In this guide, we’ll share an effective ideation workshop structure and a heap of tips for running an effective ideation process, whether you’re trying to solve problems for users or simply need to create innovation in any context.

What is an ideation workshop?

An ideation workshop is a structured format for going from zero ideas to great ideas. Typically, an ideation session will follow a process that begins with defining the problem and brainstorming potential solutions.

After initial ideation, groups will then refine those ideas and begin turning them into well-defined solutions. Once those solutions have been presented and explored, groups will tend to end a session by choosing one to move forward with or committing to further research and exploration.

While the exact make-up ideation workshop will differ based on the problem statement, team and solution space, they will generally follow a similar structure to the below. Here, we’ll explain each stage in a typical ideation session and offer a little advice for each too. Let’s dig in!

User research and data gathering

Generating ideas without a good understanding of the problem you are trying to solve is a surefire way of creating an ineffective solution. The most effective creative process often starts with research and gathering data to inform the innovation process before the date of the workshop.

This can look like everything from conducting interviews with users, gathering and collate quantitate data, exploring the wider competitive landscape and more. We’ll explore this more below, but the key takeaway here is that you should always do some research before approaching any ideation process.

In some cases, you might even invite experts to your session so participants can ask questions before they generate ideas. In the Design Sprint 2.0 workshop, for example, the first day starts with a section on expert interviews that helps inform the rest of the session and provide a foundation for new ideas. These experts might be users, members of your target audience or simple those people in your team most familiar with the problem space.

Try and provide as much supporting information as you can to help define and contextualize the problem you’re solving while also providing valuable insights for creating solutions that will actually solve that issue.

Problem analysis and discovery

Once you’ve gathered all this raw data to inform your understanding of the problem, you need to make sense of it and set a direction for the rest of the ideation session. This can be as simple as creating a problem statement based on the findings, or opening up further avenues of discovery with the group.

The key here is that you and your team have a strong understanding of the problem you are trying to solve, even if the specific root cause is still elusive.

For example, let’s say you’ve created a fitness tracking app and your users aren’t renewing their subscriptions. What should you do? It’s likely that some initial ideas will spring to mind, but without first gathering insights from users, those ideas may not actually solve the issue and you’ll end up wasting time pursuing.

Then, let’s say you’re running a cross functional ideation workshop to help explore new ideas and create a solution. If you’re not aligned on the actual problem you’re trying to solve, it’s possible your teams diverge completely and again start ideating in the wrong place.

In my experience, a successful ideation workshop is one that moves between convergence and divergence at the right moments – get aligned on the problem you’re solving, but absolutely encourage your workshop participants to diverge in how to solve it, at least at the start of the session.

Ideation and brainstorming

This is the stage most people get excited about when attending an ideation workshop. The moment where everyone is encouraged to come up with as many ideas as possible in a free flow of creativity.

Typically, the facilitator leading the session will use their favoured ideation techniques or brainstorming activities alongside principles like no bad ideas, idea mash-ups and more to aid the free flow of possible solutions.

As discussed above, it’s imperative to have a proper grounding and alignment before you ask a group to generate ideas. It find it helpful to frame this as less of a (brain)storm raging in all-directions, but as a way of directing the group’s collective energy to drive a wind turbine. Focus and a general direction are your friends here!

Once that’s in place, let the creative juices flow but ensure you have thought about how those ideas will then be shared, discussed and refined. If in doubt, try a technique like The Six Thinking Hats to build this kind of feedback loop into your session with ease.

Clustering

This part of the ideation workshop is about making sense of the ideas generated so far, to begin noticing patterns and help set the stage for idea refinement. Typically, workshop participants will add their ideas to a shared space, perhaps briefly framing their idea and then together, the group will begin to cluster ideas together and make sense of where they’re at.

In some settings, it’s common for a facilitator to use ideation techniques like mash up innovation or a form of brainwriting to have a stage of early refinement before clustering.

Personally, the decision comes down to our understanding of the problem, the level of divergence in the group, and the time available. If the group requires a bit more warm-up, I might have them create 10-20 ideas in a first round and then ask them to do a second round.

On the other hand, if the group I’m working with already has a strong understanding of the problem and have perhaps ideated before the session, we might move straight to clustering after a silent brainstorm.

In any case, I’d always recommend having a clustering and sense making step before moving into refinement. The best ideas often come from a synthesis of others, and making the groups thinking visible can help facilitate alignment and excitement. It’s also possible to see that one idea or cluster is clearly rising to the top and so exploring that particularly solution space more deeply may be of interest.

Refinement

Remember what I said about coming up with ideas being easy? This is where you take all those first drafts and (potentially) horrible ideas with a seed of greatness and collectively turn them into something that will stick.

The refinement stage is the one most pliable to the needs of the group. Some teams will have a sticky note for each idea up on a board that everyone is encouraged to silently review before then undergoing a second round of ideation. In other teams, facilitators will put folks into groups to improve the most innovative ideas and turn them into something a little more concrete.

In our fitness tracker example, someone may have the idea to give people extra subscription time based on performance in order to help retain them as a customer. Okay, not bad. But what would that look like in practice? Could you take it further or refine it so that it matches your brand values and the specific problem statement?

While the ideation step was to get all the ideas out and share them with the group, refinement is about helping the best ideas rise up organically and beginning to turn them into something that you might deploy.

Depending on the group, you may run multiple rounds of refinement or even go as far as having groups start to build a business case or begin to scope the work necessary to deploy a solution. Often, the best bet is to refine enough to have a paper prototype, mock-up or clear vision you can share with the group, but not go too deep into implementation. Who knows – your idea might not make it or may be refined further down the line.

I think of the refinement state as taking a raw idea and transforming it into a potential solution. The aim is to shape, add depth and start to think about what that grand idea might look like in practice.

Presentation and voting

After the group has successfully refined their ideas, now comes the time to present them to the rest of the team. The format for this can differ based on the session you’re running and the nature of solutions you’re working with.

When we’re working on product ideas at SessionLab, we’ll often create paper prototypes and hang them up in a space that folks can walk around like a gallery, leaving comments and sticky dots on the bits of the solution they like.

On the flip side, if we’re ideating on strategy and marketing items, a stand-up presentation is often a better way to help everyone understand the vision, ask questions and then qualify next steps.

After everyone has had the chance to present and/or review the various solutions, now comes the time for folks to share what they think and give an indication of which solution they would most like to implement.

In some cases, this is a democracy, where the group will collectively decide which idea to implement. In this case, a method like dot-voting is a fast, proven technique time and again by facilitators running ideation sessions.

It’s worth noting that even if there’s a single decision maker, it’s a great idea to give the group chance to share a snapshot of how they’re feeling. This can help inform the team lead’s decision and ensure everyone in the session continues to be engaged and included in the process. It also helps get an early sense of the roles various folks might play in implementation too.

Decision making

The culmination of a successful ideation workshop is usually the moment where you choose a solution you’re excited about and that the whole group is behind.

Sometimes, making a decision is as simple as getting folks to vote on which they think is most likely to resolve what came up in your problem statement.

In other ideation workshops, you may need to undertake a more involved process of ranking possible solutions. You likely consider possible impact and effort while thinking through the ramifications of possible solutions in order to pick the best one to work on right now.

With our fitness tracker example, it’s possible that you have a great idea for radical new features and diversifying business strategies, but you simply don’t have the capacity to implement them at present.

As such, your team might choose a simple solution in the short term while beginning to work on a larger project. (An impact/effort matrix is perfect for this!) Making the right decision means taking a little time in the ideation session to think about what it actually takes to make those ideas a reality and selecting a solution that solves your challenges while still being feasible.

Want to go deeper? Learn more about how to effectively make group decisions in this post on decision making techniques.

Next steps and closing

So you and your team generated a heap of new ideas, refined them as a group and then decided on a solution. Super! An effective ideation workshop also ensures that action is taken afterwards and that folks are best positioned to continue the momentum of the session.

I find it useful to have each person say what they’re going to do following the session and set a date for the next check-in meeting. This keeps things moving and ensures accountability and ownership.

As with any workshop, it’s also valuable to have a check-out round where people reflect on the process, share what they’re feeling and provide feedback. Symbolically closing your ideation workshops can help participants shift gears, putting aside those bad ideas they were attached to or adding them to a backlog and creating focus for the task ahead.

Though these steps are not exhaustive, they do provide a solid structure for an ideation workshop that you can tinker with further. I hope it’s given you an understanding of what to expect in an ideation workshop and how you might approach designing and running such a process.

Specific frameworks such as the Design Sprint also include steps for prototyping and testing you may want to consider too. As with each of the points above, consider what will best address the problem you’re working with and what is most feasible for the project and group present.

This ideation workshop template from the Board of Innovation is also a great example of how to approach the ideation process with a group. Check it out for inspiration or adjust to your needs!

Why run an ideation workshop?

In my experience, no single mind is better than a diverse group of people at solving a problem. Ideation workshops provide a powerful structure for helping a group quickly come up with new ideas and refine them into solid solutions that will actually solve the challenge at hand.

Running an ideation workshop is especially great when trying to solve important, complicated issues that have no obvious solution. If you find that a problem keeps occurring despite your attempts to fix it or you have a business critical issue that needs your attention, that’s a great trigger for a workshop.

So in short: if an issue is important to your business and you don’t know how to solve it, running an ideation workshop will help you discover how to solve it, get buy-in from your team and give you next steps too.

One misconception I’ve seen is that ideation and innovation workshops are only suitable for product teams or for folks that are building and designing things. While it’s true that the origins of these design thinking frameworks comes from product teams working to solve user issues, their application doesn’t stop there.

In my experience, a (tailored) design sprint or ideation session can be effective even when approaching any complex issue you want to solve collaboratively. Whether that’s a challenge like low employee morale or complex systems issues and team conflicts.

While these frameworks aren’t quite one-size fits all, a skilled facilitator using a general ideation structure can help any group of people make progress on solving tough problems.

Tips for running an ideation workshop

So you’re running a dedicated session for ideation. Your room is booked, the right people are invited and you’re turning your mind to running the workshop and guiding the group towards the perfect solution.

In this section, we’ll share some tips and advice to help you and your group get the most out of your session. Not only will these help you in moment-to-moment facilitation, but they’ll ensure that you create a workshop structure and approach that is best suited to the problem space you’re working with.

There are no bad ideas (but there are irrelevant ones)

No bad ideas is one brainstorming rule you might have heard of. So what do we mean by bad ideas, and why are they okay? There are two main reasons:

1. Warming up.

Sometimes it’s helpful to think of ideation and creativity as a muscle. Before you go out for a big run or lift an incredible amount of weight, you warm-up and stretch. Not only does this help prevent injury, but it helps you achieve more during your exercise too. Not-so-great ideas are the equivalent of a warm-up for your creative brain.

This is also an extension of the quantity over quality principle. Don’t worry about whether they’re good ideas or bad ones, just get out as many as possible as quickly as possible in order to clear the way for better ideas to arise.

2. Creating a sense of safety.

The most effective ideation sessions I’ve ever been a part of have been ones where it’s felt safe to take risks, dream big and suggest something left field. Even if those first ideas that come out during the early stages aren’t perfect, feeling safe to suggest them helps the group go wider, think differently and keep moving.

In some groups I’ve also seen the term “negative ideas” used. While this can mean “bad ideas” it can also mean, challenging ideas, or ideas which upset the status quo.

Sometimes, those ideas which challenge us the most are those which present new angles and help create genuine innovation. Make it safer for the group to truly innovate and solve business problems by letting all ideas exist in the space without being too quick to label them as good or bad.

So “bad ideas” are encouraged, but where I try and guide the group more carefully is when it comes to “irrelevant ideas.”

For example, let’s say we’re running ideation workshops on the subject of our fitness tracking app. During that session, one of the attendees writes an idea on a post it and presents it the group that reads “Soda should contain less sugar.”

Is it a bad idea? Technically no, but it is an idea that isn’t attuned to the needs of this particular ideation session. We don’t sell soda. Our users haven’t told us that soda is a problem they’re facing. The danger of an irrelevant question is that it splits the groups attention and sends folks down a rabbit hole that doesn’t serve the problem space you’re attending to.

All that said, an irrelevant idea is less dangerous than creating a sense of unsafety. No reprimands or public dressing down, please! In the above case, I’d gently try and move things along, guide the group back to relevancy and restate the problem space you’re working with.

Choose a wide or narrow approach

A framing question I find useful when thinking about running an ideation workshop is “how clear is the problem we’re trying to solve?”

The answer to this question will determine everything from who should be in the room to the ideation techniques you’ll use in order to find an effective solution.

Let’s take the example of the fitness tracker app with low user retention. You’ve got some background data but you’re not yet aligned on what’s causing the issue nor how should you approach it.

The cause of that issue is likely to be quite complex and so the specifics of the problem are unclear. As such, starting with the wider problem space of low retention is likely a better approach than narrowing immediately to an assumption like “our user emails have low engagement and that’s why retention is low.”

In this case, I’d advise the group to start wide and explore the low retention problem space before narrowing towards a solution.

On the flip side, if you’ve already done extensive research and discovered that your user onboarding emails are a big problem that deserves the team’s full attention, then the problem is clear, and so you can direct your attention to working on that explicitly with a more narrow approach.

Once you understand your level of clarity on the problem, then you can best choose who needs to be present.

If things are unclear and you need to do some big picture thinking, enlist those people in the group. Getting into the details of your entire onboarding program and need to discuss creative ways to personalize your communications based on user data? That’s likely a slightly different group of people.

Narrow and wide approaches are both extremely effective, but you’ll want to ensure you’re deploying the one that matches your challenge for best results.

Clearly frame the problem space you’re working on

So we’ve established above that an ideation workshop can take a wide or narrow approach based on how much clarity you have on the issue. An effective ideation workshop is also one in which everyone is aligned on the problem you’re solving, regardless of their initial approach to solving it.

In the fitness tracker with low user retention example, you would frame either approach by saying that the the group will be working on the issue of user retention and then provide some supporting information. Why is this important? This framing ensures that people are focused and aligned on what to bring to the table. Without it, you might get great ideas that have nothing to do with the issue and find a lack of traction or shared understanding.

While you might have different perspectives on how to solve the problem you’re facing or even a different understanding of why a problem is occurring, but it’s vital the whole group is aligned on the core issue you’re working on. Think of it as a north start you’re all travelling towards, even if the route is different for different participants.

Having trouble getting to the core problem you want to solve? Try The 5 Whys activity to help a group go deeper and frame the problem space effectively.

Work on the right problem

It’s one thing to have everyone aligned on the problem you’re working on, but it’s also vital that you are working on the right problem.

Narrowing down to a specific problem too soon or making an assumption without exploration can result in teams working on the wrong problem and thus spend time creating solutions that may not actually help address your biggest challenges.

So how do you avoid working on the wrong problem? Depending on how your organization works, you should have a way for challenges and initiatives to be recorded and to rise to the surface.

At SessionLab for example, we have a quarterly planning session where we choose what to work on in order to achieve our company goals. In this framework, challenges go through a consistent process of validation, background research and consideration before the planning session and even more during it.

Aligning your problem discovery process with your company goals is a great first step, but beyond this, you’ll also find that creating a well-defined problem statement, conducting user research or doing a root cause analysis before or during the session is helpful.

If you’re taking a wide approach to ideation, try starting the workshop with an exploration what your participants consider to be the biggest contributors to the issue.

The Sailboat exercise is a fantastic example of an ideation technique you can use to explore a problem space with a team and narrow down to the right problem in an informed, practical way.

Do your (user) research and gather data

Good data and user research are vital for any ideation or problem solving process. They are foundational pillars you’ll use when crafting a problem statement and also when informing new ideas and the solutions you develop.

In many cases, user feedback and data is what triggers the ideation session in the first place. Whether that’s consistent feedback about broken features or data to show a consistent decline in new subscribers year over year.

Whenever possible, bring data and user insights to share at the start of your ideation workshops and to support the framing of your challenge. This can help ensure you’re solving the right problem and also orient folks towards the root cause or even start the creative gears turning.

Whatever you do, ensure you’ve done some data analysis or can rattle off a summary to help folks make sense of what you present. I’ve seen ideation sessions get derailed by vast swathes of data that isn’t actually relevant or which would have been better presented in the form of a summary.

It’s also important to note that it’s not always possible to source deep user research to inform every idea or problem. Some times, you actually need to move faster than data gathering permits. In these cases, having experts and well-informed, smart people in the room is a good stop gap.

For example, you might not have been able to survey dozens of facilitators first hand BUT you can bring your company facilitator expert into the session to provide insights.

The final thing I’ll say on data is that there are times in an ideation workshop where making a decision on two great ideas feels impossible without first doing some further research to validate some assumptions.

In these cases, create a focused research task to be done at the first available opportunity and defer the final decision a touch until you can get at least a little validation.

Document everything (and make it accessible)

In both my personal and professional life, diligently recording ideas and taking notes has been instrumental in making projects become a reality.

A lot of ideation techniques involve each team member writing ideas on sticky notes and then sharing them with the group.

Take a photograph of the completed idea boards or ask a note taker to record those that resonate with the group and any connected conversations. It’s unlikely that you’ll implement all potential solutions immediately, and so these notes can be helpful when a product manager needs to remember that one great idea that now makes sense but which you can’t quite remember.

If working with an online whiteboard board or document, this is especially easy. Simply ask all workshop participants to add ideas to the virtual board, drag in inspiration and leave comments for everyone to see. You’ll also find online workshop tools that can help create summaries or transcriptions of your online chats to ensure nothing is missed.

The idea of documenting everything also extends to using a parking lot to capture conversations and ideas that might be peripheral to the problem at hand, but are worth coming back to. In a tightly structured ideation workshop, it can feel important to stay on topic. A parking lot means that anything that comes up while running an ideation technique isn’t lost, and you can circle back to it when it’s appropriate.

Balance solo and group thinking

Ever been in a session where one person speaks for an hour before you get chance to contribute or even have space to reflect? Not the best environment for new ideas, is it? Round robin brainstorming techniques can be incredibly exciting and effective at producing as many ideas as possible. Be sure to balance these group activities with time for reflection and solo ideation for best results.

Solo thinking and reflection time is also vital for avoiding group thinking and giving time for divergence to really occur. Particularly in groups with strong personalities and loud voices, this personal time can ensure that all areas are properly explored and you don’t double down on a particular solution just because the boss like it.

1-2-4-All is a great example of a technique that helps balance solo and group thinking while also ensuring everyone in the group is able to participate and have their ideas heard.

Engagement is key

When everyone in the room is fully engaged in the process, it can feel a little like magic. One person suggests something that challenges a long-held assumption and something clicks. Ideas come thick and fast and people step up to take ownership of deploying the solution. Getting participants fully engaged in the process and the problem is a large part of what facilitates this outcome. So how do you engage your group?

A well-designed agenda with varied ideation techniques is a great start. Try using brainstorming techniques that encourage visual thinking and critical thinking alike so that people with a broad set of skills can take part.

Workshop facilitation best practices can also help create an engaging atmosphere that positions the session for success. You’ll want to ensure you guide discussions effectively, solicit input, create space for reflection and much more. For more tips on facilitating engagement, read our guide on how to run a workshop.

Conclusion

When you bring the right people together with a common purpose and an effective structure, you can create genuine innovation and solve tough problems. An ideation workshop provides the ideal structure to make that happen.

Whether you’re looking for the perfect ideation technique to inform your process or some advice for leading the group effectively, I hope this guide has helped provide some practical examples you can bring to your next workshop.

Looking for an example ideation workshop as inspiration? Design Sprint 2.0 is a tried and tested process you can run over 4 days, including time for prototyping solutions and validating those prototypes via testing.

Need help understanding how to put together your ideation workshop? Explore our guide on how to plan a workshop to start making your session a reality.

But how to choose the right workshop format to use and how to make the most of time spent together as a team? In this blog post, we’ll share workshop ideas ranging from corporate sessions you can use to make an impact in the workplace all the way through to creative activities you can use to engage participants at any workshop event.

When should I host a workshop?

While there are a near infinite number of potential triggers and workshop topics, the primary reason you may need to host a workshop will likely fall into one of these two camps:

1. You have a group of people together in one place and someone (maybe you) says “Let’s use this opportunity effectively and run a workshop!”
2. You have a specific, (often challenging) goal that requires people to collaborate.

While the specific circumstances can differ, I find this useful to think about when understanding why you should run a workshop, and what kind of a workshop you should run.

If you have a specific goal, this is easy. Whatever your challenge or task, a well-facilitated workshop that is designed to achieve that goal is a great way to go. In the context of this blog post, you’ll find different types of workshop that each have a goal in mind, whether that’s skills development or problem solving.

Using these sessions as inspiration for your next workshop event will help you move things along swiftly while benefit from the insights of experienced facilitators too.

If you’re running a workshop event that is not in response to a specific goal, this is a little trickier. Maybe you have a three-day company conference and have been tasked with running a workshop one afternoon. What do you do?

In this case, it comes down to thinking about the needs of your participants and the context that brings them together. Workshops are always purposeful, even if that purpose is as simple as having fun as a team and building bonds.

If this is you, you’ll find a heap of workshop ideas that can serve as inspiration below. In addition, it’s worth talking to your team, your managers and event organizers to determine what would best serve the group with the time you have available.

