't answer questions

Sometimes you do need to directly answer a question right as it is asked. 

First off, you don't have all day to run the workshop, you have a schedule, you need to keep it relatively well. You can't answer every question just-in-time. Tell the questioners, "that is a great question, can you write it down?." Have a set question answering/discussing part of the workshop via the parking lot strategy. 

Second, when you answer a question for an individual, it may only bring about an actual learning moment for that individual, leaving potentially the rest of the class behind. Furthermore, giving answers is not the best way to cause learning to happen in general, the learner must have the struggle of trying to find the answer. So, what you do is: "that is a great question, does anybody in the room think they have an answer?" Defer the question to the room. In this way, you have now engaged the entire class in the question. Even more so, you will hear participants give answers that may uncover popular misconceptions; exposing and correcting misconceptions is a very important part of teaching.

That's it. You get five for free. If you want more you must pay... just kidding. The key to instruction is flexibility and experimentation. You need a nice bag of tricks to try in response to whatever situation arises; evaluate the situation, pick a trick, try it, assess whether it has worked and if it doesn't then try another one.