Last month our team reconnected with our Denver Public Library ideaLAB collaborators at the newly opened Central Library branch. We gathered to share updates with each other from the last 6 months as well as a new resource for facilitators: Facilitation Cards. This blog post will focus on our experience reflecting on these cards together.
About the Facilitation Cards and Guide
This resource is a collaboration between the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium, and our Creative Communities research group at CU Boulder as part of the Facilitating Computational Tinkering project. As the guide points out, this resource was created because as a group we all care about creating spaces where young people:
feel safe and seen
feel empowered to express personally meaningful ideas
can see themselves as creators
This card deck was created for facilitators in informal learning environments to help start a conversation between facilitators across our different practices, perspectives and unique journeys. The cards themselves are specifically designed around practices that promote feelings of belonging for participants in-person learning experiences where young people engage in creative, hands-on explorations with technology.
“The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.”
-Seymour Papert (1993)
In this guide we are also very explicit about the values that guide these cards, in order to be transparent about what’s most important to us when planning, facilitating, and reflecting on a shared experience. These values include dignity, agency and voice, connection, and the iterative process. You can read more about what each of these values mean to our team in the guide.
Sharing the Facilitation Cards and Guide with our Denver Public Library Partners
As this is a fairly new resource, we were excited to share the cards with the DPL facilitators in order to get their feedback and reflections. We distributed a set of cards and a guide to each of the facilitators sitting in table groups of 3-4 and gave them time to read through them on their own. Then we led a discussion around where the facilitation practices outlined in the cards fell across these dimensions:
Practices I’m comfortable with/use regularly
Practices I’m less comfortable with but want to work on
Constructive critiques of practices/ I have questions about/not sure
Practices I’m Comfortable With/Use Regularly
Right away we heard that the cards resonated deeply with the facilitator’s and their practice. One facilitator expressed that the cards helped put into words the expertise that they bring to their spaces, expertise that often goes unrecognized by their superiors. Specific cards that resonated included:
Experience the activity as a learner
Facilitators spoke about how this is always their goal. That engaging in activities themselves helps them to create better programming and is a great way to model exploration and tinkering in the lab in front of participants. They also mentioned that due to time constraints and staffing issues though, this is part of their job that might have to be foregone in order to cover more essential tasks like machine maintenance or assisting participants
Asking “What’s Next”
Facilitators shared how this is a key way that they get participants to keep building on their projects once they think they’re done, encouraging them to try out new tools or pursue more ambitious goals. However, some participants come in with a very specific project in mind and are not always interested in extending their project once they feel it’s complete.
Share appreciation for co-facilitators and others
All facilitators agreed that their co-facilitator in the lab is an essential part of what makes their work possible and that recognizing them and the skills and unique expertise they bring is important to them. They also mentioned how much they learn from each other, even though they might not all work at the same library branches. Being able to share practices and tips across locations helps them all improve their practice
Connect to learn
Finally, the facilitators spoke about how important it is to build relationships with patrons of all ages. These relationships result in people coming back, taking on longer term projects, and being able to act as a mentor to other participants in the lab
Practices I’m Less Comfortable With But Want To Work On
Facilitators shared a few practices that they felt they needed to be more conscious of including in their practice, or that they might improve on. Many of these cards are also reflective of their limited time and staffing that might make some of these practices challenging in the moment.
Make time for reflection (at the end or during the process)
While recognizing its importance, facilitators mentioned that this type of reflection often gets lost as they quickly move on to preparing for new programming
Inviting Feedback
The facilitators mentioned that it feels challenging to get feedback from participants on programming that feels constructive and actionable. In particular one facilitator mentioned how she is always curious what participants who enter the lab for the first time and decide to leave before making something are thinking, and how they might lower the barrier of entry to where someone feels capable of creating a project the first time they step foot in the lab.
Thinking out Loud
One facilitator mentioned how this was hard to keep in mind in the moment as she’s focused on problem solving for a participant efficiently but that she recognized the importance of talking through a process out loud in order to share in the learning together
Low pressure share- How to know what kind of sharing makes sense
Finally, facilitators talked about how sharing can look different depending on projects or programs and that they are still striving for options of what meaningful sharing might look like that isn’t a big time suck but feels authentic.
Constructive Critiques
Finally, the facilitators shared some of their reflections and suggestions for the cards that might be explored in future iterations.
“Invite participants to contribute right away”
A couple of facilitators agreed that this practice might be intimidating depending on the experience or comfort level of participants. They mentioned that sometimes they gauge first timers body language to see if it feels appropriate to prompt new participants to get started on a project, or share about what they’re working on. They’re hesitant about adding too much pressure and mentioned that just observing others working might be the extent of some people’s comfort zone during their first visit.
Another great observation included that some of the practices described in the cards felt more applicable for Open Hours/drop-in visits vs planned programming or workshops. One facilitator suggested that maybe the cards could be labeled to indicate practices that were more applicable for each of these settings in order to make the card deck feel less overwhelming.
Final Reflections
Overall we were really happy with how the facilitation cards and guide were received by our DPL collaborators. We heard exciting ideas about how they might use the cards, including as a resource to train new facilitators, as a reflection tool to help deepen the practice of their Teen facilitators, and as a tool for themselves to grow their own practice by focusing on one card at a time that they want to improve on. We’re excited about these ideas and look forward to hearing more about what they look like in action.
These materials are based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (2005764).