You can read much more about this topic in our post on what is a workshop and why you should run one.

If you’re ready to move towards planning your workshop agenda, check out our guide on how to plan a workshop which also includes a template for a series of client planning meetings.

Different types of workshops 

So now we’ve established that workshops are a powerful way to bring a group together and get things done and you’re eager to run one. Next, it might be useful to understand some of the different types of workshop you might run.

Whether you’re organising a session in a workplace environment, at school or as part of a community, each of these workshop activities can be a great way to encourage teamwork and make meaningful progress on your goals.

Before you jump into designing a session, we’d recommend considering this (non-exhaustive) list alongside your goals and the needs of your workshop attendees. By holding all these details together, you can select the right workshop format as the basis for creating an engaging, interactive session.

Whether you’re looking for online workshop ideas or an agenda for an in person event or hybrid workshop, you’ll find something fit for your needs here.

Added bonus, for most of these workshop ideas we’ve also included a ready-to-use, high-quality template for you you can look at for inspiration or even take as a guideline to base your next workshop on! Let’s take a look.

Corporate workshops

In a corporate setting, workshops tend to be used in two primary ways:

1. as an efficient structure for collaboration;
2. as an engaging format for learning and development.

There are many ways to use workshops as a collaborative workplace tool. You might run a workshop to create innovative ideas and solve tough problems facing your company.

Workshops can also be used to set team values, develop company strategy or effectively open or close an important project. What all these use cases have in common is a need for a group to work collaboratively on a common goal. Workshops provide an excellent format for structured work that encourages participation and shared responsible.

For example, a leadership development workshop can help aspiring managers develop the skills they need to lead their teams and build confidence. Similarly, a communication or public speaking workshop can improve how team members interact with each other and with clients, leading to more efficient and harmonious workplace dynamics.

By addressing specific needs and challenges within the organization, corporate workshops can drive significant improvements in performance and morale.

Skills development and educational workshops

While traditional lectures and teaching formats will always have their place, workshops are a powerful tool for learning. Educational workshops are designed to enhance knowledge, skills, and competencies by focusing on the latest research, trends, and best practices in various industries. Examples of educational workshop ideas include college workshops and industry-specific sessions tailored to meet the specific learning needs of the participants.

Educational workshops are particularly effective because they offer a hands-on, interactive learning experience. Participants can engage with the material in a meaningful way, ask questions, and receive feedback from experts and peers.

This approach not only deepens understanding but also helps attendees retain and apply what they’ve learned. Whether it’s a workshop on the latest technological advancements or a session on effective teaching strategies, educational workshops are a powerful tool for continuous learning and growth.

Creative workshops

Remember: all workshops have a goal. Sometimes that goal can be lofty and specific, such as in a strategic planning session or project retrospective. Other times, the goal of workshop events can be to simply create space for fun, memorable experiences with a group.

Creative workshops are interactive sessions where participants get the chance to practice and develop creative skills in a safe and engaging environment.

Examples of creative workshop ideas you might use with a group include art classes, music, and creative writing workshops. These sessions encourage participants to think outside the box, develop new skills, and build confidence in their creative abilities, all while sharing the experience with others.

For event planners, creative workshop ideas can be a great addition to a conference program, networking event or as part of a company retreat. At SessionLab for example, we always try to build in time for collective creativity during our team retreats, whether that’s an art class, pottery making workshop or even cooking together.

In our experience, the right creative workshop can also have profound effects on things like team cohesion, trust and general happiness. Especially as a fully remote team, we’ve found running a virtual workshop with the express goal to have fun and be creative as a group has helped keep our emotional batteries running high.

Corporate workshop ideas

Workshops are one of the most effective ways for a group to get things done. In a corporate environment, workshops can be used to help teams tackle workplace challenges, create innovation, learn new skills or even have memorable, team bonding experiences.

One misconception I’ve seen is that workshops are fluffy by nature, only for exploring creative topics and learning skills, and not for serious work. On the contrary, workshops provide a structured space for collaboration in whatever form is needed by the group.

You might run a leadership development workshop where would-be managers can share experiences, practice their skills and gain confidence as leaders. On the other hand, you might run a workshop to plan your yearly strategy or resolve an emerging problem.

It’s key to remember that workshops are goal and outcome oriented, designed to reach an intended outcome by engaging all participants in the process. If you have a clear goal and bring the right people together in pursuit of that goal, there are few things you cannot achieve in a workshop.

What’s more: workshops produce results quickly. Under the guidance of a facilitator, a corporate workshop can move things forward more swiftly than endless emails or Slack threads.

Here are some impactful ideas for your next corporate workshop:

Leadership development

Great leadership doesn’t happen overnight. The best organizations know that investing in learning and development is a powerful way to equip new and existing managers with the skills they need to lead their teams well.

Leadership development workshops often comprise a combination of training scenarios, skills development and peer support, all designed to engage new leaders and improve their abilities.

While it’s possible to teach many of these skills asynchronously, the experiential format of a workshop can help spread best practices, improve learning potential and help new leaders learn from one another as they grow. Interactive workshop activities can play a crucial role in making these sessions more engaging and effective for leadership development.

The workshop format also allows participants to practice leadership skills and techniques under the guidance of an experienced facilitator. Yes, a role-playing scenario might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but in the right format, it can help new leaders feel more confident in leading and managing their team.

Check out the leadership development workshop template to see what such a workshop looks like in practice.

You might also find our collection of leadership training activities helpful for building out a learning and development program.

Team building

Team building can come in many different forms. Happy hours, escape rooms and fun games can all strengthen relationships in your team, but you can go further.

Team building workshops offer a dedicated space for collaboration that helps teams practice and demonstrate skills that will also help in their day-to-day work. These can come in the form of group problem-solving games, collaborative challenges or even exercises designed to expressly deepen connections and help people get to know each other more.

In our experience, these kinds of workshops can help improve communication, create memorable shared experiences and build bonds.

Explore our team development day workshop template to see how you might effectively structure such a team workshop.

Have limited time but want to add team building elements into your session? Our collection of team building activities come in all shapes and sizes so you can easily plug them into an existing agenda!

Design sprint 

When you have a tough problem without a clear solution, a design sprint is one of the best ways to approach the issue. First developed at Google, the design sprint is a structured approach for teams to explore a problem and ideate, refine, prototype and test solutions.

One of the major strengths of a facilitated workshop is structure. When collaborating on tough challenges with others, it can be easy to go down a rabbit hole or spend time inefficiently. Workshop formats like the design sprint have been tested and refined by facilitators for years. By using the benefit of all that experience, you’ll instead be able to focus on resolving challenges and creating innovation.

Check out the 4-day Design Sprint 2.0 template by AJ&Smart for a ready-to-use method for solving tough problems. Want to focus on fresh ideas and brainstorming? The one-hour brain sprint template offers a self contained brainstorming workshop that is ideally suited to a short workshop event.

Diversity and inclusion workshop

Workshops led with the guidance of an expert facilitator can be one of the most powerful ways to explore emotionally charged and complex concerns. Promoting awareness and action on diversity and inclusion can help create an equitable and inclusive work environment, but it’s not enough to just update company policies and ask folks to read up.

Workshop events can be used to create a safe forum for discussion, help participants feel seen and heard and to give practical examples to the group. By dedicating time and space to DEI, you can ensure that it’s given full attention by participants and ensure complete understanding too. 

When running a diversity and inclusion workshop, we’d recommend that you bring in an external facilitator to help. The expertise of a skilled facilitator with dozens of DEI workshops under their belt can’t be underestimated. Furthermore, the role of a facilitator as an unbiased third party can really help create the psychological safety needed for such a topic. 

Project opening and closing

So your team is starting a big new project. Isn’t the best bet just to email all stakeholders and say you’re getting started? Nope. A workshop is an ideal forum for kicking off complex projects, engaging all stakeholders and surfacing potential issues before they arise. 

A project kickoff is designed to engage all participants in the planning process and ensure that work will be smooth once you get started. It’s a great place for everyone involved to air concerns, ask questions and get aligned. You’ll often end with a list of follow-up actions, check-in dates and clear scope for the project.

Closing a project with a dedicated workshop is also important. A retrospective workshop can ensure key learnings are shared, celebrations are held and that the project is symbolically closed. 

Kickoff and project retrospectives are two formats that especially benefit from meta analysis. Take the time to reflect on the process itself and improve how you run these sessions in order to make future workshops even more effective.

Read more in this guide for running project kickoffs or try using this kickoff workshop template as the basis for your next agenda. 

Running a retrospective? This retrospective workshop template provides a simple and effective structure to aid reflection and help team members work on concrete steps for improvement.

Strategy planning workshop

Working on company strategy is rarely easy. Companies have many moving parts, competing priorities and organizational needs. The process of exploring, planning and implementing a strategy is often best served by the dedicated space of a workshop. 

A strategic planning workshop typically involves a process of exploring possible strategic directions and tasks, discussing them in line with overall goals and then formulating a plan for implementation.

Getting your best minds in one room and following a structure such as this EOS strategy planning workshop can help ensure decisions are made effectively and that all stakeholders are able to contribute effectively. 

Templatizing your process is a great way to simplify and improve how your strategy is created and rolled out. At SessionLab, we run a quarterly strategy planning process that benefits from reusing a recurring agenda and a Miro board that’s been refined over many strategy planning sessions.

Learn more about how we approach this process at SessionLab with this guide to running a strategic planning workshop.

Company values workshop

Your organization’s values determine everything from cultural norms inside your company to your direction and focus. It’s not uncommon for companies to develop internal friction if these values aren’t defined or people aren’t aligned on how best to live and practice them. 

A company values workshop is designed to either define or refine a company’s core values. Your team will explore questions like: What does the company stand for? What is most important to us? How do we want to treat one another and work together? How are our shared values reflected in our goals and company mission? 

By dedicating time and space to exploring these as a team, you can help create alignment, improve team cohesion and create a set of core values you’re proud to stand beside. 

Want an example? Explore your team values and define how you want to work together in this team canvas workshop template.

Stress management and mindfulness workshop

Mindfulness in the workplace needs more than lip service in order to be effective. While wellness budgets and no-meetings Tuesdays can help, you can have a more profound and lasting effect on employee stress levels by holding workshops designed to help solve root causes and teach valuable techniques to your team.

Stress management workshops and sessions dedicated to mindfulness can come in many forms. You might teach time management techniques and provide resources for reducing stress and achieving a better work-life balance. Alternatively, you might host a problem solving workshop on the topic of workplace stress and discuss the various obstacles and opportunities for tackling the issue.

Remember that workshops are emergent by nature: even bringing people together to talk about the subject can have transformative effects on how your team approaches stress and self care.

Using a group discussion format like World Cafe to invite folks to self-organize and discuss what’s most important on the topic of stress and mindfulness can help whatever needs to surface come to the fore.

Training workshops

When you need to teach your employees important new skills, competencies or train them in the use of technical equipment, you’ll likely need to run a training session or distribute learning materials. While some concepts can be taught with a single email or seminar, important topics can benefit from the experiential learning environment of a training workshop. 

While classic training may be more passive in nature, training workshops are designed to be interactive and practical. Participants will be expected to get involved, share their experiences with other participants and learn by doing. Training sessions like these are especially effective when teaching softer skills or when it’s beneficial to receive instant feedback from the trainer or facilitator. 

You’ll find more on this in our guide to running a training session and in our various skills development workshops below. 

You might also find this training workshop template – heavily informed by Kolb’s learning cycle – useful when it comes to structuring your next training event.

Skill development and educational workshop ideas

The distinction between a training session and a workshop can feel quite narrow, especially in the hands of an experienced facilitator or trainer. While training sessions may have a pass/fail criteria for participants learning a new skill, skills development workshops are often softer in approach.

For example, if you need your participants to master a piece of highly precise technical equipment, that’s a training session. If you want your participants to practice various ways of giving and receiving feedback in order to improve their interpersonal skills at work, that would work great as an engaging workshop.

In this section, we’ll share some ideas for workshops where learning and skills development is the primary goal. These are extremely useful for developing individual competencies or helping teams work together more effectively moment to moment. Let’s take a peek.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict and friction can occur whenever passionate people work together. In our experience, conflict is often a sign that something is important and needs extra attention. What’s important is that people are able to express a difference of opinion without it escalating into an unproductive or damaging discussion. As such, it’s important that companies equip their teams with the skills to manage and resolve conflicts effectively.

Developing conflict resolution skills in a workshop can look like a combination of case study analyses, role-playing activities and de-escalation techniques. It can also be incredibly effective to work on building team trust or giving participants tools like active listening and self management techniques that can help ensure discussions are more inclusive and productive in the first place. 

Read more in our collection of conflict resolution techniques, which contains exercises designed to teach conflict management skills alongside frameworks for discussing and deescalating conflict.

Emotional intelligence in the workplace

Emotional intelligence is one of those so-called soft skills that is incredibly important to the functioning of any organization. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and understand the feelings of yourself and others and respond effectively. When folks are emotionally intelligent, communication is good, people feel seen and heard and collaboration is a joy. Without it, communication breakdowns occur, people feel misunderstood and it can be hard to get anything done.

Emotional intelligence can be broken down into distinct skillsets and techniques such as self awareness, self management, empathy, group dynamics and more. This self awareness workshop template is an effective session for exploring and strengthening this skillset with practical techniques. 

Want more? See this guide to emotional intelligence activities for more practical techniques and workshop ideas you can bring to virtual workshops and in-person sessions alike.

Decision-making

The ability to quickly make effective decisions is an important skill to master. In truth, making good decisions often comes from a composite of many different skills working together and the application of decision making models. Good decision makers need to leverage everything from critical thinking, root cause analyses and interpersonal skills when making decisions.

Running a workshop on improving decision making skills can have a profound impact on how your team makes decisions both micro and macro. Making faster, more informed decisions about how to spend your day and what to prioritize can often be as valuable as how to make a decision on company direction, for example. Such a workshop would likely be a mix of decision making exercises, advice on how to make good decisions and moments for participants to discuss and practice as a group. 

Explore possible exercises and decision making workshop ideas with our collection of decision making techniques. 

Running a workshop where you want to actually make an important decision as a group? This is an excellent idea!

Read more in our guide on how to run a group decision making process. You’ll find heaps of tips and structures that will help your group discuss and finalize even the most complex decisions.

The decision making workshop template is also an excellent example of how you might structure such a process.  

Effective communication skills

How we communicate and share information can have a profound effect on our relationships and the work we get done. Whether it’s for customer facing teams or for improving internal processes, an effective communication workshop can be a powerful way to solve issues and improve efficiency in your organization. 

An effective communication workshop should include a combination of activities designed to improve self awareness and clarity, as well as tools for giving productive feedback and practicing active listening. It’s common for workshop participants to also spend time exploring why misunderstandings and miscommunications might occur and discussing how things might be done differently in the future.

This collection of communication games and techniques is a great starting point for running a communication workshop with your team.

Simply adding an active listening exercise or feedback technique like What I Need From You to a team building activity is a great way of developing this skillset and improving team collaboration in your group. 

Storytelling workshop

Humans love stories. Learning how to tell great stories is helpful to everyone from marketers and customer support staff, all the way through to leaders and folks delivering presentations and pitching to clients. 

Storytelling workshops will typically combine group discussions, some expert theory and plenty of opportunity to practice telling our own stories. Personally, I find that starting with examples of stories that have stayed with us is a great leaping-off point that helps keep attendees engaged before leaping into deeper workshop content.

A storytelling workshop typically includes techniques for grabbing the attention of an audience, storytelling devices that help create a compelling narrative and some practice on how to use visual elements, sound and memetic tools to help your stories stick. 

For a taste, you might find this story building activity useful when kickstarting your workshop. Alternatively, this creative writing exercise encouraging folks to write from the perspective of an alien is a good example of how creative explorations can inform how we tell stories.

Facilitation skills

Facilitation is a vital workplace skill that can improve how we hold space and collaborate. Key facilitation skills like process design, group management and consensus-building aren’t just for professional facilitators. Anyone who runs meetings, workshops or collaborates can benefit from these skills, especially if they’re also in a leadership role. 

Running a workshop on how to facilitate effectively can get a bit meta, but it can be an invaluable sandbox for learning how to lead better meetings, training sessions and workshops. It can help folks collaborate better internally and also make client-facing meetings run more smoothly and effectively.

Explore this facilitation skills workshop template to start imparting these valuable skills and begin building a culture of facilitation in your organization.

Effective feedback

The way we give and receive feedback can have a profound impact on our personal and working lives. It’s quite common for people to be afraid of feedback and to avoid giving or receiving feedback altogether. The result can be missed growth opportunities, recurring mistakes and an inability to express how something has made us feel. 

Feedback workshops can help participants understand how important feedback is to personal growth and development while also developing techniques to help make the process easy and productive. 

This art of effective feedback workshop is a simple template that will help teams explore the concept and develop practical feedback techniques they can put into practice immediately.  

Looking for a self-contained activity you can add to your next retreat or team workshop? Check this collection of feedback activities for practical, effective exercises your team can use in a pinch.

Creative thinking and innovation workshops

Creative thinking is a powerful skill to encourage in both our personal and professional lives. In a corporate setting, creativity can be important to everyone from CEO to frontline support. It can help everyone see opportunities for innovation and give them the tools to solve problems.

When people tell me they’re not creative, I’ve often found that they mean “I can’t paint or draw” or “I’m worried about being judged for being creative.” Workshops designed to awaken latent creativity or help people realize how to apply their creative impulses without fear of judgment can be transformative.

Whether it’s in the form of brainstorming activities or creative workshops, remember that creativity is often generative, joyful and gratifying for those involved. That’s even before you begin to think about the impact of those innovative solutions to your business. Take the time to encourage employees to think innovatively and solve problems creatively and you’ll see results both micro and macro.

Check out this collection of creative thinking activities for inspiration that can enliven any session.

Looking for a deeper session? This ideation workshop template provides an effective framework for creating new ideas and creative solutions.

Workshop ideas for business events

Workshops can add immense value to business events, whether you’re running a conference or networking session. Some of my most engaging and memorable experiences at these kinds of events have been when I’ve joined a workshop with people I’ve just met and created something as a group.

Remember that workshops can be effective in many different formats. Putting virtual participants in an online workshop where they get to do deeper work and connect more meaningfully can be more impactful than any number of icebreaker activities.

As with all of the session formats here, it’s important for the event organizer to consider the needs and expectations of the target audience when choosing a topic. If in doubt, ask attendees what they want as part of the event planning process and maybe even invite them to lead a session.

Open Space Technology 

When you bring large groups of people together in a shared goal or area of interest, something special happens. Topics emerge, ideas are shared and its possible to create lots of momentum for change. It’s also possible that the session descends into chaos. So how do you create space for emergence while also maintaining enough structure to ensure action and outcomes?

Open Space Technology was originally created by Harrison Owen and perfected in decades of collaborative work by the Open Space Technology world-wide community. It is an event format when participants of a session co-create an agenda together. To begin, a general topic or theme is decided upon for the open space. Next, participants are invited to propose topics for discussion and host breakout groups who will come together to discuss and work on that topic.

Sessions will then be run in parallel, with a mix of people hosting, contributing and coming and going freely from different sessions. Open space is designed to be emergent, though it has enough structure to allow for sessions to be organized, opened and closed with ease. 

If you have a group of people who all care about a certain topic or who have a giant problem to solve and you’re struggling to know what to focus on, Open Space is a great workshop idea. What emerges organically from a group of passionate people united in purpose is exactly what needs to come up, and it encourages folks to take responsibility, be creative and collaborate in an incredibly powerful way.  

Check out the Open Space Technology template to kickstart your event planning process and create a structured yet dynamic event.

Hackathon

Hackathons can be an extremely powerful way to create momentum and explore tasks in a safe, self-contained way that makes it easy to experiment. At business events, an impromptu or arranged hackathon can mobilize folks with a shared goal and deliver concrete outputs quickly. 

As with any other creative session, hackathons benefit from a careful balance of structure and free space to create innovative ideas. Hackathons typically have a focus area, topic or problem space and a strict timeframe in which teams work together to create a solution or innovation in that space.

Hackathons can be a wonderful addition to an event as they are often multi-disciplinary in nature, inviting participants with different skillsets to work together to create something in a short timeframe. I’d only urge that you take the time to add some structure to proceedings so that things can run smoothly can avoid potential descending into chaos!

Mastermind group 

Sometimes, the best way to learn is from our peers. A mastermind is where a group of skilled and like-minded people come together on a recurring basis for peer coaching and problem solving.

Masterminds work best with a consistent group that allows for accountability and vulnerability, though I’ve seen them create impact even when run as one-off sessions.

I once attended a cybersecurity conference when a mastermind format emerged organically in response to various professionals experiencing similar problems. We ran out first session on the spot and then followed up with online sessions as a group over the next few months. It was a great container for us all to share experiences and help one another solve tough problems. 

It’s also worth noting that Masterminds greatly benefit when there are people with significant experience taking part. Not everyone needs to be an expert, but if you have five people who are all newbies, it can be harder for any advice to be backed up by concrete learnings and practical experience. 

