The session will be workforce learning professionals (an ASTD audience). They will range greatly in terms of the kinds of organizations, their experience.
I'm trying to get them to think about the question "How might you use Blogs, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Collaboration Tools in your organization?"
I have a list of about 30 ideas, but I think it's useful to think about your organization, your specific context and come up with ideas for where these things might apply. I was planning to do this in small groups and then have them come back together in the larger group. But what I'm hearing is that this is not a good choice...
Original post ... Uh oh, I just saw a post by Donald Clark slamming the use of small group breakouts during conference sessions.
It’s a tired old fossil of a format.
The topic for discussion is usually some ill-defined, banal question, so the group spend a further ten minutes clarifying what’s expected. The time left is usually far too short to get anything meaningfully debated and agreed. Even then it’s often a random selection of thoughts, rants and personal beefs.
Feedback to the group consists of a series of disjointed thoughts, often weighted towards the thoughts of the facilitator. These are scribbled up on acres of flipchart pages blue-tacked on the wall, thereby ruining the décor of the room. The problem here is that this is hardly ever distilled into any sensible points for action.
You’re generally left feeling short-changed.
Uh oh ...
I was pulling together my slides for ASTD TechKnowledge and had planned to do a small group breakout and then have each group contribute to the larger group. This is not something I normally do. And I've certainly had some of the experiences that Donald describes. Now I'm worried.
Do I still do the breakout? Or is Donald pretty much right on track?
My slides are due Friday, Dec. 21.
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