To experience the benefits of the peer-coaching Mastermind experience in a short timespan, you might want to try a Liberating Structure activity called Troika Consulting. This works by putting participants in small huddles of three people, in which one presents their current issue or challenge and the other two act as consultants. You’ll be surprised how much insight can emerge in the span of fifteen minutes!

What are the key characteristics of workshops?

Workshops come in many shapes and sizes and will differ in content and design based on the goal of the session. That said, workshops tend of feature some defining characteristics that collectively ensure that the session will be successful and engaging.

If you’re just getting started or need help understanding how a workshop is different than a meeting or a typical training session, this list will help make the distinction clear while also hopefully selling you on the prospect of running a workshop!

Workshops are an interactive environment

In comparison to lectures and webinars, workshops are interactive by nature. Workshops typically include a mix of practical exercises, group discussions, and real-time problem-solving where everyone is encouraged to participate and learn experientially.

The result is a session that emphazies full engagement and makes the process of working together a joy, rather than a dull, passive experience.

You’ll find a workshop format using interactive elements also encourages ownership and action: ensuring things actually get done after the session. If you find your meetings and events rarely result in decisive action and lack momentum, consider trying an interactive workshop instead!

Workshops have a clear goal and purpose

Workshops should always have a clear goal, such as developing skills, exploring a problem or building connections between team members. This purpose guides everything from the structure of the agenda to specific exercises and outcomes.

When running a workshop, it’s helpful to remember that a clear goal doesn’t always mean concrete, deliverable output.

In soft skills training sessions for example, the goal may be for participants to share previous experiences and practice new techniques as a team. There may not be a test at the end to give a pass/fail, but the goal of improving interpersonal dynamics has still been pursued.

On the other hand, the goal of a strategic planning workshop may include a completed strategy document, ready for the next steps of discovery or implementation.

All these goals are important and facilitators and event organizers should always measure whether they achieved the goal. Just remember that workshops are often very much worth running, even if the output isn’t a physical document: who doesn’t want to improve team cohesion or employee happiness?

Workshops are structured and time-bound

Workshops typically run for a specific amount of time, anything from an hour to multiple sessions over many days. To achieve the goals of the workshop in the allocated timeframe, the facilitator will create structure in the form of an agenda while also time-boxing and guiding the group through activities effectively.

Ever had issues with brainstorming going on for so long that you never get around to make a decision? Workshops can help with that.

Whether its a virtual or in-person workshop, the time-bound format is especially effective for helping attendees focus and leave other concerns at the door. When everyone in the room is gathered for a specific purpose for a specific amount of time, you’ll be surprised by what you can achieve together.

Workshops are facilitated

Workshops typically have a facilitator onboard to help guide the flow of the session, orient the group and provide structure. Teams might bring in an expert facilitator who also happens to be a subject matter expert or a manager or team leader might also take on the facilitator role. In addition to designing the session, the facilitator will also help manage group dynamics, run activities and report back.

The value add of a facilitator cannot be underestimated. Not only are they well positioned to encourage participation and ownership, but they’ll also ensure that the goal of the session is always in mind, whatever dynamically happens during the workshop.

Unsure about what else a facilitator actually does? Find a practical definition of facilitator and explore what they can bring to your session in this guide.

Workshops are dynamic

While workshops always have a concrete goal in mind, the way the best workshops achieve that goal is often dynamic and emergent in nature.

For example, let’s say you’re running a workshop to teach participants conflict resolution skills. The facilitator will have prepared an agenda in advance, but what happens if world events bring a unique energy into the room and some of the activities no longer seem fit for purpose?

Great facilitators will adjust the flow of the workshop in the moment to speak to the needs of the group and facilitate the best route towards the original goal. It takes practice, trust and a strong design foundation, but when it happens, the results can be especially impactful.

What’s next?

A great workshop is probably the best format for bringing people together to get things done. With effective design, good facilitation and the right workshop format, you can encourage participants to take part and create impact as a group. Truly, an engaging workshop can create memorable experiences that leave an indelible and lasting impression on all in attendance. So what are you waiting for?

I hope this list of interactive workshop ideas gives you some inspiration for running your next session and helps get the creative juices flowing!

For next steps, our post on how to plan and organize a workshop offers a practical, step-by-step process that can help you make your ideas a reality.

Check out the accompanying workshop planning template in SessionLab to kickstart your process with an easy to follow agenda that will help you design your next workshop too!

Have any questions or suggestions for other workshop ideas for keeping participants engaged? Get in touch in the comments below!

But when should you consider bringing in a professional facilitator to host a workshop or event? How can you ensure it’s a worthwhile investment of your time and money?

In this guide, we’ll explore what to keep in mind when choosing to hire a facilitator, what to expect from them, and give you some idea of the cost of a facilitator’s services too!

Understanding the role of a facilitator

Before diving into the specifics of hiring, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of what a facilitator does and how they’ll be able to help you and your team meet your goals.

Unlike a leader or content expert, a facilitator isn’t called in to provide training content or push a particular agenda. Instead, their primary role is to co-design and guide the process, ensure everyone is heard and help surface valuable insights while the group moves towards their shared goal.

Responsibilities of a facilitator:

• Creating a structured process for group work.
• Managing time and keep the session on track.
• Encouraging active participation and ensure everyone is heard.
• Helping the group navigate conflict and manage group dynamics.
• Engaging participation in a safe, open, and inclusive environment.

A facilitator is, above all, an expert in collaboration. They focus on how the discussion happens rather than what is discussed, using their extensive experience to guide the group smoothly.

Facilitators do not have a stake in what decisions will be taken: their focus is on making sure the group progresses towards its goals. This creates space for teams to explore a variety of ideas and perspectives and make decisions without getting bogged down in politics or stuck in endless back and forth.

Read this post on the role of a facilitator to go deeper and explore the various roles a facilitator will occupy during a session.

When should you hire a facilitator? 

Effective facilitation can help a group use its resources better (and that includes time, money, and personal energy), by:

• making meetings more impactful;
• improving interpersonal dynamics;
• mitigating risks;
• running innovation and creativity workshops (such as design sprints);
• creating processes to improve business outcomes;
• increasing buy-in and participation;
• managing conflict constructively. 

It’s safe to say that ordinary, day-to-day meetings can be facilitated internally by the team itself (using tips and structures such as the ones you can find in this post on facilitating meetings). 

That said, there are times when you may need the expertise of a professional facilitator who can also serve as an impartial guide to help you solve tough problems and create change.

Some of the most common reasons (and there are many more) I’ve witnessed for hiring an external facilitator includes:

• the need to work with diverse stakeholders, such as public bodies who wish to develop participatory processes with industry leaders and citizens;
• helping to align partners toward a common aim, such as project kick-offs;
• supporting a new group to draft its vision, mission, aims, value statements and group agreements;
• boosting creativity and ideation, for example through design thinking workshops that encourage new perspectives; 
• helping guide a group to solve tough problems when the solution is not immediately apparent or is complex in nature;
• when the need emerges for a neutral third-party to guide a group through a difficult process, such as change management.

While facilitators are not necessarily trainers, they may also support you in providing workshops for continuous learning, particularly on topics such as effective meetings, giving/receiving feedback, or training part of your staff in basic facilitation skills, so they can manage those daily meetings better on their own.

External facilitators should be called in if some of these conditions are met:

• a large or very large meeting, with over 20 participants (up to hundreds! Huge meetings are not an obstacle, as long as you have enough space, resources and people to cover different facilitation roles);
• diverse participants, in terms of origin, language, culture, background, expertise;
• the potential for conflict;
• situations of ambiguity and complexity where there is no “one given simple solution” to be found.

We’ve made a handy summary of factors that could lead you to decide to get some extra support. Use it to self-assess if your next session, conference or event might benefit from the participation of external facilitators.

You may also find our guide explaining exactly what a facilitator is and what they do helpful in determining whether you need to hire one or not.

Examples of when you might hire a facilitator

To help clarify when a facilitator can be helpful, here are some specific examples of the kinds of workshops and events you might bring in an external facilitator for.

Strategic planning

Facilitators are great at leading processes that get results and create business growth. For complex projects like strategic planning, an external facilitator can help teams step back, identify clear, measurable goals and create a plan of action in an inclusive manner.

In our experience, it can be incredibly useful to get someone outside of your core team to help challenge assumptions and provide a fresh perspective.

When looking for a facilitator to help with corporate strategy, it’s often helpful to look for someone with a proven track record and who has relevant experience. They don’t need to have been a marketer or CEO, but if they’ve helped other companies navigate organizational change, that’ll be helpful context for your team.

Expect to provide facilitators with some background about your organization, business objectives and current strategy. All this information is helpful context when the facilitator begins to design a series of workshops for your strategy sessions.

Leadership development workshops

Leadership development workshops and learning programs can have a massive impact on the companies that deploy them.

Facilitators can help with leadership development by creating structured, experiential processes that impart vital leadership skills while also encouraging participants to share and learn from one another.

There’s a large crossover with leadership training here, though depending on your needs, a facilitator with a background and interest in leadership and consulting can be well-positioned to deliver leadership workshops and provide support.

In many cases, facilitators are also able to provide fresh perspectives and outside expertise and experiences that can enliven managers who might have a set way of thinking defined by existing internal politics.

Team building, values and alignment workshops

Hiring an external facilitator to help with team building can be an effective way to ensure everyone in your team can take part and focus on the activity at hand. If your leaders also have to facilitate, they will be taking on a different role and lose the opportunity to bond and learn more about their team members.

When it comes to values workshops or team training sessions, a facilitator can also serve as an excellent team coach, helping participants focus on the skills they wish to improve and giving instant feedback as needed.

Conferences and events

Large-scale events are one area where facilitators shine. Facilitators sometimes call themselves experience designers, and these two skillsets can help turn a humdrum conference into a highly participatory and inclusive experience for all.

Facilitators are also great at adapting to unique circumstances and designing inclusive processes based on your needs. If you’re running a hybrid event, for example, the complexity of managing participation in person and online at the same time is best left in the expert hands of a professional.

What to keep in mind when hiring a facilitator

Once you have decided you do want to hire an external facilitator, here are some things you should keep in mind.

(1) Facilitators are specialists in process design. Draw them in early, before your agenda is set: that is how we can be most useful. I was recently hired for a one-day event in which the agenda had already been set to the minute, with lots of presentations and speeches, yet the hosts were, and I quote “putting our faith in you to make it participatory.” I did my best, but interactions when you have to carve out five minutes here and there are inevitably limited! 

(2) A good facilitator will help you define your requirements and desired outcomes, but the clearer your needs are from the beginning, the easier everyone’s job will be. Expect facilitators to ask you: when is the event (freelancers have crazy schedules), where is it (including online, in-person, or hybrid), who will attend, and what outcomes are you looking for?

(3) If a facilitator recommends co-facilitating or investing in another role such as a graphic recorder to capture conversations, or a tech host online, don’t discount the suggestion offhandedly. Yes, it could cost you more, but there could also be real benefits to it. For more on co-facilitation and why it works, read here.

(4) Facilitators have opinions regarding locations and those opinions have reasons! We are flexible and will work with anything (we have shared some fun stories in this community thread, including facilitating in a church and in a parking lot) but settings are important and have an influence on a workshop’s success.

The way lecture halls are typically built in Western Universities, for example, tell a story about where the power lies, who has the right to speak, and what is the best attitude for learning (seated, quietly taking notes). Workshop rooms designed to be flexible, with tables you can move about, space to hang up posters, chairs that can be arranged in many different ways tell a different story, about collaboration and creativity. 

A facilitator might also have ideas around how to arrange a room in a way that is unexpected, and novel to participants. This is in itself a strong statement and sets the mood for the day: expect something unusual! With that in mind, it should come as no surprise if facilitators ask you to access rooms an hour (or more) before an event starts, if only to quickly rearrange the chairs!

Questions to ask a facilitator before you hire them

Selecting the right facilitator requires more than just reviewing a résumé or website. A key part of the hiring process is having an in-depth conversation to assess whether the facilitator’s style, experience, and approach align with your needs.

Asking the right questions will not only help you gauge their capabilities but also give you insights into how they might handle the unique challenges of your session. Below are some essential questions to consider asking before making your final decision.

1. What is your approach to facilitation?

This question helps you understand the facilitator’s overall philosophy and style. Do they take a more directive role, or do they prefer a hands-off, participant-driven approach? This will give you a sense of how they manage sessions and if their methods align with your organization’s culture and session goals.

2. Can you describe a session you’ve facilitated that was similar to ours?

Experience in your specific type of session or industry can make a big difference. Ask for examples that are closely related to the challenges you face, whether it’s a strategic planning workshop, a conflict resolution session, or a creative brainstorm. This allows you to assess their relevant expertise and how well they understand the context of your session.

3. Can you provide examples of how you’ve adapted when things didn’t go as planned?

Flexibility is key in facilitation. A session might veer off course, or unexpected issues may arise, such as conflict or a sudden shift in participant energy. A skilled facilitator will be able to pivot and adapt. Ask for examples where they had to think on their feet and what adjustments they made to ensure the session’s success.

4. How do you handle virtual or hybrid facilitation, if needed?

In today’s work environment, many sessions are conducted remotely or in a hybrid format. If this applies to your situation, ask about their experience with virtual facilitation tools like Miro, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams. Understanding their comfort with digital platforms ensures they can create an engaging experience, even for remote participants.

5. What is your approach to follow-up or post-session work?

A well-facilitated session doesn’t always end with the last conversation. Ask whether the facilitator provides any follow-up services, such as session summaries, action plans, or debriefs. This can be helpful in ensuring that the decisions and insights generated during the session are implemented effectively.

6. What are your rates, and what does your fee include?

Understanding the facilitator’s pricing structure is crucial to ensure it fits within your budget. Ask if their rates cover preparation, materials, travel, and follow-up work. Some facilitators may offer day rates, while others work on an hourly basis or provide package deals. Clarifying this upfront helps prevent any misunderstandings later on.

7. Can you provide references from past clients?

References can offer valuable insights into the facilitator’s professionalism, effectiveness, and ability to handle various challenges. Reach out to former clients to ask about their experience working with the facilitator, the outcomes of the sessions, and how they handled difficult situations.

8. What do you need from us?

A great facilitation session is a collaborative effort, and the facilitator will likely need input, resources, or support from your team to ensure success.

Ask what they require from you, whether it’s background information on the group, access to specific tools or materials, or help with logistical arrangements. Understanding their needs ensures that you can provide the support necessary for a smooth, productive process.

9. How will we collaborate?

For the duration of your contract, it’s a bit as if a new person were joining your team. Make the most of your time together by working out any specific needs in terms of how you will meet, how often, and what tools you’ll be using to share feedback, notes, and make progress in planning your workshop, training or event.

Because they interact with many different organizations, facilitators can often bring innovation also in the form of new tools or approaches to working together. It’s another opportunity to learn!

While you may be used to doing everything in meetings, for example, your newly found consultant may introduce tools to work asynchronously, such as Slack or Notion. Thousands of professional facilitators use SessionLab to design their sessions and share them with clients: is this where you’ll be giving them feedback?

How much does facilitation cost? 

Given the variety of facilitation services out there, there is really no definitive way of answering this question. To get a general sense, you can check out the State of Facilitation report section on pricing for your geographical location and/or sector. A more detailed look at the topic, from a couple of years ago, comes from the NeverDoneBefore community’s pricing survey.

In both cases, the median price for a full-day workshop was given at about €3000. This is a good indication to start with, but as many respondents pointed out, there are many variables involved. Is the request to accompany a group in time, or a one-off event? How much preparation is required, how many meetings with staff? How large is the event? Are travel and accommodation covered?

If you are a facilitator working on how to price your services, I highly recommend this podcast episode on How to Price your Facilitation and Coaching services, hosted by Myriam Hadnes on Workshops Work, in which pricing expert Jenny Millar offers her reflections and top tips. After listening to it, I began to offer three-tier pricing options to potential clients, which is one of the tools recommended in the podcast.

I have found experimenting with this approach very helpful also because it forces me to articulate clearly what services I can offer extra (such as 1:1 interviews, or follow-up questionnaires), and should be paid extra for, versus what the bare minimum would cost. Negotiations on pricing, especially when a client is new and not familiar with facilitation yet, are also an opportunity to go deeper into explaining a facilitator’s role and value. Expect some back-and-forth negotiation!

How do I find a good facilitator?

So now you know you want to bring in an external facilitator to run a session with your team. Where do you find them?

In my experience, the most common avenue for finding a good facilitator is through a referral or recommendation. Check with your professional networks and ask around!

Facilitator networks are also a great source of professional facilitators. For example, the International Association of Facilitators provides a directory of certified facilitators who are grouped by location, so you can easily find a facilitator that is right for you.

Most facilitators have a specialization or special interest area that can make them the ideal fit for your project.

Good facilitators can apply their skills to any group process, but finding someone who has a lot of experience in Agile processes, for example, might benefit you if your team is already familiar with the methodology.

Similarly, some facilitators are specialists in community engagement, design thinking, games, creativity or anything else you can think of. Finding a good match for the aims of your project can help ensure a successful facilitation process later.

We’d also recommend being clear with any potential hires about the goals and expected outcomes for the project. Good facilitators will quickly be able to tell if they are the right fit, and any potential collaboration will be better with this clarity in place.

When are facilitators useful besides professional facilitation? 

Requests for professional facilitation and facilitation skills are definitely on the rise. Changes in the workplace accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular, made it painfully clear when meetings and workplace habits were functional or dysfunctional to making progress. In between the lines of commentary to the State of Facilitation 2023 report two parallel trends emerge:

• more requests for professional facilitators (and a need for more training and certification in general facilitation skills) and, at the same time
• a more diffuse appreciation of basic facilitation skills, such as meeting management. To quote IAF Vice-chair Gerardo De Luzenberger, “facilitation [is] becoming widespread as a transversal competence among leaders as well as in the general workforce. “

As facilitation skills become widespread, in fact, so does the ability to detect when a situation can be facilitated internally and when some extra help is needed.

A more facilitative approach is also diffused in certain education environments, as teamwork abilities and communication skills are more and more recognized as a crucial part of pedagogy. This is detailed, for example, in numerous publications on the future of education such as this policy paper on Skills for a Modern Europe. 

In conclusion

Hiring the right facilitator can be a game-changer for your organization. By keeping these key factors in mind, you’ll be well on your way to choosing a facilitator who is not only skilled and experienced but also a great fit for your team and organizational goals.

Whether you’re hosting a strategic planning meeting or a creative brainstorming session, the right facilitator can help you get the most out of your time together and drive meaningful outcomes.

Want to learn more? Check out the latest state of facilitation report for more insight into the profession or explore what a facilitator does in greater depth.

Want to find a suitable facilitator for hire? Ask our facilitation community for help or post a request. Facilitators are a friendly, helpful bunch by nature!

In this post, we’ll share a definition of facilitation before exploring the key principles of facilitation you can use to embody the approach successfully, whether you’re looking to have more effective meetings, handle conflict and do more productive group work.

Below, we’ll explore the meaning of facilitation in simple terms while also giving you a better sense of the core principles that separate a facilitative approach from other ways of thinking. Think of these as the pillars around which you can build your facilitation practice.

While many of us know good facilitation when we see it, what’s going on behind the scenes can be complex and mysterious for those new to the practice. Here, we’ll demystify facilitation while also giving you some advice on how to bring a facilitative approach to your work.

What is the meaning of facilitation?

Let’s start with a simple definition of facilitation: Facilitation is the craft of guiding a group through a participatory process that makes it easier to achieve their goals.

But let’s go further. What is the meaning of facilitation, really? Facilitation is an approach, mindset and set of skills that a facilitator or leader employs in order to support a group during collaborative work.

• Facilitation means creating space for everyone in the group to contribute and encouraging participation and ownership from everyone involved. It means having a shared goal and designing a process to help the group meet that goal.
• Facilitation is also defined by its approach to process and content: a facilitative approach means designing a process which supports a group in discovering, ideating and creating their own content. It’s not about having one person get on stage and tell a group how to solve a problem: it’s about supporting group members to discuss that problem together and co-create a solution.
• Facilitated processes are participatory and interactive by design. A workshop is one of the most common examples of a process where facilitation is used, though an effective facilitator can bring their skills to the table any time a group comes together to get things done.
• At its simplest level, facilitation is facilitation is a set of skills and techniques that everyone – not just facilitators – can use to create shared understanding, supercharge group work and enable teams to do incredible things.

Designing a meeting process, holding community discussions, mediating conflict, working as a leader… there’s no shortage of scenarios where facilitation is a vital and transformative skill.

Read on to discover a deeper meaning of facilitation, see examples of facilitation in action and explore how to learn facilitation and improve your practice.

Examples of facilitation

Facilitation is not the sole preserve of professional facilitators. Anyone working in groups can benefit from bringing a facilitative mindset to their process.

But what does facilitation look like in action? What kinds of gatherings benefit from facilitation. Let’s explore a few facilitation examples to help paint a picture.

Facilitating a team meeting

Facilitation can turn an unengaging and time-wasting team meeting into a productive discussion that energizes the group and encourages action.

Though the process might appear simple, even a 15-minute team meeting and discussion can benefit from facilitation.

Some facilitators refer to facilitation as “directing traffic” and this is very apparent during an in person meeting where they will help discussions to flow, ensure heavy vehicles give way and that the system is ultimately pulling in the same direction.

Facilitation during a team meeting looks like:

• Keeping time and using time-boxing techniques to ensure the meeting is efficient and ends on schedule.
• Creating and distributing a meeting agenda to ensure alignment and ensure a structured process.
• Using facilitation techniques to solicit input and engagement from all participants.
• Using active listening techniques to ensure participants are seen and heard.
• Managing group dynamics and responding to the needs of the group.
• Documenting action items and creating follow-through.

Facilitating a brainstorming workshop

Brainstorming is an exciting process for many teams, but without facilitation, it can be difficult to turn ideation into action.

In these kinds of workshops, a facilitator is on hand to help everyone in a group contribute and find their own solutions while moving efficiently towards action. In most cases, this means creating a safe, inclusive space and asking the right questions at the right time.

Facilitation during a brainstorming workshop looks like:

• Designing an inclusive and efficient process that guides participants from initial ideation and refinement, through to solution design and implementation steps.
• Using proven brainstorming techniques to help participants effectively generate, organize and refine their ideas.
• Asking key questions that will enable a group to surface the root cause of problems, refine ideas and create momentum for follow-up action.
• Paying attention to group energy levels and using breaks, energizers and active facilitation techniques to keep everyone energized.
• Guiding the group to contribute their own ideas and solutions, rather than telling them what solution they should implement.
• Creating a sense of psychological safety and managing group dynamics so that everyone feels able to contribute and so loud voices do not dominate.

Facilitating leadership training

Are your training sessions dry, boring and entirely one-direction? Presentations will always have their place, but training has been proven to be more effective when it incorporates experiential elements that serve to give participants opportunities to recall, practice and share knowledge.

Leadership training is one example of a traditional session that can be transformed with effective facilitation.

Facilitation during leadership training looks like:

• Participatory exercises where leaders and managers share their experiences and learn from one another.
• Flexible and adaptive leadership activities where the instructor responds to the group while still achieving training goals.
• Engaging experiential learning that aids in knowledge transfer and retention.
• Personalized learning, immediate feedback and a responsive instructor.

What are the principles of facilitation?

So we know that a facilitative approach is a means of creating participatory processes that make it easier for groups achieve their desired outcomes. But what does facilitation look like in practice? How should one go about using facilitation at work and what principles should you follow when trying to be a good facilitator?

While many facilitators have different styles and ideas about exactly how to facilitate and engage group members, there are some unifying principles that underline the profession and useful methods of embodying the right mindset and improving your facilitator skills.

Some of the key principles of facilitation are:

Neutrality and impartiality

Neutrality in facilitation is all about enabling group members to have discussions and explore possible solutions while not providing the answers or becoming invested in a particular option yourself. A facilitator is not present to prescribe a solution or favour certain voices or ideas.

Holding this neutral, impartial position also means creating space for all voices to be heard and given equal weight and consideration. Think about how some people dominate during small meetings and certain viewpoints are favoured because they are held by managers. A facilitator designs their sessions to manage group dynamics and set ground rules that can hopefully avoid this possibility.

Effective facilitation also means helping the group be more objective and neutral during a discussion or while attempting to reach consensus. This is difficult, but with the right tools and techniques, having these kinds of conversations is made much easier!

See our post on group facilitation tips for more on this subject and how to work with a group in general.

Have a plan but be prepared to change it

Facilitated processes are carefully crafted experiences designed to guide a group through a flow of activities that helps them achieve a specific goal.

Workshop plans, for example, often include icebreakers to introduce the session, activities to help a group generate ideas and stay focused, and then techniques to create shared understanding, and converge on a solution.

Designing and planning a workshop agenda is a skill in itself, and it absolutely one you’ll want to cultivate on your path to being a skilled facilitator.

All that said, one of the key things I’ve learned as a facilitator is that plans are also made to be changed or even broken. I’ve run many in person workshops where I realized the needs of the group had changed and so had to mix up my agenda.

Planning is important, but using your facilitation skills to identify when things need to change in order to help the group achieve their goals is a hallmark of good facilitation.

But how do you know when you should make such a change? One of the best ways is to simply ask the group!

Finding that sweet spot between preparation and flexibility takes practice, but it’s an important job that you can prepare for by following the other principles of facilitation featured in this section.

Know your goal

Having a very clearly defined goal before you begin a session is essential for all facilitators. Ask key questions about what outcomes need to be achieved with stakeholders and your team before the session. This allows you to build an effective workshop plan that delivers the desired outcome in an effective and engaging way. It also means you know where your agenda can bend and flex during delivery.

If things begin to go off the rails or a change feels necessary, take another look at your goal and consider how you might best achieve your chosen outcome.

I often find that changing the meeting agenda during a session is less about tearing up the entire agenda but rather, adjusting to what is happening in the moment and being flexible to the needs of the group while still pursuing our goal.

Remember that success is defined by whether your group achieved the goal of the session, not by whether you stuck rigidly to your original agenda.

Everything is in service of the group

Facilitation is all about guidance, rather than prescription. Facilitators create a structure that encourages the group to participate in the process to such an extent that they create solutions collaboratively. The facilitator’s job then, is simply to help the group do their best work together!

Remember that distinction between process and content? This is a key aspect of embodying this group service mindset. You are responsible for the process—the design of the meeting, the flow of activities—that will help the group achieve their goals, but you are not responsible for the actual content. Content should come from the group.

Early in the process, supporting the group means designing a process with your specific workshop participants in mind. This includes basic tasks such as considering ideal room setup and when to take breaks.

Once you are actually in the room (virtual or otherwise) with participants, this focus on being in service to the group translates into paying closing attention to group dynamics and how people are feeling.

It’s also about being aware of body language and realizing that the group is in need of an energizer. It’s letting go of your favorite activity because you realize participants would find something else more effective. It’s giving adequate time for everyone in the room to have their voice heard.

Facilitators act on behalf of a group and not themselves, knowing that what’s best for the group transcends the idea of what the meeting should look like on paper.

Friction is where things happen

Lively discussions, differences of opinion and new ideas are common occurrences in a well-facilitated workshop. Helping groups explore tricky problem spaces collaboratively can be emotionally charged, but it’s the facilitator’s job to guide a group through this process while maintaining psychological safety and mutual respect.

One important aspect of facilitation is learning to be comfortable standing in this storm and to not be afraid of conflict or passionate discussion. This is often where the magic happens and real change can occur.

Creating a space where difference and creativity can emerge is vital for creating true innovation, solving tough problems and really connecting as a group. This often means creating space for people to be vulnerable, asking key questions and opening things up, rather than closing them down.

Use facilitation techniques designed to support the process and carefully develop your facilitation skills in order to learn how to hold this space. This takes practice, great communication skills and a knowledge of group dynamics, but it can also be one of the most rewarding things about facilitation!

Participation and inclusivity

One of the most impactful mental shifts you can make as a facilitator is to put participation first. Moving from “I do this” to “we do this together” is one of the best ways to start putting facilitation into action, whether you’re working with students, employees or peers.

Facilitators design sessions and activities that encourage every member of a group to participate and feel good while doing so. This can be as simple as using a method such as 1-2-4 All to give everyone chance to contribute or as far ranging as creating a culture of idea generation and group decision making.

Facilitators also consider how to make spaces, discussions and settings inclusive: encouraging diversity in voices, ideas and teams. Good facilitators think about how to get the right people in the room, and how they might include important voices in the conversation.

Inclusivity can also look like setting ground rules at the beginning of a session to create safety, address power dynamics and move forward with an agreement of how people should treat one another in the space.

With established groups, this will become second nature, but when starting out with facilitation, it can be helpful to make these things explicit.

What are the benefits of facilitation?

The value of facilitation ranges from immediate to long term. Not only can a facilitative approach help improve a specific meeting or workshop, but it can also help bring about positive culture change and improve how an organization collaborates and creates innovation.

Here are some of the key benefits of facilitation:

More effective sessions

Workshops and meetings run with a facilitative approach are often more effective and engaging than those run without. If you’ve been the victim of a meeting that goes over time or feels unproductive, you’ve felt the sting of poor or nonexistent facilitation!

Bring facilitation skills to your meetings and workshops and you’ll stay on time, make efficient progress and involve every person in the room in a more productive manner.

Over time, you’ll also find that your team’s ability to get things done efficiently, focus and stay on topic improves. Facilitation is habit building. When you and your team build good habits around your meetings and workshop, great things happen.

Get results

Remember how knowing your goal was one of the key principles of facilitation? By being outcome oriented, facilitation helps teams deliver results and do meaningful work. In practice, facilitators help groups focus on what is important and reach the goal of a session efficiently and on-time.

Facilitation is also proven method of getting groups to take ownership and accountability of the work they do. When a group co-creates their outcomes, buy-in is higher and the desire of the group to follow through is increased.

When you need to solve a complex problem, facilitate a team workshop designed to explore that problem and move forward together. With a facilitator on board, I promise you the results will be better than trying to solve the issue on your own. Facilitation is all about using specific tools and resources in order to create an environment where stuff gets done!

Creative thinking and innovation

Facilitation is all about unleashing the creative potential of a group. Sometimes this means running sessions explicitly designed to support ideation and innovation or using brainstorming techniques to generate creative ideas.

Beyond this, facilitation’s general ethos helps support a group to think creatively. Encouraging participation from all participants, putting in place good conditions for a psychologically safe environment, and giving space to think about things from a fresh perspective are all ways in which a facilitator can encourage innovation.

Improved group dynamics and connections

Paying attention to how people interact and taking steps to remove friction, build connections and help members get to know each other better are all things a facilitator does in service of the team.

This ability to enable members of an organization to form better connections through careful design, team building activities and facilitated discussions has long lasting effects on how teams interrelate and communicate.

Spending time deepening connections in a team building workshop and seeing your colleagues as much more than the job they do or simply learning better ways to help other people feel seen and heard in a meeting can be transformative. In my experience, teams that regularly facilitate sessions or use facilitation in their work are also happier and more connected.

Improved collaboration

Helping a team work together more effectively is one of the guiding stars of facilitation. By design, workshops are collaborative spaces where teams are encouraged to work together towards a common goal.

What’s wonderful about facilitation is that the techniques, connections and working patterns you establish in such sessions also translate to future collaborations.

Whether it’s learning to focus on one problem at a time, better explore ideas in depth or have more productive, effective discussions, the skills we learn in facilitated sessions have lasting effects on how we collaborate with others.

These changes can be dramatic, such as better organization and ideation when working on complex projects. They can also be small, with team members adjusting how they communicate with others on Slack or over email. All these things add up to a more collaborative working environment in which people often feel more empowered to do great things.

When to use a facilitative approach?

Approaching a situation with a facilitation mindset can be transformative and impactful, even if you’re not squarely occupying the role of facilitator.

As a manager or consultant, you may be more directly involved in the content of a session and making things happen than during traditional facilitation. Even then, following facilitation principles such as encouraging participation or having a clear plan and goal leads to better outcomes and more engaged teams.

Read on for some examples of specific sessions and scenarios where you might use facilitation for impact.

Meetings

A meeting can be a great place to start practicing your facilitation skills. Many managers start by making some small changes such as time-boxing discussions, using check-ins or other facilitation techniques. Less unproductive discussions and more lightbulb moments while also finishing on time? Yes, please!

As a small, manageable microcosm of team dynamics, a meeting is also an ideal place for newbies to practice and apply knowledge of facilitation. If you’re just getting started, try bringing some of the facilitation principles to your next workplace meeting and set what happens.

With a facilitative approach, you can begin to positively change your meeting culture, start finishing on time and having clear action points. Read more in this post on how to facilitate a meeting!

Workshops

Workshops are a facilitator’s bread and butter. They’re a place where groups come together to collaboratively ideate, discuss, problem solve and hopefully reach consensus on an incredible solution everyone is excited to achieve. Bringing a facilitation mindset or better yet, a professional facilitator, and your workshops can become more memorable, effective and productive too!

Trying to plan and run a workshop without a working knowledge of facilitation can end up being unproductive or even chaotic.

If you’ve been at a workshop where the goal is unclear, activities seem picked at random or you don’t feel your contribution is valued, that’s a sign that the person leading the session needed to brush up on their facilitation skills or simply hire a professional facilitator.

Facilitative leadership

Leaders who use facilitation skills as part of how they run their team are often more effective managers. Whether it’s making every meeting productive or knowing how to handle conflict and empower your group, facilitation is a skill every leader should be developing.

Leadership activities that have a facilitation element are becoming increasingly common parts of leadership training. As a leader, it’s likely that you already use some facilitation skills and tools every day. By becoming more aware of the practice and deploying these techniques thoughtfully, you’ll help build the foundation for high performing teams.

Consulting and coaching

Coaches and consultants share a lot of DNA with facilitators. All these individuals work in the service of a group or an individual and hope to help them solve problems, often empowering people to make changes themselves.

While consultants and coaches often have a more direct role in suggesting solutions, many principles of facilitation also form the basis of good coaching. Enabling a group or individual to act in their own interest while feeling seen, heard and valued are ideas that unite these professions.

Bringing facilitation methods into a meeting with a client or inviting stakeholders into a discovery workshop are just some of the ways in which facilitation can help you be a more effective consultant.

Training

While training courses and sessions are much more prescriptive in nature, facilitation skills and tools can still be used to impactful effect. Training is often more effective when it includes experiential elements and has opportunities for trainees to talk and learn from each other.

Complex training also requires a great deal of organization and process design. Our 7-day train the trainer template is a great testament to this! The overlap between trainer skills and facilitator skills is large and you’ll often find professional facilitators called on to lead training and improve participation and engagement from trainees.

Looking to quickly bring facilitation activities into your sessions? Check out our post on training games and activities to bring experiential elements to your next training.

Education

Whether it’s teaching students in school or working with adult learners, facilitation is a helpful skillset for lecturers and educators. Workshops, group-lead discussions and collaborative work are all formats a skilled teacher will employ when engaging students, and they all benefit from using a facilitative approach.

See our post on exploring the concept of teacher as a facilitator for more insights and tips on bringing facilitation into the classroom. Traditional seminars and lessons will always have their places, but there’s plenty of benefits to bringing facilitation into your teaching practice.

Whenever you collaborate!

In essence, all of the items listed above are formats for group collaboration. Whether it’s a compact team of three or four or a workshop with dozens of people, the format exists in order to help people get things done as a collective.

Facilitation can be used whenever you collaborate with others. Sometimes this is in a specific format, such as running a kickoff workshop at work. Other times, its an ad-hoc process of enabling better collaboration by simply thinking like a facilitator.

Are you running online sessions? Virtual workshops and meetings always benefit from skills and techniques you’ll find outlined in this guide to online facilitation.

You might facilitate a meeting in the day and then moderate a conversation between your disputing neighbours in the evening! I’ve even heard of facilitators using dot voting to decide on what to have for dinner or idea generation methods to help their family choose where to go on holiday.

However you choose to employ facilitation, remember that the methods, tools and approaches are designed to help people collaborate more effectively, and in a way that makes them feel heard and valued. There are few limits to what effective facilitation can achieve with the right people in the room. Try using these principles in your interactions inside and outside of traditional formats and you’ll see what I mean!

How to improve your facilitation practice

Facilitation is rapidly becoming the must-have workplace superskill. Learning how to facilitate and deepening your practice can seem intimidating, but you’re not alone.

Check out the collection of facilitation resources below to sharpen your knowledge and facilitate your next session effectively.

• Whether you’re a manager, trainer of facilitator, the core facilitation skills outlined in this guide will help you develop the core competencies needed to facilitate well.
• Facilitation podcasts, books and toolkits are a great way to learn from the experiences of others. Explore this post on free facilitation resources to continue your learning journey.
• Facilitation courses and certifications are a great pathway for those wanting to become professional facilitators. Check out our guide on the best facilitation training for more.
• Facilitating with others can be a powerful learning tool that can also lead to better outcomes, especially when working with large groups. This guide to co-facilitation is a valuable resource for those wanting to facilitate with one or more other facilitators.
• Practice! Whether you’re running a meeting, a training session or a workshop, the best way to improve is to start facilitating. Even running a single activity in the company all-hands is a great way to improve. Explore the SessionLab library of facilitation techniques to find something to bring to your next session.

In conclusion

Depending on who you ask, what is facilitation is a question that can have various answers. But what unites those interpretations is an emphasis on enabling a group to do great things.

Whether that’s through incredible workshop design or skilled group moderation, facilitators use their skillset to empower collaboration and create change. We hope that with this article, you can start to do the same!

Want to keep learning about facilitation? Join our free email course facilitation is for everyone to get started. Or join our community of facilitators to learn from your peers, see events and opportunities, and connect with some of the best minds in facilitation!

When it comes to empowering your team to do great work and complete projects, one of the most important things you can do is hold a kickoff meeting.  

With a comprehensive project kickoff, you can position your team for success, create alignment and structure, and build resiliency to potential issues. By creating clarity, excitement, and preparedness in this short, focused meeting format, you’re helping ensure your goals are met and that everyone on the team is empowered to do great work.

The question is not, “Should you find the time to run a project kickoff meeting?” but, “Can you afford to leave the success of your project to chance?”

In this guide, we’ll explore how kickoff meetings can fundamentally improve your workflow and how to have an effective project kickoff meeting. We’ll also share tips, activities, and some ready-made templates for a team project kickoff meeting, a multi-stakeholder project kickoff meeting, and an agile kickoff.

Let’s take a look!

What is a project kickoff meeting?

A project kickoff meeting is an initial meeting between all the stakeholders involved in a project and is designed to scope, define and plan a project in order to get it moving.

A project kickoff is used to share a clear understanding of the purpose and goals of the project, organize the team, and set the actions necessary to make it happen. 

A good kickoff meeting helps everyone feel excited and clear about what they need to do once they leave the room. You’ll scope out and plan the work involved, figure out dependencies and responsibilities, and answer any questions from the team. 

While not everything needs to be 100% confirmed by the end of the meeting, your team should be motivated and prepared to take the first steps necessary to get the ball rolling and make the project successful.

In a nutshell, project kickoff meetings are about alignment, motivation and clarity.

What is the purpose of a kickoff meeting?

A project kickoff meeting aims to give everyone on the team everything they need to steer the project towards success. This means aligning on goals, agreeing on tasks and responsibilities, identifying challenges, and moving forward with the next steps.

During a kickoff, you might also settle any internal disputes, clarify how you want to collaborate and build excitement and team spirit for the project to come!

Not only is the kickoff meeting a chance to share information, but it’s also the best time to motivate and set expectations for future work. This is especially important with a newly formed project team, where you might also break the ice and create team bonds before getting into project specifications.

When people get to know each other better and connect as individuals, this can improve future collaboration and help everyone feel happy and engaged. 

In this article, we’ve included three templates for different types of kick-off meetings. One of these is based on experience in large, multi-stakeholder projects, where the kickoff is often also the first opportunity to introduce team members to one another.

In these cases, it’s a good idea to schedule some time for smaller working teams to spend some time together, so new team members can meet and build rapport before the work actually starts.

Your project kickoff is also a great opportunity to surface any challenges or concerns and remove any early obstacles or assumptions. Remember that every project is different, and even when working with an established team, the kickoff is vital to ensure these nuances are addressed. 

We often find that things we learned in a previous project should be factored into the next one. The kickoff is a great place to double down on what worked last time, and perhaps try to avoid anything that went wrong too. 

Tips for having a successful kickoff meeting 

We’ve established that a kickoff meeting can make the difference between a productive project and one that stalls or might even be unsuccessful. But even after you’ve decided to hold a project kickoff, how can you make it successful? 

Here are a few ways to set yourself up for success and ensure that you are fully prepared to run your kickoff meeting. 

Prepare and consult key stakeholders before the meeting 

If you are the project manager, the kickoff meeting should not be the first time you’ve thought about the project at hand. Part of this preparation means liaising with key stakeholders to understand their position, invite them to the meeting, and ensure buy-in on the project. 

While you should absolutely open the floor during the meeting, you should already know many of the key details and key figures by this stage. If someone says something that means you cannot proceed with the project at all, something has gone wrong. For example, you should already have spoken to the head of engineering if your product requires input from the product team.

Remember that the goal of the kickoff is to remove any obstacles, set the tone, and get your team moving. Any of the larger logistical concerns and bigger questions of whether a project should go ahead should have been done before the kickoff. 

Get the whole project team in the room

Your project kickoff should involve everyone who is directly involved in the project. If someone will be working on the project and collaborating with others to make the project happen, they should be in the room. For those not directly involved, it’s worth asking if they should be in the room. Often, the answer is no. If someone isn’t involved and if it would be a waste of time for them, maybe they don’t need to be there. 

While you should keep the larger organization in the loop and provide materials to people outside of the core team, remember that the purpose of the meeting is to position the project for success and get things moving. If someone doesn’t meet that criteria question whether they should be involved. Otherwise, it can be frustrating and unproductive for all parties involved. 

Schedule the meeting and test your tech

Set a date and time for the kickoff meeting in advance and let everyone know it’s happening as early as possible. While it’s sometimes difficult to get everyone in the room, be sure to schedule with key stakeholders in mind and try to pick a time that works for the most people. 

Send email invites with the date, time, and agenda, and request that all team members confirm their attendance. Be sure to include anything your participants need to prepare and give them the heads-up of what to expect from the kickoff. Prepared teams are more effective teams! 

If you’re running an in-person meeting, be sure to book the room and prepare the space for a productive kickoff. This might mean changing the room setup, adding more tables and chairs, or setting up screens.

For virtual meetings, check your tech and set up any online whiteboards or slides you’ll be using. Making sure the kickoff runs smoothly and that you aren’t searching for links or need to spend time setting up elements in your whiteboard can really help things move along productively!

Set a project kickoff meeting agenda

For a successful kickoff that will cover everything and run on time, it’s vital to set an agenda for the facilitator and group to follow. Without a plan, any meeting can become messy and disorganized once you get people in the room. A project kickoff meeting agenda ensures you stay on track and leave the meeting having done everything you needed to do.

Remember that a structured meeting agenda is also a tool for you to use in the meeting. It’s a great way to ensure you stay organized and cover everything without wasting time with off-topic discussions. Where possible, try to include a basic agenda in your invite to the meeting too – it can help everyone arrive at the session prepared to contribute. 

Finally, be sure to keep your meeting agenda focused. The project kickoff is not the place to resolve interdepartmental conflicts or for general company chat. Design your agenda thoughtfully and keep it concise by keeping your objective in mind at all times.

Have a facilitator 

Meetings are more effective when there is someone whose job it is to keep things on track and make it a success. Assigning a facilitator can help everyone in the room focus on the content of the meeting, rather than getting distracted by the process or the admin. 

For many kickoff meetings, the project manager will also act as facilitator, and lead the first meeting. While this can work, it can also be useful to bring in a neutral party from another department or consider hiring a facilitator.

If your kickoff meeting is a more involved process that requires decision-making and problem-solving, that’s a great candidate for a dedicated facilitator. For more on how facilitators can help and what to keep in mind when hiring one, check out this guide. In any case, be sure to have someone in charge of guiding the group through the process. A free-for-all format rarely results in a great outcome! 

Assign a note-taker

In addition to someone leading the meeting, it’s helpful to have someone dedicated to taking notes. In some meetings, it’s possible to have the facilitator also take notes, but in a kickoff meeting, it’s often helpful to separate these roles. Give the facilitator and major stakeholders scope to focus on their tasks by having someone else take notes. 

We like to collect our notes for every meeting in Notion. This creates a resource for those who couldn’t attend and ensures nothing vital is missed or forgotten. Collecting insights, summing up key points, and making sure everything is captured can make all the difference for the success of a project. Creating a habit around note-taking during meetings is helpful for subsequent sessions too!  

Timebox

Timeboxing has a place in almost all meetings, though it’s especially important during a project kickoff. When it comes to starting a new project, team members are often excited and eager to discuss some aspects in great detail.

While this energy is something you want to encourage, you also need to keep your project kickoff on track. Failing to do so can leave team members unclear about what to do next or you can get lost in the woods and run out of time.

Sometimes, it can be easy for an in-depth conversation about a certain aspect of the project to take over the meeting. While this conversation may be important to have, timebox such discussions and consider tabling more involved topics to follow up on later.

Create a safe container

All workplace collaborations are made better when everyone in a group feels safe and empowered to speak up and contribute. Creating a safe environment in the project kickoff is a great first step to building trust and safety for the project to come. 

You might use a team code of conduct or project contact to ensure everyone is on the same page about how to interact. You might also include a brainstorming session as part of the kickoff to facilitate collaboration off the bat. It might even be as simple as making rules and expectations clear to everyone in the meeting.

The steps you need to take to create a safe space are often contextual, though be sure to ask yourself: how can I make it feel psychologically safe to engage in this meeting and the project at large?

Be transparent

Where possible, we find it helpful to be really clear about expectations, timeframe, and responsibilities. If you have a concern or your client has some specific requests, share those with your team and make sure people can access those items after the meeting too. When it comes to divvying up tasks and planning a project, be clear about roles, and responsibilities and have this information readily available.

The more transparent you are during a project kickoff, the more likely you are to spot and solve challenges early in the process. It’s also helpful when it comes to maintaining team motivation and momentum. If people know why they are doing something and why it is important to the project, it’s much easier to feel motivated about doing so. 

Include an icebreaker!

Icebreaker games can be an important ingredient for any meeting, especially if those people involved in the project aren’t used to working together. Regardless of how much your team members know each other, be sure to prepare an icebreaker for your project kickoff. This will allow everyone to loosen up, arrive in the space and help them begin to connect. 

You can try general icebreaker games, though it can be helpful to design an icebreaker that helps set the stage for the project and connects to your goals. For example, if you’re developing new features to connect with your customers, it can be especially effective to use icebreaker games that focus on people-to-people connection.

If the project kickoff is to include brainstorming or space for ideation, a creative game can be great for getting people in the right mindset! Whatever method you try, remember that this is a vital part of warming up the group and shouldn’t be skipped.

Set clear next steps

Generating momentum early in a project can massively affect its overall success. Often, the first steps after a kickoff meeting can feel tentative or slow. Setting clear follow-up actions with a deadline can ensure that things get done and that the project gets moving. 

Once things get rolling, projects and teams are often self-sustaining. Be sure to enable your group to get to work and create momentum with a clear set of actions to take after the meeting is over. 

Document outcomes

After the project kickoff meeting is over, project managers need to turn their attention to documenting its outcomes. To ensure project success, you’ll need to have a clear place where to:

• outline the project scope;
• set out project deliverables;
• include a project timeline;
• report on project progress.

This is sometimes called a project charter. Make sure you inform all team members of where they can find this information, and keep it regularly updated as the project progresses.

At SessionLab, we use Notion to detail every project plan, while when running each team kickoff we have a template in Miro we use to collect notes.

What should the project manager include in a kickoff meeting agenda? 

Taking the time to structure and plan the agenda for your project kick-off meeting is an important part of making it a success. But how can you ensure you touch on everything you need to without making the meeting a marathon? Our example kickoff meeting agenda below is a great place to start your design process!  

You’ll find an explanation of each agenda point that includes some helpful context when it comes to organizing and running your meeting. Let’s take a look at what a typical project kickoff will include.

Meeting setup and outline

Although it may be tempting to jump right into the fine points of project planning, resist the urge and be sure to properly set the stage for your project kickoff. Start by introducing yourself as facilitator, briefly recap the purpose of the meeting, and set any expectations and rules of engagement. 

While you should have sent a reminder email before the meeting to cover the purpose of the project kickoff, it’s worth reiterating briefly here what the kickoff is about and why you’re all here. This helps ensure everyone is on the same page and is given an opportunity to fully arrive in the space. If there are any special requirements or tech setup issues take a moment to address them to help ensure your meeting can proceed without issue.

Introductions and check-in

Now you’ve set the stage, it’s time to give everyone a chance to warm up and get to know each other if they don’t already. If you’re working with a team that knows each other well, you might be able to skip introductions, but remember it’s always worth taking the time to check in with the group. Noting any low energy levels or concerns from the group early on can ensure the meeting runs smoothly from start to finish.

With groups that don’t know each other well, it’s a great time to give everyone an opportunity to introduce themselves and touch on what they might bring to the table. Be sure to timebox and facilitate this section so that everyone gets a chance to speak without overrunning or derailing the schedule. The best way to do this? Use an icebreaker game or activity!

Check-In Questions is an effective method for helping a project group get to know one another quickly and warm up for the meeting ahead. Encourage participants to include a sentence or two about what they’ll be bringing to this project and how they feel about the task at hand. Getting a quick read on the room and encouraging some light conversation about expectations is a great way to get started!

Project background

This is where you’ll discuss the impetus for the project you are about to embark on. We often discuss why this project, why now, and what we hope to achieve. Often, big projects have been discussed in various channels before they reach this stage and not everyone has been involved in those conversations. Now is the time to help everyone get on the same page about why the project is important and what brought you to this point. 

This might also be your first opportunity to get the team behind the project and start building excitement. This is your chance to help everyone understand the project and to connect with the central vision in a way that means they feel excited to contribute. Sometimes it can be helpful to think of this as an internal pitch to bring your group onboard.

If working with an external client, now would be a great time to give them the floor or present their perspective. Outline your client’s business or product. What is the client’s overall mission, or the company’s brand? What brought the client to pursue this project at this moment in time? Remember this is your chance to make sure your team has a solid grasp of the background of the project and get fired up about it! 

Project scope and goals

Discuss the project details and deliverables. What is the purpose of this project? What is the client hoping to achieve? What problems are you trying to solve? What are the goals, as a team and individually? Make sure your team understands the client’s vision for the project, as well as the client’s idea of what a successful project looks like. 

It’s also worth carefully outlining the scope of the project. Make it clear where the project ends and what doesn’t fall under the scope of this project. It can be easy for an excited team to have big ideas that fall outside of the reach of the current project. 

As your team starts to get an idea of what the project will involve, ensure that the goals for the project are also clear. If the goal of your new feature is designed to help onboard new customers and improve activation, make sure you define what that means.

Getting lost in the woods and trying to solve problems out of the scope of the current project or wholly unrelated to your goal can lead to wasted time and frustrated teams. Align on these items early and help everyone understand where the project ends, as well as where it begins. 

Roles and organization

This is the point to make sure each team member fully understands their role in the project. Assign each person or subteam their tasks, responsibilities, and accountabilities. We’d recommend using one of the various charts or methods to visualize and document the roles and assignments of everyone on the team.

RACI Matrix is an effective framework for not only breaking down the work and roles to be done but to clearly show the various dependencies and reporting systems. If someone isn’t directly involved in conducting groundwork but should be consulted or kept up to speed, this matrix helps ensure that happens.

During this section of the kickoff, every team member should know what is expected of them, who they are working with, and who they should answer to. This is an area that can often get a little messy if not clearly outlined and discussed. You’ll be so glad to have this in writing, especially as roles and dependencies can change and should be kept up to date! 

Timeline and major milestones

After setting the main goals of the project and assigning responsibilities, it’s good to set any hard and soft deadlines. Of course, there is an overall deadline for when the project must be completed. But what about the milestones you must reach to ensure the project is proceeding on track?

If the project manager doesn’t yet have those milestones established, now would be a good time to discuss what these look like and when they should be achieved. For example, a large project might have an initial scoping or discovery phase that needs to be conducted before the next stage – it’s important to set a timeline for when this phase is expected to conclude so you can keep the entire project on track. 

Decide on a plan that works for everyone and make it concrete. You may also want to schedule follow-up meetings to check in on progress. For example, scheduling a progress meeting every 2-4 weeks for a 3-month project can help ensure that major milestones are hit in time and that any issues are dealt with effectively. Try using a planning method like Who/What/When Matrix to make this process easier!

Questions

At this stage in your kickoff meeting, it’s a great idea to open the floor to questions. You might have briefed team members to come to the meeting with questions, or simply want to open up a general discussion for anything that isn’t yet clear. This is your team’s chance to make sure they are clear on the project brief, what their roles are, and to ask about anything that might prevent them from getting started.

While you might simply have an open discussion, it can also be useful to use a method format designed to help people ask great questions in an efficient manner. For example, Walking questions is a great method to help bridge knowledge gaps and enable the group to start working together on answering open questions immediately.

It’s also worth noting that some important questions relevant to the project may fall outside of the scope of this meeting. While you might not have time to get into deep technical questions here, be sure to set a follow-up or create space in Slack or elsewhere to have these conversations. 

As with many aspects of the project kickoff, remember you’re setting the tone for the project to come and so making it safe and easy to ask questions is vital! 

Next steps and follow-up actions

With complex projects, it can be so easy to get lost in the big picture and lose sight of what concrete actions need to be taken to get things moving. Before closing the project kickoff, we recommend reiterating your first milestone and ensuring that everyone in the team is clear on the very first actions they need to take once the meeting is over.

Depending on the project, this might mean doing initial research, scheduling follow-up meetings, outlining a prototype or something else entirely. The key is that you can continue the momentum of the kickoff by having everyone clear on what is expected of them and empowered to go do it after the meeting. 

In our experience, getting the first steps of a project actioned quickly and efficiently after a kickoff is key to a successful project. Don’t leave the meeting without having everyone clear on what it is they need to do next. Give everyone the tools and clarity they need to get going and take the time to clarify any open questions or uncertainty. 

Closing statements and check out

Now everyone on the team has what they need to help bring your project to fruition, it’s time to close the meeting. Reiterate what you expect from your team and ensure that everyone is aligned, but also take the chance to galvanize the group and remind them why you’re embarking on this project. Help everyone leave the meeting excited to get started by having a moment for sharing and reflection. 

Try using one of the five simple activities featured in Quick Reviews in 1 minute for a speedy round of sharing and to get a read on how everyone is feeling. Having a moment to share and check out also helps bring the meeting to a symbolic close and clear the decks for the next steps!

A focused checkout activity like One breath feedback is also an effective way of giving everyone a moment to hold the space and give their feedback on both the kickoff and the project at large. 

Whichever method you choose, checking out gives everyone who hasn’t yet spoken a chance to be heard and ensures nothing is missed. Try not to skip this step!

Wrap up

Congratulations, you successfully orchestrated a project kick-off and gave your team what they need to get started. But your work isn’t done yet. Review the notes from the meeting, write up any other key points and send a follow-up to the team. Ensure to include any important resources such as the accountability chart and project timeline. Encourage feedback or questions, and include the details of any follow-up meetings or scheduled check-ins. 

Whatever format you choose, document everything and make it accessible for everyone who needs it – whether they were present at the project kickoff or not! The more information you share with your team, the less you will have to repeat yourself, and the more empowered and enabled they will be to crack on. Win-win! 

Project kickoff templates

If you run more than one project kickoff meeting with the same group of people, you’ll probably want to create a reusable template. SessionLab’s collaboration tools can be quite helpful in keeping your project management neat by allowing you to create and save copies of your agendas in a personal (or team) library.

To get you started, we’ve created three basic templates that cover three types of project kickoff meetings. Whether you are working internally with your own team, in a wide assembly of multiple project stakeholders, or with agile methods, we’ve got you covered.

You can look through these for inspiration or, if you feel they fit your situation, copy-paste them and simply drag-and-drop blocks to customize and adapt each template to your needs.

Team project kickoff

Want to make the design and planning process for your kickoff meeting easy? We’ve prepared a template for a simple, one-hour project kickoff you can use and modify to your needs!

This template is based on our own work here at SessionLab, where we run project kickoffs each new business quarter. Use this template if you are an established team needing to bring clarity and focus to a new team project.

You’ll find everything you need to cover in a simple, adjustable format. While you may wish to use specific activities, lengthen certain sections or introduce elements specific to your project, we hope it makes it easy to get started in a pinch!

Multi-stakeholder project kickoff

Sometimes, a project kickoff is not just for your team members, but will involve multiple groups and stakeholders. Achieving success in such complicated environments can be quite tricky!

In public policy projects, it’s common to have multiple groups and working packages working semi-independently for common goals, detailed in a project plan. In such scenarios, it’s essential to spend time at the start to make sure project goals are shared and understood, background information is understood, as well as to assign responsibilities to different team members to that they may then go on to work with a fair degree of autonomy.

We’ve created this Project Kickoff template based on experience in project kickoff meetings, both online and in-real-life, for large multi-stakeholder public policy projects.

In this template for a half-day meeting you’ll find different sections for sharing agenda items and objectives as well as allowing working groups to spend time together to identify what they need for effective collaboration. Read it for inspiration if you have large projects to kickoff, and take it and adapt it to your needs!

Agile project kickoff

If you are working with Agile you’ll be looking for a dedicated template that fits the format. A kickoff is a short session for the team responsible for developing a solution to understand the objectives, accept them as realistic, and feel empowered and inspired to deliver a solution.

This template has been created considering the DSDM principle Communicate continuously and clearly which underpins the Agile principle of Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. DSDM is an Agile method that focuses on the full project lifecycle, from Kickoff to Close-Out or Retrospective.

Think of an Agile kickoff as a workshop that lays the foundation for effective collaboration. Use it when you need to establish a shared understanding and align team members with their goals, to ensure a successful and productive project.

What’s next?

Running a kickoff meeting can feel overwhelming, but the truth is that not running one will result in misalignment and inefficiency that can completely scuttle your project. By following these simple guidelines, your team will feel prepared, excited, and motivated to produce an exceptional project. 

To run a good kickoff you don’t just need a good agenda: you also need to approach the task with curiosity, listening, and openness to change the plan depending on your team’s needs. If you feel like you need to refresh your understanding of facilitation skills before running your next kickoff, you might be interested in reading our guide to facilitation skills here.

Have a takeaway from your own kickoff meetings you’d like to share? Is there something missing from our list or have you found something especially useful? We’d love to hear from you in the comments, or in our SessionLab community discussions!

Proven problem solving techniques such as those outlined below can guide your group through a process of identifying problems and challenges, ideating on possible solutions, and then evaluating and implementing the most suitable.

In this post, you’ll find problem-solving tools you can use to develop effective solutions. You’ll also find some tips for facilitating the problem solving process and solving complex problems.

What is problem solving?

Problem solving is a process of finding and implementing a solution to a challenge or obstacle. In most contexts, this means going through a problem solving process that begins with identifying the issue, exploring its root causes, ideating and refining possible solutions before implementing and measuring the impact of that solution.

For simple or small problems, it can be tempting to skip straight to implementing what you believe is the right solution. The danger with this approach is that without exploring the true causes of the issue, it might just occur again or your chosen solution may cause other issues.

Particularly in the world of work, good problem solving means using data to back up each step of the process, bringing in new perspectives and effectively measuring the impact of your solution.

Effective problem solving can help ensure that your team or organization is well positioned to overcome challenges, be resilient to change and create innovation. In my experience, problem solving is a combination of skillset, mindset and process, and it’s especially vital for leaders to cultivate this skill.

What is the seven step problem solving process?

A problem solving process is a step-by-step framework from going from discovering a problem all the way through to implementing a solution.

With practice, this framework can become intuitive, and innovative companies tend to have a consistent and ongoing ability to discover and tackle challenges when they come up.

You might see everything from a four step problem solving process through to seven steps. While all these processes cover roughly the same ground, I’ve found a seven step problem solving process is helpful for making all key steps legible.

We’ll outline that process here and then follow with techniques you can use to explore and work on that step of the problem solving process with a group.

The seven-step problem solving process is:

1. Problem identification 

The first stage of any problem solving process is to identify the problem(s) you need to solve. This often looks like using group discussions and activities to help a group surface and effectively articulate the challenges they’re facing and wish to resolve.

Be sure to align with your team on the exact definition and nature of the problem you’re solving. An effective process is one where everyone is pulling in the same direction – ensure clarity and alignment now to help avoid misunderstandings later.

2. Problem analysis and refinement

The process of problem analysis means ensuring that the problem you are seeking to solve is the right problem. Choosing the right problem to solve means you are on the right path to creating the right solution.

At this stage, you may look deeper at the problem you identified to try and discover the root cause at the level of people or process. You may also spend some time sourcing data, consulting relevant parties and creating and refining a problem statement.

Problem refinement means adjusting scope or focus of the problem you will be aiming to solve based on what comes up during your analysis. As you analyze data sources, you might discover that the root cause means you need to adjust your problem statement. Alternatively, you might find that your original problem statement is too big to be meaningful approached within your current project.

Remember that the goal of any problem refinement is to help set the stage for effective solution development and deployment. Set the right focus and get buy-in from your team here and you’ll be well positioned to move forward with confidence.

3. Solution generation

Once your group has nailed down the particulars of the problem you wish to solve, you want to encourage a free flow of ideas connecting to solving that problem. This can take the form of problem solving games that encourage creative thinking or techniquess designed to produce working prototypes of possible solutions. 

The key to ensuring the success of this stage of the problem solving process is to encourage quick, creative thinking and create an open space where all ideas are considered. The best solutions can often come from unlikely places and by using problem solving techniques that celebrate invention, you might come up with solution gold. 

4. Solution development

No solution is perfect right out of the gate. It’s important to discuss and develop the solutions your group has come up with over the course of following the previous problem solving steps in order to arrive at the best possible solution. Problem solving games used in this stage involve lots of critical thinking, measuring potential effort and impact, and looking at possible solutions analytically. 

During this stage, you will often ask your team to iterate and improve upon your front-running solutions and develop them further. Remember that problem solving strategies always benefit from a multitude of voices and opinions, and not to let ego get involved when it comes to choosing which solutions to develop and take further.

Finding the best solution is the goal of all problem solving workshops and here is the place to ensure that your solution is well thought out, sufficiently robust and fit for purpose. 

5. Decision making and planning

Nearly there! Once you’ve got a set of possible, you’ll need to make a decision on which to implement. This can be a consensus-based group decision or it might be for a leader or major stakeholder to decide. You’ll find a set of effective decision making methods below.

Once your group has reached consensus and selected a solution, there are some additional actions that also need to be decided upon. You’ll want to work on allocating ownership of the project, figure out who will do what, how the success of the solution will be measured and decide the next course of action.

Set clear accountabilities, actions, timeframes, and follow-ups for your chosen solution. Make these decisions and set clear next-steps in the problem solving workshop so that everyone is aligned and you can move forward effectively as a group. 

Ensuring that you plan for the roll-out of a solution is one of the most important problem solving steps. Without adequate planning or oversight, it can prove impossible to measure success or iterate further if the problem was not solved. 

6. Solution implementation 

This is what we were waiting for! All problem solving processes have the end goal of implementing an effective and impactful solution that your group has confidence in.

Project management and communication skills are key here – your solution may need to adjust when out in the wild or you might discover new challenges along the way. For some solutions, you might also implement a test with a small group and monitor results before rolling it out to an entire company.

You should have a clear owner for your solution who will oversee the plans you made together and help ensure they’re put into place. This person will often coordinate the implementation team and set-up processes to measure the efficacy of your solution too.

7. Solution evaluation 

So you and your team developed a great solution to a problem and have a gut feeling it’s been solved. Work done, right? Wrong. All problem solving strategies benefit from evaluation, consideration, and feedback.

You might find that the solution does not work for everyone, might create new problems, or is potentially so successful that you will want to roll it out to larger teams or as part of other initiatives. 

None of that is possible without taking the time to evaluate the success of the solution you developed in your problem solving model and adjust if necessary.

Remember that the problem solving process is often iterative and it can be common to not solve complex issues on the first try. Even when this is the case, you and your team will have generated learning that will be important for future problem solving workshops or in other parts of the organization. 

It’s also worth underlining how important record keeping is throughout the problem solving process. If a solution didn’t work, you need to have the data and records to see why that was the case. If you go back to the drawing board, notes from the previous workshop can help save time.

What does an effective problem solving process look like?

Every effective problem solving process begins with an agenda. In our experience, a well-structured problem solving workshop is one of the best methods for successfully guiding a group from exploring a problem to implementing a solution.

The format of a workshop ensures that you can get buy-in from your group, encourage free-thinking and solution exploration before making a decision on what to implement following the session.

This Design Sprint 2.0 template is an effective problem solving process from top agency AJ&Smart. It’s a great format for the entire problem solving process, with four-days of workshops designed to surface issues, explore solutions and even test a solution.

Check it for an example of how you might structure and run a problem solving process and feel free to copy and adjust it your needs!

For a shorter process you can run in a single afternoon, this remote problem solving agenda will guide you effectively in just a couple of hours.

Whatever the length of your workshop, by using SessionLab, it’s easy to go from an idea to a complete agenda. Start by dragging and dropping your core problem solving activities into place. Add timings, breaks and necessary materials before sharing your agenda with your colleagues.

The resulting agenda will be your guide to an effective and productive problem solving session that will also help you stay organized on the day!

Complete problem-solving methods

In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem-solving methods that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. These will help guide your team from the discovery and definition of a problem through to delivering the right solution.

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing method or problem-solving model, these processes are a great place to start. They’ll ask your team to challenge preconceived ideas and adopt a mindset for solving problems more effectively.

Six Thinking Hats

Individual approaches to solving a problem can be very different based on what team or role an individual holds. It can be easy for existing biases or perspectives to find their way into the mix, or for internal politics to direct a conversation.

Six Thinking Hats is a classic method for identifying the problems that need to be solved and enables your team to consider them from different angles, whether that is by focusing on facts and data, creative solutions, or by considering why a particular solution might not work.

Like all problem-solving frameworks, Six Thinking Hats is effective at helping teams remove roadblocks from a conversation or discussion and come to terms with all the aspects necessary to solve complex problems.

Lightning Decision Jam

Featured courtesy of Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart Berlin, Lightning Decision Jam is one of those strategies that should be in every facilitation toolbox. Exploring problems and finding solutions is often creative in nature, though as with any creative process, there is the potential to lose focus and get lost.

Unstructured discussions might get you there in the end, but it’s much more effective to use a method that creates a clear process and team focus.

In Lightning Decision Jam, participants are invited to begin by writing challenges, concerns, or mistakes on post-its without discussing them before then being invited by the moderator to present them to the group.

From there, the team vote on which problems to solve and are guided through steps that will allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on. 

By deciding the problems that need to be solved as a team before moving on, this group process is great for ensuring the whole team is aligned and can take ownership over the next stages. 

Problem Definition Process

While problems can be complex, the problem-solving methods you use to identify and solve those problems can often be simple in design. 

By taking the time to truly identify and define a problem before asking the group to reframe the challenge as an opportunity, this method is a great way to enable change.

Begin by identifying a focus question and exploring the ways in which it manifests before splitting into five teams who will each consider the problem using a different method: escape, reversal, exaggeration, distortion or wishful. Teams develop a problem objective and create ideas in line with their method before then feeding them back to the group.

This method is great for enabling in-depth discussions while also creating space for finding creative solutions too!

The 5 Whys 

Sometimes, a group needs to go further with their strategies and analyze the root cause at the heart of organizational issues. An RCA or root cause analysis is the process of identifying what is at the heart of business problems or recurring challenges. 

The 5 Whys is a simple and effective method of helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct analysis that will deliver results. 

By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to truly discover the cause of an issue.

World Cafe

World Cafe is a simple but powerful facilitation technique to help bigger groups to focus their energy and attention on solving complex problems.

World Cafe enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere where participants are able to self-organize and explore topics relevant and important to them which are themed around a central problem-solving purpose. Create the right atmosphere by modeling your space after a cafe and after guiding the group through the method, let them take the lead!

Making problem-solving a part of your organization’s culture in the long term can be a difficult undertaking. More approachable formats like World Cafe can be especially effective in bringing people unfamiliar with workshops into the fold. 

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

One of the best approaches is to create a safe space for a group to share and discover practices and behaviors that can help them find their own solutions.

With DAD, you can help a group choose which problems they wish to solve and which approaches they will take to do so. It’s great at helping remove resistance to change and can help get buy-in at every level too!

This process of enabling frontline ownership is great in ensuring follow-through and is one of the methods you will want in your toolbox as a facilitator.

Design Sprint 2.0

Want to see how a team can solve big problems and move forward with prototyping and testing solutions in a few days? The Design Sprint 2.0 template from Jake Knapp, author of Sprint, is a complete agenda for a with proven results.

Developing the right agenda can involve difficult but necessary planning. Ensuring all the correct steps are followed can also be stressful or time-consuming depending on your level of experience.

Use this complete 4-day workshop template if you are finding there is no obvious solution to your challenge and want to focus your team around a specific problem that might require a shortcut to launching a minimum viable product or waiting for the organization-wide implementation of a solution.

Open space technology

Open space technology- developed by Harrison Owen – creates a space where large groups are invited to take ownership of their problem solving and lead individual sessions. Open space technology is a great format when you have a great deal of expertise and insight in the room and want to allow for different takes and approaches on a particular theme or problem you need to be solved.

Start by bringing your participants together to align around a central theme and focus their efforts. Explain the ground rules to help guide the problem-solving process and then invite members to identify any issue connecting to the central theme that they are interested in and are prepared to take responsibility for.

Once participants have decided on their approach to the core theme, they write their issue on a piece of paper, announce it to the group, pick a session time and place, and post the paper on the wall. As the wall fills up with sessions, the group is then invited to join the sessions that interest them the most and which they can contribute to, then you’re ready to begin!

Everyone joins the problem-solving group they’ve signed up to, record the discussion and if appropriate, findings can then be shared with the rest of the group afterward.

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

Using a problem-solving method to help a team identify and analyze a problem can be a quick and effective addition to any workshop or meeting.

While further actions are always necessary, you can generate momentum and alignment easily, and these activities are a great place to get started.

We’ve put together this list of techniques to help you and your team with problem identification, analysis, and discussion that sets the foundation for developing effective solutions.

Let’s take a look!

Fishbone Analysis

Organizational or team challenges are rarely simple, and it’s important to remember that one problem can be an indication of something that goes deeper and may require further consideration to be solved.

Fishbone Analysis helps groups to dig deeper and understand the origins of a problem. It’s a great example of a root cause analysis method that is simple for everyone on a team to get their head around. 

Participants in this activity are asked to annotate a diagram of a fish, first adding the problem or issue to be worked on at the head of a fish before then brainstorming the root causes of the problem and adding them as bones on the fish. 

Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop a creative approach.

Problem Tree 

Encouraging visual thinking can be an essential part of many strategies. By simply reframing and clarifying problems, a group can move towards developing a problem solving model that works for them. 

In Problem Tree, groups are asked to first brainstorm a list of problems – these can be design problems, team problems or larger business problems – and then organize them into a hierarchy. The hierarchy could be from most important to least important or abstract to practical, though the key thing with problem solving games that involve this aspect is that your group has some way of managing and sorting all the issues that are raised.

Once you have a list of problems that need to be solved and have organized them accordingly, you’re then well-positioned for the next problem solving steps.

SWOT Analysis

Chances are you’ve heard of the SWOT Analysis before. This problem-solving method focuses on identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a tried and tested method for both individuals and teams.

Start by creating a desired end state or outcome and bare this in mind – any process solving model is made more effective by knowing what you are moving towards. Create a quadrant made up of the four categories of a SWOT analysis and ask participants to generate ideas based on each of those quadrants.

Once you have those ideas assembled in their quadrants, cluster them together based on their affinity with other ideas. These clusters are then used to facilitate group conversations and move things forward. 

Agreement-Certainty Matrix

Not every problem-solving approach is right for every challenge, and deciding on the right method for the challenge at hand is a key part of being an effective team.

The Agreement Certainty matrix helps teams align on the nature of the challenges facing them. By sorting problems from simple to chaotic, your team can understand what methods are suitable for each problem and what they can do to ensure effective results. 

If you are already using Liberating Structures techniques as part of your problem-solving strategy, the Agreement-Certainty Matrix can be an invaluable addition to your process. We’ve found it particularly if you are having issues with recurring problems in your organization and want to go deeper in understanding the root cause. 

SQUID

Organizing and charting a team’s progress can be important in ensuring its success. SQUID (Sequential Question and Insight Diagram) is a great model that allows a team to effectively switch between giving questions and answers and develop the skills they need to stay on track throughout the process. 

Begin with two different colored sticky notes – one for questions and one for answers – and with your central topic (the head of the squid) on the board. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Ask the group to come up with answers to those questions, fix them to the board and connect them with a line. After some discussion, go back to question mode by responding to the generated answers or other points on the board.

It’s rewarding to see a diagram grow throughout the exercise, and a completed SQUID can provide a visual resource for future effort and as an example for other teams.

Speed Boat

To continue with our nautical theme, Speed Boat is a short and sweet activity that can help a team quickly identify what employees, clients or service users might have a problem with and analyze what might be standing in the way of achieving a solution.

Methods that allow for a group to make observations, have insights and obtain those eureka moments quickly are invaluable when trying to solve complex problems.

In Speed Boat, the approach is to first consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Bonus points if you are able to identify any sharks in the water and develop ideas that can also deal with competitors!   

The Journalistic Six

Some of the most effective ways of solving problems is by encouraging teams to be more inclusive and diverse in their thinking.

Based on the six key questions journalism students are taught to answer in articles and news stories, The Journalistic Six helps create teams to see the whole picture. By using who, what, when, where, why, and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Reporter’s notebook and dictaphone optional.

Flip It

Individual and group perspectives are incredibly important, but what happens if people are set in their minds and need a change of perspective in order to approach a problem more effectively?

Flip It is a method we love because it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed. 

Participants in Flip It are first invited to consider concerns, issues, or problems from a perspective of fear and write them on a flip chart. Then, the group is asked to consider those same issues from a perspective of hope and flip their understanding.  

No problem and solution is free from existing bias and by changing perspectives with Flip It, you can then develop a problem solving model quickly and effectively.

LEGO Challenge

Now for an activity that is a little out of the (toy) box. LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem-solving skills. 

The LEGO Challenge includes giving each member of the team an assignment that is hidden from the rest of the group while they create a structure without speaking.

What the LEGO challenge brings to the table is a fun working example of working with stakeholders who might not be on the same page to solve problems. Also, it’s LEGO! Who doesn’t love LEGO! 

What, So What, Now What?

If not carefully managed, the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem-solving process can actually create more problems and misunderstandings.

The What, So What, Now What? problem-solving activity is designed to help collect insights and move forward while also eliminating the possibility of disagreement when it comes to identifying, clarifying, and analyzing organizational or work problems. 

Facilitation is all about bringing groups together so that might work on a shared goal and the best problem-solving strategies ensure that teams are aligned in purpose, if not initially in opinion or insight.

Throughout the three steps of this game, you give everyone on a team to reflect on a problem by asking what happened, why it is important, and what actions should then be taken. 

This can be a great activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. This is one of the most important problem-solving skills you can bring to your organization.

Journalists 

Problem analysis can be one of the most important and decisive stages of all problem-solving tools. Sometimes, a team can become bogged down in the details and are unable to move forward.

Journalists is an activity that can avoid a group from getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stages of the process.

In Journalists, the group is invited to draft the front page of a fictional newspaper and figure out what stories deserve to be on the cover and what headlines those stories will have. By reframing how your problems and challenges are approached, you can help a team move productively through the process and be better prepared for the steps to follow.

Problem-solving techniques for brainstorming solutions

Now you have the context and background of the problem you are trying to solving, now comes the time to start ideating and thinking about how you’ll solve the issue.

Here, you’ll want to encourage creative, free thinking and speed. Get as many ideas out as possible and explore different perspectives so you have the raw material for the next step.

TRIZ

Looking at a problem from a new angle can be one of the most effective ways of creating an effective solution. TRIZ is a problem-solving tool that asks the group to consider what they must not do in order to solve a challenge.

By reversing the discussion, new topics and taboo subjects often emerge, allowing the group to think more deeply and create ideas that confront the status quo in a safe and meaningful way. If you’re working on a problem that you’ve tried to solve before, TRIZ is a great problem-solving method to help your team get unblocked.

Mindspin 

Brainstorming is part of the bread and butter of the problem-solving process and all problem-solving strategies benefit from getting ideas out and challenging a team to generate solutions quickly. 

With Mindspin, participants are encouraged not only to generate ideas but to do so under time constraints and by slamming down cards and passing them on. By doing multiple rounds, your team can begin with a free generation of possible solutions before moving on to developing those solutions and encouraging further ideation. 

This is one of our favorite problem-solving activities and can be great for keeping the energy up throughout the workshop. Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem-solving techniques like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex. 

The Creativity Dice

One of the most useful problem solving skills you can teach your team is of approaching challenges with creativity, flexibility, and openness. Games like The Creativity Dice allow teams to overcome the potential hurdle of too much linear thinking and approach the process with a sense of fun and speed. 

In The Creativity Dice, participants are organized around a topic and roll a dice to determine what they will work on for a period of 3 minutes at a time. They might roll a 3 and work on investigating factual information on the chosen topic. They might roll a 1 and work on identifying the specific goals, standards, or criteria for the session.

Encouraging rapid work and iteration while asking participants to be flexible are great skills to cultivate. Having a stage for idea incubation in this game is also important. Moments of pause can help ensure the ideas that are put forward are the most suitable. 

Idea and Concept Development

Brainstorming without structure can quickly become chaotic or frustrating. In a problem-solving context, having an ideation framework to follow can help ensure your team is both creative and disciplined.

In this method, you’ll find an idea generation process that encourages your group to brainstorm effectively before developing their ideas and begin clustering them together. By using concepts such as Yes and…, more is more and postponing judgement, you can create the ideal conditions for brainstorming with ease.

Problem-solving techniques for developing and refining solutions 

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to develop and refine your ideas in order to bring them closer to a solution that actually solves the problem.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team think through their ideas and refine them as part of your problem solving process.

Improved Solutions

After a team has successfully identified a problem and come up with a few solutions, it can be tempting to call the work of the problem-solving process complete. That said, the first solution is not necessarily the best, and by including a further review and reflection activity into your problem-solving model, you can ensure your group reaches the best possible result. 

One of a number of problem-solving games from Thiagi Group, Improved Solutions helps you go the extra mile and develop suggested solutions with close consideration and peer review. By supporting the discussion of several problems at once and by shifting team roles throughout, this problem-solving technique is a dynamic way of finding the best solution. 

Four Step Sketch

Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem-solving strategies. Exercises that include sketching and prototyping on paper can be effective at the solution finding and development stage of the process, and can be great for keeping a team engaged. 

By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. Problem-solving techniques like Four-Step Sketch are great if you have a group of different thinkers and want to change things up from a more textual or discussion-based approach.

1-2-4-All

Ensuring that everyone in a group is able to contribute to a discussion is vital during any problem solving process. Not only does this ensure all bases are covered, but its then easier to get buy-in and accountability when people have been able to contribute to the process.

1-2-4-All is a tried and tested facilitation technique where participants are asked to first brainstorm on a topic on their own. Next, they discuss and share ideas in a pair before moving into a small group. Those groups are then asked to present the best idea from their discussion to the rest of the team.

This method can be used in many different contexts effectively, though I find it particularly shines in the idea development stage of the process. Giving each participant time to concretize their ideas and develop them in progressively larger groups can create a great space for both innovation and psychological safety.

15% Solutions

Some problems are simpler than others and with the right problem-solving activities, you can empower people to take immediate actions that can help create organizational change. 

Part of the liberating structures toolkit, 15% solutions is a problem-solving technique that focuses on finding and implementing solutions quickly. A process of iterating and making small changes quickly can help generate momentum and an appetite for solving complex problems.

Problem-solving strategies can live and die on whether people are onboard. Getting some quick wins is a great way of getting people behind the process.   

It can be extremely empowering for a team to realize that problem-solving techniques can be deployed quickly and easily and delineate between things they can positively impact and those things they cannot change. 

Problem-solving techniques for making decisions and planning

After your group is happy with the possible solutions you’ve developed, now comes the time to choose which to implement. There’s more than one way to make a decision and the best option is often dependant on the needs and set-up of your group.

Sometimes, it’s the case that you’ll want to vote as a group on what is likely to be the most impactful solution. Other times, it might be down to a decision maker or major stakeholder to make the final decision. Whatever your process, here’s some techniques you can use to help you make a decision during your problem solving process.

How-Now-Wow Matrix

The problem-solving process is often creative, as complex problems usually require a change of thinking and creative response in order to find the best solutions. While it’s common for the first stages to encourage creative thinking, groups can often gravitate to familiar solutions when it comes to the end of the process. 

When selecting solutions, you don’t want to lose your creative energy! The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem-solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem.

Problem-solving techniques that encourage creative thinking and the ideation and selection of new solutions can be the most effective in organisational change. Give the How-Now-Wow Matrix a go, and not just for how pleasant it is to say out loud. 

Impact and Effort Matrix

All problem-solving techniques hope to not only find solutions to a given problem or challenge but to find the best solution. When it comes to finding a solution, groups are invited to put on their decision-making hats and really think about how a proposed idea would work in practice. 

The Impact and Effort Matrix is one of the problem-solving techniques that fall into this camp, empowering participants to first generate ideas and then categorize them into a 2×2 matrix based on impact and effort.

Activities that invite critical thinking while remaining simple are invaluable. Use the Impact and Effort Matrix to move from ideation and towards evaluating potential solutions before then committing to them. 

Dotmocracy

If you’ve followed each of the problem-solving steps with your group successfully, you should move towards the end of your process with heaps of possible solutions developed with a specific problem in mind. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action? 

Dotmocracy – or Dot Voting -is a tried and tested method of helping a team in the problem-solving process make decisions and put actions in place with a degree of oversight and consensus. 

One of the problem-solving techniques that should be in every facilitator’s toolbox, Dot Voting is fast and effective and can help identify the most popular and best solutions and help bring a group to a decision effectively. 

MoSCow

Straddling the gap between decision making and planning, MoSCoW is a simple and effective method that allows a group team to easily prioritize a set of possible options.

Use this method in a problem solving process by collecting and summarizing all your possible solutions and then categorize them into 4 sections: “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, or “Would like but won‘t get”.

This method is particularly useful when its less about choosing one possible solution and more about prioritorizing which to do first and which may not fit in the scope of your project. In my experience, complex challenges often require multiple small fixes, and this method can be a great way to move from a pile of things you’d all like to do to a structured plan.

RAACI

When it comes to managing the rollout of a solution, clarity and accountability are key factors in ensuring the success of the project. The RAACI chart is a simple but effective model for setting roles and responsibilities as part of a planning session.

Start by listing each person involved in the project and put them into the following groups in order to make it clear who is responsible for what during the rollout of your solution.

• Responsibility (Which person and/or team will be taking action?)
• Authority (At what “point” must the responsible person check in before going further?)
• Accountability (Who must the responsible person check in with?)
• Consultation (Who must be consulted by the responsible person before decisions are made?)
• Information (Who must be informed of decisions, once made?)

Ensure this information is easily accessible and use it to inform who does what and who is looped into discussions and kept up to date.

Problem-solving warm-up activities

All facilitators know that warm-ups and icebreakers are useful for any workshop or group process. Problem-solving workshops are no different.

Use these problem-solving techniques to warm up a group and prepare them for the rest of the process. Activating your group by tapping into some of the top problem-solving skills can be one of the best ways to see great outcomes from your session.

Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process.

Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute. 

If you are running a series of meetings, setting a consistent pattern of checking in and checking out can really help your team get into a groove. We recommend this opening-closing activity for small to medium-sized groups though it can work with large groups if they’re disciplined!

Doodling Together 

Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem-solving skills for any group or team, and warming up by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start. 

Doodling Together is one of our favorite creative ice breaker games – it’s quick, effective, and fun and can make all following problem-solving steps easier by encouraging a group to collaborate visually. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems. 

Show and Tell

You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem-solving activity to kick off a session.

Asking participants to prepare a little something before a workshop by bringing an object for show and tell can help them warm up before the session has even begun! Games that include a physical object can also help encourage early engagement before moving onto more big-picture thinking.

By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Great groundwork for approaching a problem-solving process as a team! 

Constellations

Who doesn’t love stars? Constellations is a great warm-up activity for any workshop as it gets people up off their feet, energized, and ready to engage in new ways with established topics. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases, and patterns that can come into play as part of your session.

Using warm-up games that help build trust and connection while also allowing for non-verbal responses can be great for easing people into the problem-solving process and encouraging engagement from everyone in the group. Constellations is great in large spaces that allow for movement and is definitely a practical exercise to allow the group to see patterns that are otherwise invisible. 

Draw a Tree

Problem-solving games that help raise group awareness through a central, unifying metaphor can be effective ways to warm-up a group in any problem-solving model.

Draw a Tree is a simple warm-up activity you can use in any group and which can provide a quick jolt of energy. Start by asking your participants to draw a tree in just 45 seconds – they can choose whether it will be abstract or realistic. 

Once the timer is up, ask the group how many people included the roots of the tree and use this as a means to discuss how we can ignore important parts of any system simply because they are not visible.

All problem-solving strategies are made more effective by thinking of problems critically and by exposing things that may not normally come to light. Warm-up games like Draw a Tree are great in that they quickly demonstrate some key problem-solving skills in an accessible and effective way.

Closing activities for a problem-solving process

Each step of the problem-solving workshop benefits from an intelligent deployment of activities, games, and techniques. Bringing your session to an effective close helps ensure that solutions are followed through on and that you also celebrate what has been achieved.

Here are some problem-solving activities you can use to effectively close a workshop or meeting and ensure the great work you’ve done can continue afterward.

One Breath Feedback

Maintaining attention and focus during the closing stages of a problem-solving workshop can be tricky and so being concise when giving feedback can be important. It’s easy to incur “death by feedback” should some team members go on for too long sharing their perspectives in a quick feedback round. 

One Breath Feedback is a great closing activity for workshops. You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. This keeps feedback short and to the point and means that everyone is encouraged to provide the most important piece of feedback to them. 

Who What When Matrix 

Matrices feature as part of many effective problem-solving strategies and with good reason. They are easily recognizable, simple to use, and generate results.

The Who What When Matrix is a great tool to use when closing your problem-solving session by attributing a who, what and when to the actions and solutions you have decided upon. The resulting matrix is a simple, easy-to-follow way of ensuring your team can move forward. 

Great solutions can’t be enacted without action and ownership. Your problem-solving process should include a stage for allocating tasks to individuals or teams and creating a realistic timeframe for those solutions to be implemented or checked out. Use this method to keep the solution implementation process clear and simple for all involved. 

Response cards

Group discussion can comprise the bulk of most problem-solving activities and by the end of the process, you might find that your team is talked out! 

Providing a means for your team to give feedback with short written notes can ensure everyone is head and can contribute without the need to stand up and talk. Depending on the needs of the group, giving an alternative can help ensure everyone can contribute to your problem-solving model in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Response Cards is a great way to close a workshop if you are looking for a gentle warm-down and want to get some swift discussion around some of the feedback that is raised. 

Tips for effective problem solving

Problem-solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. While a great method can help unlock your team’s ability to solve problems, without a thoughtful approach and strong facilitation the solutions may not be fit for purpose.

Let’s take a look at some problem-solving tips you can apply to any process to help it be a success!

Clearly define the problem

Jumping straight to solutions can be tempting, though without first clearly articulating a problem, the solution might not be the right one. Many of the problem-solving activities below include sections where the problem is explored and clearly defined before moving on.

This is a vital part of the problem-solving process and taking the time to fully define an issue can save time and effort later. A clear definition helps identify irrelevant information and it also ensures that your team sets off on the right track.

Don’t jump to conclusions

It’s easy for groups to exhibit cognitive bias or have preconceived ideas about both problems and potential solutions. Be sure to back up any problem statements or potential solutions with facts, research, and adequate forethought.

The best techniques ask participants to be methodical and challenge preconceived notions. Make sure you give the group enough time and space to collect relevant information and consider the problem in a new way. By approaching the process with a clear, rational mindset, you’ll often find that better solutions are more forthcoming.  

Try different approaches  

Problems come in all shapes and sizes and so too should the methods you use to solve them. If you find that one approach isn’t yielding results and your team isn’t finding different solutions, try mixing it up. You’ll be surprised at how using a new creative activity can unblock your team and generate great solutions.

Don’t take it personally 

Depending on the nature of your team or organizational problems, it’s easy for conversations to get heated. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the discussions, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions.

You’re all in it together, and even if your team or area is seeing problems, that isn’t necessarily a disparagement of you personally. Using facilitation skills to manage group dynamics is one effective method of helping conversations be more constructive.

Get the right people in the room

Your problem-solving method is often only as effective as the group using it. Getting the right people on the job and managing the number of people present is important too!

If the group is too small, you may not get enough different perspectives to effectively solve a problem. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages.

Creating the right group makeup is also important in ensuring you have the necessary expertise and skillset to both identify and follow up on potential solutions. Carefully consider who to include at each stage to help ensure your problem-solving method is followed and positioned for success.

Create psychologically safe spaces for discussion

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner.

It can be tough for people to stand up and contribute if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions and where possible, create regular opportunities for challenges to be brought up organically.

Document everything

The best solutions can take refinement, iteration, and reflection to come out. Get into a habit of documenting your process in order to keep all the learnings from the session and to allow ideas to mature and develop. Many of the methods below involve the creation of documents or shared resources. Be sure to keep and share these so everyone can benefit from the work done!

Bring a facilitator 

Facilitation is all about making group processes easier. With a subject as potentially emotive and important as problem-solving, having an impartial third party in the form of a facilitator can make all the difference in finding great solutions and keeping the process moving. Consider bringing a facilitator to your problem-solving session to get better results and generate meaningful solutions!

Develop your problem-solving skills

It takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver. While some roles or participants might more naturally gravitate towards problem-solving, it can take development and planning to help everyone create better solutions.

You might develop a training program, run a problem-solving workshop or simply ask your team to practice using the techniques below. Check out our post on problem-solving skills to see how you and your group can develop the right mental process and be more resilient to issues too!

Design a great agenda

Workshops are a great format for solving problems. With the right approach, you can focus a group and help them find the solutions to their own problems. But designing a process can be time-consuming and finding the right activities can be difficult.

Check out our workshop planning guide to level-up your agenda design and start running more effective workshops. Need inspiration? Check out templates designed by expert facilitators to help you kickstart your process!

Save time and effort creating an effective problem solving process

A structured problem solving process is a surefire way of solving tough problems, discovering creative solutions and driving organizational change. But how can you design for successful outcomes?

With SessionLab, it’s easy to design engaging workshops that deliver results. Drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session timing adjusts automatically, saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore how to use SessionLab to design effective problem solving workshops or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Over to you

The problem-solving process can often be as complicated and multifaceted as the problems they are set-up to solve. With the right problem-solving techniques and a mix of exercises designed to guide discussion and generate purposeful ideas, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible.

Is there a problem-solving technique that you are missing here? Do you have a favorite activity or method you use when facilitating? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you! 

Whether you’re working in a virtual or live environment, this guide to instructor-led training will help you and your trainers deliver exceptional training experiences. We’ll share share best practices, actionable insights and help you decide when instructor-led training is right for you and your team.

What is instructor-led training?

Instructor-led training (ILT) is a learning format where an instructor or facilitator leads a group of learners through a course or program designed to teach new skills or impart knowledge.

Picture a classroom where a group of learners receive instruction from an experienced trainer on a topic before getting the opportunity to test skills relating to that training topic and you have a good sense of what ILT involves.

The trainer or instructor will typically guide participants through a learning journey designed to satisfy the desired outcomes of a training needs assessment, job compliance or competency test or business initiative.

ILT often involves a combination of presentations, discussions, hands-on activities, and assessments to ensure learning is comprehensive and engaging. When facilitated by an expert trainer, the ILT method creates space for real-time interaction, immediate feedback, and a structured learning environment tailored to the needs of the participants.

Instructor led training sessions can be conducted in person or virtually, utilizing various digital platforms to create an engaging environment for learning. The key distinction between instructor-led training and eLearning is that the core learning and training materials are delivered in real-time, with a real person present to guide the experience.

Alternative formats used by trainers can include self-paced online courses where learners access eLearning materials on their own time, or blended learning programs, where there is a mix of live training and interactive workshops alongside self-paced elements (to learn more about blended learning, check out our guide here).

ILT is typically delivered with the aid of an agenda or training session plan. This will include an itemized rundown of all the training content to be covered, with clear activity timings and supporting materials attached.

When creating your training design, SessionLab is an easy-to-use tool for designing your learning flow, working with subject matter experts and then exporting your materials in the format that works for you.

Learn more about how to use SessionLab for training design or explore how Vlerick Business School uses SessionLab to create their training and learning programs in this customer story.

What are the benefits of instructor-led training?

Even in a rapidly changing workplace, instructor-led training remains one of the most effective ways to transfer skills and knowledge and ensure learning is retained by trainees.

When it comes to determining the best format for your learning solution, you may run a cost-benefit analysis and consider the pros and cons of various formats. Yes, eLearning may be cheaper to deploy to your global workforce, but will it successfully close your skills gap and solve the problems you’ve unearthed?

To help understand whether ILT is right for your organization, let’s start by exploring the benefits of ILT below.

Personalized Learning

In ILT sessions, instructors can flexibily tailor their teaching methods to accommodate different learning styles and paces, ensuring that all participants grasp the material effectively.

Experienced trainers are able to personalize their training materials to groups and individuals alike, creating a training environment that is responsive to the needs of the group. In practice, trainers may start by assessing the specific class they’re training, get to know them with an icebreaker and begin to form a connection that allows for more personalized instruction

Context is also a vital ingredient here. Trainers are able to adjust what they deliver and how they deliver it based on the group and their specific context. For example, if a regional sales team approaches something differently, this can be incorporated into the training. If a group ends up having an advanced knowledge of one topic, a trainer may elect to provide a recap only.

Immediate Feedback

In ILT, learners receive instant clarification and feedback, which helps in reinforcing knowledge and correcting misunderstandings promptly. While an eLearning course is also able to provide feedback based on trainer input, a key distinction here is that feedback in ILT sessions can be a conversation that goes both ways.

If a trainee doesn’t understand the feedback given to them, an instructor is able to clarify, rephrase or provide additional context that can ensure the desired learning outcome is met. In cohort sessions, you can even encourage participants to give one another feedback and insights too.

Engagement and Interaction

The interactive nature of ILT encourages participation, discussion, and collaboration among learners, enhancing the overall learning experience. ILT is generally more experiential in nature, with opportunities for live role playing, skills-based practice and group work that encourages learners to learn from one another.

Memorable and unique experiential learning is a major contributing factor to knowledge retention. ILT sessions that encourage interaction between trainees and which create memorable learning experiences are generally more impactful and aid knowledge retention.

For example, including some of the games from this collection of training activities can be a sure-fire way of encouraging interaction and engaging.

Good eLearning programs are all about interactivity too, though often in the form of simulations, quizzes and games rather than person-to-person interaction.

While this is impactful, it will always have a different flavour to an ILT session. For the best of both worlds, cohort-based blended learning programs can provide participants with personal engagement while still allowing for flexibility and reduced overhead.

Accountability and Structure

Getting everyone in a room together with a trainer can help provide a structured learning environment with clear objectives, schedules, and accountability. In many cases, the presence of everyone together in one place with a trainer can be the surest signal that learning is about to begin and that their attention is required. Distractions that might occur in a self-paced environment can be eliminated too.

In my experience, the focused attention of coming together, whether virtually or live, can also create a sense of momentum for next steps. The care and skilled facilitation of an instructor helps provide a sense of structure that a hands-off process can sometimes struggle to achieve.

Skill Development

With hands-on activities and real-world scenarios, ILT helps learners develop practical skills that are directly applicable to their roles or studies. Face-to-face delivery gives students the opportunity to quickly learn and practice new skills in a more context-relevant manner. Here, the guidance of an instructor and the help of peers can be incredibly powerful in ensuring that your group all develop skills in the way that is most applicable to them.

Moving from understanding a concept to applying it is a key step in Bloom’s taxonomy of learning – a framework for effective instruction that goes back to the 1950s and is still relevant to this day. Hands on training during an ILT session remains one of the easiest way to guide students on a learning journey that helps new skills take root.

Flexibility and adaptability

While self-paced online courses are typically static in form, the instructor’s style and content can adapt during an ILT based on the needs of the group.

When delivering training, it’s common to have a range of skill and knowledge levels in a group. in ILT, trainers are able to adjust to the specific makeup and context of the group they have. In my own experience, adjusting the learning process on the fly, adding or removing activities or diving deeper into tricky spots is all par the course for an experienced trainer.

All that said, it’s important to have a solid foundation to fall back on. After you’ve created your training session agenda in SessionLab, it’s easy to adjust based on the needs of your participants.

Drag and drop to adjust your learning flow and the timing of your session will update automatically, ensuring that whatever changes, your training session will still finish on time.

What are the different types of instructor-led training?

Instructor-led training can come in many forms and isn’t restricted to a typical classroom or presentation format. Here, we’ll outline the various possible formats and types of ILT so you can understand which might be right for your organization and training scenario.

Traditional classroom training

This is the traditional form of ILT, where learners and instructors gather in a physical training room in order to give and receive learning. It allows for face-to-face interaction, hands-on activities, and collaborative learning and is particularly useful when aiming to create a memorable experience or encourage discussion between learners.

This format mirrors some of earliest learning experiences in school and incorporates many of the same concepts as good pedagogy combined with adult learning theory and learning design principles.

What to consider with classroom based training?

Room setup

Room setup is an important, yet often overlooked factor of any learning experience that takes place in a conference room or physical space. How you arrange tables and chairs can have an impact on group dynamics and whether trainees can complete necessary tasks with ease.

Depending on what you’re actually training people in, you’ll also need to have sufficient space and the right equipment to hand. Practical instruction, for example, is a different beast to theoretical or knowledge based training.

It’s also worth considering how you might use physical space to create different training zones (Ie: a quiet reflective zone, or a space for presentations and breakout group discussions.) in order to deliver the best possible learning experience.

Want to learn more and see some examples? Read more in our guide to room setup for training and facilitation.

Learning aids

On-site training can massively benefit from the use of learning aids, handouts and physical artefacts. These materials can be used augment your training, facilitate learning and also give trainees something to take away and aid the retention process. You’ll want to consider what learning aids and training materials you need and create them ahead of the session.

One thing I love about classroom based training with a cohort is the possibility to tailor the physical space to them and use the space to impact the learning experience. On the simple side, this can look like putting up posters or creating a space for quiet discussions or presentations.

On the more complex side, you can also have participants create persistent materials or their own learning aids. For example, having each team create a poster to summarize a key course topic and leaving it up for future reference can massively benefit the learning experience.

Ongoing course or one-off?
Skilled instructors will often use different techniques and strategies depending on whether they are delivering a one-off training session or a series of instructor led trainings.

For a longer training program with a cohort, they may spend more time helping trainees get to know each other and setting up a buddy system or async communication space.

In a single session, you may not even have time or space for every experiential activity you want and need to choose appropriately. This length and format of the course will likely impact your assessment criteria too.

Having only one major chance to evaluate performance often means having a more rigid marking criteria and an emphasis on giving participants what they need to satisfy that criteria directly.

Virtual Instructor-Led Training (VILT)

Conducted over video software like Zoom, VILT aims to replicate the classroom experience online and offer personalized training to remotely distributed trainees. VILT leverages video conferencing tools, virtual whiteboards, and chat functions to facilitate interaction and engagement.

VILT has become increasingly prevalent over the years as it combines many of the best elements of ILT while reducing costs and improving accessibility. While some training topics will always benefit from an in-person element, VILT can be the best option for many teams wanting to deliver hands-on training while navigating the challenges of distributed teams.

For remote or hybrid teams, getting good at designing and delivering online training goes beyond being a “nice to have.” It’s not only a great format for training, but it can also serve well for the purpose of alignment, team cohesion and getting face-time with colleagues you may otherwise barely see.

What to consider with virtual instructor-led training?

Tool selection and familiarity

The tools you use for delivering your virtual training are an important factor in the efficacy and impact of your training.

Getting everyone in a Zoom session might work for some training, but how will you facilitate collaboration and experiential learning? Online whiteboards and engagement platforms are just some of the tools you might use to enliven your virtual session and deliver an engaging experience.

Knowing the tools your audience is familiar with and finding a balance between familiarity and function is important too.

If your group spends the entire session getting to grips with your choice of whiteboard tool instead of engaging with your training content, it’s likely to become a blocker to effective learning. Pick your tools wisely! This guide to online tools for workshops, meetings and training sessions is a great place to start.

Engagement and interactivity

Whatever the format of your training, creating engagement with moments of interactivity is important. In online instructor-led training, this importance only increases due to the potential for fatigue, potential distractions and the lack of immediacy in trainee surroundings.

Ensure to design for engagement and balance your training to include interactivity where possible. This might look like breakout groups for discussions, polls, games and other techniques to encourage interaction from your audience. Experiential learning can still happen in an online setting: it’s just that the format needs to adjust slightly for the virtual space.

Blended learning

Combining in-person training with self-paced elements, blended learning is a powerful approach for organizations who want to offer flexibility in their training programs without sacrificing the benefits of ILT.

In most scenarios, blended learning programs are time sensitive, with an entrance and exit date, with a cohort of trainees entering such a program together.

Typically, a blended learning strategy will combine live instruction where everyone in a cohort is present alongside eLearning modules that are done at a trainees own pace. Sometimes, a group will only meet at the beginning, middle and end of a program with the majority of instruction done on their own via a learning management system.

In other set-ups, the majority of instruction is in a series of virtual workshops and training with only a small amount of self directed work that might even be offline in nature.

Blended learning is flexible by nature and its often best created in response to participant needs and with the context of training in mind. Need lots of real time feedback? Design for more live sessions. Globally distributed participants and some great self-paced resources ready to go? Lean into the online learning element of your program and choose a training management system that best supports this set-up.

Read this guide for more on how to design and implement a blended learning strategy. Want to see what the agenda for such a program might look like? Explore this blended learning program template and feel free to edit and reuse it for your own needs!

What to consider with blended learning programs?

Clear instructions

Blended learning courses tend to have more moving parts than solely live or self-paced options. You’ll have specific times and dates for many live elements, there will likely be deadlines for the completion of certain modules and more – it’s a lot for learners to keep it mind.

Help trainees out by providing key resources, timelines and FAQs and collecting them in an easy to find place. Email reminders and calendar integrations for events are also a good shout. Ensure that you make it easy for participants to attend and stay on track throughout the program.

Office hours

For some blended learning programs, the key live elements are one-to-one conversations or small group discussions between trainees and the instructor. Like lecturers in a university, this format of office hours is typically optional and is designed to serve the needs of learners who may need extra help without making such meetings mandatory.

In self-directed programs where the output is something that cannot be assessed with a quiz in an eLearning module, this regular check-in point can be vital. Obviously, such a setup is time consuming and depending on your cohort size, might be untenable. As with every design decision, come back to what will best serve the needs of your participants and help you achieve your learning goals most effectively.

Cohort and peer learning

One of the major benefits of a blended learning program is in the creation of a cohort of trainees who can all learn and engage with one another during the program. Putting together small groups for assignment work, discussion groups, async chat and peer review systems can have a massive impact on participant engagement and the overall success of your program.

Where possible, choose a learning management system that supports cohorts and peer interaction and try to keep communication in one place so it feels like a living classroom.

Workshop-Based Training

Workshop-based training sessions are typically intensive, short-term programs focused on specific skills or knowledge areas. Workshops often involve practical exercises, group work, and case studies to enhance learning outcomes.

In contrast with traditional training, workshop-based training tends to have a greater emphasis on participant ownership of outcomes and practice based learning.

The distinction between training and workshops can be fuzzy, but in my experience, training typically follows a more pass/fail format while workshops are often about exploring a subject, developing skills and coming away with an outcome that is more self-directed.

In training, an expert is likely to come in and teach a group their skills whereas in a workshop, participants are more likely to share their skills and develop their own approach as a group.

In any case, both training and workshops are powerful methods of sharing skills and knowledge and it’s common for trainers to run both, sometimes pivoting from one to another if the needs of the group require it.

Learn more in this guide on how to plan and design a workshop, from idea to completed agenda.

What to consider with workshop-based training?

Participant ownership

Workshops work best when a group is properly mobilized and able to take part in the success of the session. While all training should have elements design to help trainees transition from passivity to activity, workshops index even further into participant action.

Let’s use an example of training paramedics. A session on proper equipment usage is likely to be in a traditional format, where an expert teaches, participants practice and then are assessed. There’s a right way and a wrong way to use a defibrillator and the training format reflects this.

Conversely, a session on how to deal with the emotional challenges of being a paramedic may benefit from a workshop format where participants are able to share their core concerns and difficulties and then work together on the items they find most important as a group. Group discussions and personal experiences are often much more engaging and useful than a simple checklist of best practices alone.

Facilitator guides

Facilitator guides are useful for any form of training though in workshop-based training, they are especially important. Often, a facilitator in a workshop will amend their session flow in order to best serve the needs of the group and the training at hand.

Facilitator guides help provide a solid foundation for improvisation and adjustment and can help ensure that whatever changes, the desired learning outcomes are reached.

Ensure you come to any workshop-based training with a clear agenda with instructions and goals attached. Not only will this help any facilitator to deliver training effectively, but it can increase confidence that people across an organization are all getting what they need.

Facilitation skills

Just as the lines between training and workshops blur, so does the line between facilitation and training. That said, there are skills that expert facilitators use when designing and delivering workshops that trainers can benefit from bringing to their practice. In my experience, the closer a session gets to shifting control from the instructor to the group, the more facilitation skills and techniques are useful.

Going from a sage on the stage to a guide on the side isn’t simple and so shoring up your key facilitation skills (such as those outlined in this guide to facilitation) can help ensure the experience is enjoyable and useful to all.

Seminars and Conferences

Seminars and conferences provide opportunities for networking, knowledge sharing, and exposure to the latest trends and best practices in a particular field. For our purposes, these are large-scale training events that bring together industry experts and learners.

These most closely resemble seminars and university lectures, where instruction is often one-way only and participants are expected to listen, ingest and memorize information, rather than engage experientially.

Great seminars and conferences do tend to incorporate experiential elements, such as space to break out into groups or employ open space technology in response to an expert lecture. You might also see a seminar form the central pillar of a larger training strategy.

Whether you create a seminar yourself or invite participants to attend a conference, they can offer an unparalleled opportunity to get lots of expert insight at speed.

What to consider with seminars and conferences?

Scale and interaction

Seminars, conferences and webinars provide a great opportunity for learning at scale. If you simply need to get a lot of people in a room to receive information from an expert, it’s often the best format to do so. The scale of such an event means that you can reach a lot of people at once, but you do also trade out some interaction, personalization and many other hallmarks of ILT.

Where possible, pair a seminar with breakout groups, smaller sessions and ample reflection time to help the learnings of a large scale session take root. In some conferences, you may also create space for a Q&A at the end and factor this into your design. This can be taken further with a webinar format, where you may have an assistant in live chat answering questions and engaging with the audience.

Outside expertise

Seminars, webinars and conferences are a great way to bring outside expertise into your organization and enrich your program. An expert might be brought in to deliver a lecture, be a guest instructor or form the foundation of a course that another instructor will then lead.

One reason a seminar format is used to bring in outside expertise is the lower demand on that expert’s time. Such industry leaders aren’t typically asked to create a full program and are instead expert speakers that support a broader program designed by another instructor or learning designer.

In fast moving fields or when subject matter experts will add tremendous value to your program, adding a seminar to a blended learning program can be very effective. It’s also common to have an opportunity to attend external conferences as part of a larger learning and development program.

Conference design and participant guidance

Conference design is a complex topic that deserves its own blog post, but here, it’s worth mentioning that there’s more to an engaging learning experience than hosting a series of lectures.

Consider how to prepare your participants for the experience, where to provide downtime and reflection and how you might supplement keynotes and lectures with opportunities for discussion and deeper learning. Buddy systems, conference groups and a suggested learning route can be helpful at ensuring the conference is good ROI for everyone involved.

How to choose whether to use instructor-led training or eLearning?

Choosing an appropriate format and delivery method for your learning solution is a key moment in any training design process. There are heaps of factors that can determine whether you should deploy live instructor led training in a classroom setting or instead go for a simple micro-learning course.

Here are some key questions you can use to help you determine when to use ILT in your organization.

What’s the training cadence and cohort size?

For many organizations, scale and cost are key considerations when choosing whether to deliver ILT or self-paced training materials. In my experience, the cadence of training and cohort size is a key consideration that has an impact of questions of cost.

Consider how often you will be running your training and how many people will be attending during each intake. Very small cohorts with high cadence could point towards eLearning or blended learning programs often supported by a manager. Larger cohorts with infrequent cadence may point to ILT being a more cost-effective solution.

Let’s say you’re designing an employee onboarding program that includes a section on tools training. In many cases, its likely you’ll have a regular trickle of new hires and it doesn’t make sense for your in-house trainer to deliver live training every time someone new starts.

In this case, simple eLearning, good documentation and on-demand help from a manager or trainer will likely satisfy your training needs. On the other hand, let’s say that everyone in your organization needs to take updated compliance training every 6 months.

Getting a large group in a room (or online session) together might be a better option, particularly if discussions and inter-team dependencies are required.

What’s the scale of training required and where are your trainees located?

The scale of your learning solution is likely to determine your choice of format. Rolling out ongoing training to thousands of employees across many timezones is a very different beast to a single training in one location.

Sometimes, the sheer scale of a training project can make it feel like a one-size fits all eLearning approach is needed. For some projects, that may be true and using a learning management system to facilitate large scale training makes the most sense. For others, dynamic and flexible ILT sessions with many trainers syncing across the company is a better approach.

Whether your trainees are co-located or remote is also a consideration to take into account. While this might be as simple as requiring training to be done virtually or in a hybrid format for remote teams, it can be much more modular than this.

Regional teams might benefit from coming together and discussing regional context as part of in-person training. If you find it difficult to bring team members working across timezones together, this might make blended or self-paced training a more natural fit for your project.

How complex is your training topic?

In my experience, the more complex a topic is, the more it benefits from the ILT format . Instant feedback and real-time dialogue between trainer and trainee can ensure learning sticks and that questions are answered with ease. In the live format, trainers are able to go the extra mile and ensure that understanding is achieved before moving on. Misunderstandings and course corrections are often must faster to enact in this format.

That said, this isn’t always true and ultimately, this comes down to the needs of your learners and the context of what they’re learning.

When teaching practical skills like how to operate a complex machine in a factory for example, the instant feedback of ILT can be instrumental in ensuring correct performance and helping learners retain key knowledge. On the other hand, certain topics benefit from a mix of instruction and self-paced reflection.

When I think about learning how to do simple coding, I found the time pressure of learning and performing in front of an instructor unhelpful, and instead preferred to look through examples of other’s code and work on my own computer at my own pace. Complexity plus context is often an effective lens for considering your choice of training format.

How mission critical is your training topic?

If your training needs assessment surfaced a need or skills gap, it’s important. But when it comes to determining your learning solution, it’s helpful to ask exactly how important it is to the core competencies of a role and business function.

Teaching paramedics how to effectively perform CPR is more important to their core work than effective email communication and something like this can often be the single deciding factor when choosing a training format.

In this case, you may deploy ILT to ensure the core competency is achieved and then use self-paced learning to support continued growth and check further progress and compliance. On the other hand, peripheral competencies might be served well with self-paced solutions and a sense of learning on the job.

When I say mission critical, I’m also talking about business goals. If key business goals hinge on the effective delivery of specific training material, this is a great candidate to invest in ILT or blended learning.

How much practical instruction is required?

The format of your learning solution is also highly dependent on the learning methods you’ll be deploying. Practical, hands-on instruction is much more feasible in a live environment. Are group discussions or experiential learning activities a key part of your training strategy? Think about how you’ll achieve your learning outcomes and what the best way to teach your learners what they need to know.

This isn’t to say that if you have practical instruction you must go for ILT. Good eLearning can easily include all the elements listed above. An effective blended learning strategy that incorporates cohort discussion alongside self-paced elements can often prove to the best option.

It’s all a balancing act that is best achieved by thinking deeply about your learners and the best methods of teaching them what they need to know.

What are the assessment criteria and desired outcomes?

When choosing whether to use an interactive workshop or eLearning course to train your team, the desired outcomes are helpful. Are you looking for trainees to demonstrate they understand new regulations or that they can use or do you want them to be able to manage conflict effectively?

Outcomes that are relatively simple or more straightforward in nature are easier to deliver via eLearning. More complex outcomes can often benefit from ILT or blended learning sessions.

Assessment criteria is also a useful consideration. Pass/fail criteria around “hard” knowledge or skills is easier to satisfy in an eLearning course while criteria based around general competency or demonstration of (so-called) soft skills.

Let’s go back to the paramedic analogy. Determining if a trainee understands the call system could likely be done with a great role play simulation in an online course. Determining if a trainee has a good bedside manner and can represent the institution’s values favourably is much harder in a self-paced course.

How to design an effective instructor-led training program

Creating an effective ILT program involves a process of research, design, development, feedback and iteration. For new training designerss and instructors, it can feel like a lot and even established L&D or HR teams can benefit from a structure or framework to follow.

In this section, we’ll share an overview of how to design effective instructor-led training. This broadly follows the structure of the ADDIE instructional design model, though I’ve also included some tips specific to designing instructor-led training that should help when it comes to creating your program.

Following these steps will help you determine the appropriate learning solution and also create an engaging learning experience that will help you meet your learning goals. Let’s dive in!

Conduct a training needs assessment (TNA)

In this step, you’ll do some research to determine the needs of your learners and any skill gaps in your group or organization. Often, a TNA is conducted in light of overarching business goals, performance issues or the surfacing of a key problem or challenge.

Typically, the aim of a training needs assessment is twofold. First – to understand the root cause of an issue, why there is a need for training and how training might successfully help fulfill that need. Second – to get an understanding of the needs, goals, and context of the target audience of the training solution you’ll develop.

The information you source during a TNA will help you design the right learning solution and also tailor the content and approach of that learning solution to your audience and their specific needs.

Without a training needs assessment, it’s entirely possible your organization will go in the wrong direction or design training that isn’t fit for purpose. Want to learn more? Explore this guide to running an effective training needs assessment to set you and your team up for success.

Propose a learning solution and set learning objectives

Based on the training needs, and skills gaps you’ve identified, you’ll start to shape an appropriate learning solution to meet those needs and any business goals relating to your training project.

In the early stages, this usually takes the form of an outline or proposal that is shared with stakeholders or clients in order to get approval and begin creating your learning solution. You’ll determine your training format, and technology and resources needed and start the shape the overall learning flow.

At this stage, you’ll also want to source all additional information needed to determine and scope out an appropriate training program. This includes everything from logistics, what training management system you may be using, deadlines, training software you’ll have access to and more.

While your TNA will likely answer most of these questions, there are often expectations or needs from a business or stakeholder perspective you’ll need to cover with a separate meeting or over email.

You’ll also set the learning objectives of your learning program. These will often flow naturally from the results of your TNA, though they’ll also need to incorporate business goals and the problems you seek to solve. These goals should be specific and measurable, effectively capturing what the outcomes of your course will be.

To learn more about these initial phases of designing a course outline, you can check out this article.

Design the first draft of your training agenda

After receiving approval for your training proposal, you’ll then be able to start designing your training in earnest. This begins with a training agenda or detailed curriculum that outlines the topics, learning outcomes, and instructional methods and puts them into a structured learning flow.

SessionLab is an effective agenda design tool that allows you to quickly structure your training programs and design engaging learning experiences. When I have a session to create, I start by adding any learning objectives and considerations for the training such as format, location, time and other logistical information to my agenda.

Next, I’ll quickly create a general outline of the training with simple blocks that represent each activity or section of training content. Adding these into a schedule with clear timing for each item starts to concretize my plan and at this stage, I’ll have a pretty good idea of how I’ll achieve my learning outcomes.

I’ll continue to iterate dragging and dropping blocks into a new order and then get an overview to zoom out and see the big picture. With colour-coded blocks, it’s even easier to see how balanced my learning flow is and understand what needs to change.

There’s so much to say about effective training design that we’ve written a whole post about it! Check out this guide to designing an engaging training session plan, complete with a step-by-step guide to going from outline to completed agenda.

Second draft and instructional design considerations

Once the first draft of your training agenda or course design is in place, you’ll likely seek to get approval from stakeholders so you can move forward. You’ll liaise with collaborators and any subject matter experts, sourcing materials and input in order to move towards a completed agenda.

Invite your collaborators directly to your training agenda in SessionLab to quickly get feedback and take your design to the next level. Work async or in real-time, leave comments and tag collaborators to efficiently iterate and make changes.

By creating a single source of truth, you can relegate lengthy email exchanges to the past.

While most learning designers and trainers will consciously bring instructional design principles to their process from the start, the second draft is a perfect time to revisit them.

Using Gagne’s nine events of instruction or the best practices of various instructional design models can help ensure you are crafting an effective learning journey based on sound learning theory.

Finalize assessment and evaluation criteria

In most cases, it’s likely that the assessment criteria and evaluation techniques you’ll use will emerge as a result of your training needs assessment and your business goals.

In fact, after completing a TNA, a common design flow could be simplified like this:

• What do we need to teach our trainees? (learning goals)
• How will we teach them that? (learning flow)
• How will we check we’ve taught them that? (assessment criteria)

I say flow, but it could also be considered a loop – often, choosing the assessment criteria will inform training techniques or even call into question exactly what we’re teaching in the first place. All that said, there comes a time when you need to pin this down in order to complete your learning program.

At this stage, you will finalize your evaluation methods and design assessments to measure learners’ understanding and progress. This may include formative assessments (quizzes, exercises) and summative assessments (tests, projects) so participants have ample chance to show their understanding and mastery of the training topic.

Develop supporting materials

Supporting materials for ILT come in many forms. You’ll likely create or source multimedia resources to support the learning experience including handouts, presentations and learning materials. You’ll also need to create materials to help your training team deliver an exceptional session, including an agenda, lesson plan and activity instructions.

If you’re working with multiple trainers and distributed training teams, you may also need to create facilitator guides so that every trainer is well positioned to deliver the training with confidence.

In my experience, this is best delivered in the form of a time-based agenda with instructions for each activity attached. I’ll also include an intro section with a list of materials needed, prep steps and any other supporting information.

In SessionLab, you can easily export your agenda to PDF, Word, PowerPoint or clipboard. Print out the agenda and facilitator guide or share an online version with your team. Whether you’re delivering live or online training, you and your training team will be able to facilitate with confidence.

Deliver your training

This is it! The day has finally arrived and it’s time to execute the training program you designed and lead your trainees through an engaging learning experience.

When leading this session, you’ll need to be conscious of group dynamics and energy levels, all while giving feedback, encouraging participation and delivering your training content. It’s a lot! While this topic also deserves its own deep exploration, I’ll outline a few of the most important things I think about whenever delivering ILT.

Pre-training checks

Taking the time to check you have everything you need before your session begins is a hallmark of a prepared trainer. I create a checklist containing everything from running through the agenda a final time to checking my tech to checking in with myself and my own energy levels.

Make this part easy on yourself by adding a checklist to your agenda or facilitator guide so it’s difficult to miss. Remember that room set-up, having the right materials to hands and even having water close by can all impact your ability to instruct well!

In some organizations, it’s entirely likely that a learning designer will create materials that other instructors will lead. In these cases, it’s worth liaising with your trainers ahead of the session to go over any questions and ensure they have everything they need as part of this pre-training process. This extra diligence and support can really help ensure everyone is aligned and prepared.

Seed engagement and participation early

Directly soliciting input at the outset of a session is a great way to get input later on. Start with an icebreaker or training game to loosen the group up and bring in personal experiences that can enliven the whole session.

Kicking off with a 30 minute presentation and only then asking people for input is likely to result in blank stares and silence. Get people talking and sharing early and create opportunities to make the session memorable in order to help your training material stick.

Be aware of your presence and energy

Holding an ideal space for learning can take a lot of practice to achieve. Start by consciously bringing your presence, attention and energy to each session and interaction therein. Build in time for breaks and before the session, try and take five minutes to centre yourself. If you’re disengaged or distracted, that effects the group and how they’ll receive your instruction.

In my own experience, I’ve seen trainers give all their energy and presence to delivering a presentation but then being relatively absent when it comes to giving feedback and engaging with participants directly. The small moments (especially feedback) are as important as the big and if I could grab the younger version of me, I’d tell him to invest as much energy into those as I did in the big presentations.

And what if you’re having a low-energy day? My suggestion would be to let your trainees know! Being a little vulnerable can create understanding and help solicit extra input from the group too.

Training onboarding and exit

Whether you’re running a one-off session or month long course, you’ll want to consider how people enter and exit the training in order for delivery to be effective.

By training onboarding, I mean: how have you prepared your trainees to start the session before the day of training? Did you communicate logistics and expectations thoroughly? Did you make it easy for them to prepare and come to the session knowing the expected outcomes?

Doing this well means your trainees are ready to be trained and are able to meet you in that. Failure to do this can mean you spend the first half of your training reiterating what could have been in an email.

Training exit is a trickier beast. Here, you’ll want to think about how trainees will be positioned for next steps and either continued learning or knowledge retention. Why do I mention this point in the training deliver section of this guide? In my experience, you’ll want to mention this during delivery and also, as a tool to support your delivery.

Let’s say you’re doing a blended learning course and you have a live session in between two eLearning modules. You may clearly signpost that one half of the live session is about summarizing the last learning module while the second half is about prepping for the module to come. This kind of clarity and synergy can help ensure learners understand how best to learn and how what they’re learning will be used.

When it comes to closing a session or course you may also want to create space for reflection and further questions in order to enhance learning and help people leave with key information intact. You may also distribute learning aids and summary sheets they can refer to in their work or further studies. However you approach this, just remember that you begin and end is as important as the content in the middle.

There is so much more to say on the subject. If you want to keep exploring this, I recommend this guide on how to create an engaging training session – while it talks about the entire process of planning, Deb’s tips on delivery are invaluable too. In my practice, I always come back to learning principles such as Gagne’s events of instruction and try to keep them in mind during any experience I’m leading.

Get feedback and improve

Just as you’ll assess the performance of your learners and trainees, you should also assess the performance of your materials and instruction.

Collect feedback from participants to identify areas for improvement, what worked, what could be better and what should you do next time. You might do this at the end of a session or with a follow-up email. Using a simple exit survey where participants rate aspects numerically is a great way to do this, though be sure to also provide space for general comments too.

In my experience, asking for feedback close to the end of the session, then again a few days later, will give you the most accurate results. In most cases, I’ll have a little space at the end of the actual session and ask people to give feedback then, when it’s fresh. Less people will respond to questionnaires sent out after the course is over, but those who do may leave more authentic (and critical) notes.

Based on your own reflections and what you learn from your participants, you can then refine the training program and continue to grow in your practice.

Impact assessment and analysis is also typically conducted at this stage. Here, you or your stakeholders will aim to discover if you solved the problems discovered during your training needs assessment and determine the business impact of your program. Did you close the skills gap you were trying to fill? Did the new onboarding program improve job efficiency and employee satisfaction? It can take time to source data and answer these questions, but it’s a vital step when determining the overall efficacy of your learning solution.

So there you have it: an end to end process for creating a training program. After you’ve finished collecting feedback and making improvements, it’s likely that the whole process will start over. Remember that every program you complete is an opportunity for your own learning and factor those learnings into your next project.

For those who want to go deeper or explore alternatives, models like ADDIE are a tried and tested way to provide an overarching structure and project management framework to creating a training program, online course, or other learning experience.

Check out our ADDIE template to get started or check out the accompanying guide for more.

Next steps

Instructor-led training isn’t going anywhere. While eLearning and self-paced courses have their place, training delivered in real-time by an experienced instructor can still be the most effective way to teach important skills and transfer knowledge.

With this guide, we hope we’ve given you some insight into deciding when to use ILT and when to go in another direction. Whether you’re delivering VILT or blended learning, use the tips above and various training templates to get started effectively.

Want to go deeper? Explore this guide to creating a training session plan to start structuring an engaging agenda. Pair with the accompanying training template to save time with your next design and optimize your process.

Thanks for reading! If there’s anything we’ve missed or you have thoughts on what makes great instructor-led training, we’d love to hear from you in the comments!

But what is instructional design exactly? In this guide, we’ll start with a practical definition of instructional design. We’ll explore the role of instructional designers, learning models and theories, and also share real-world examples and best practices to help you craft more effective learning experiences.

What is instructional design?

Instructional design is a systematic process of designing and developing effective instructional materials and learning experiences. 

Instructional design involves analyzing learner needs, designing a curriculum and learning content designed to meet those needs, implementing that design in the most effective way, and finally evaluating the effectiveness of the learning experience. 

When a company sees a need to train their employees or there’s a skills gap that needs to be filled, they’ll often employ an instructional designer to analyze the issue and create an appropriate learning solution based on the desired learning goals of the project. 

While instructional design is a process, this isn’t to say instructional design isn’t creative or overly rigid. In my experience, the best instructional designers use their personal style and creativity to develop eLearning or training programs that excite, engage and teach in equal measure. 

In my experience, great instructional design happens when:

1. a thorough needs analysis is conducted, giving the designer a deep knowledge of the needs, preferences and challengers of their audience
2. appropriate and well-defined learning objectives are created in response to the needs of the audience and client
3. subject matter experts provide great learning content that the instructional designer can then fashion into engaging course material 
4. The instructional designer utilizes proven learning theory and instructional design principles to design an effective learning flow, first in the form of an outline or storyboard
5. Appropriate learning methods and content styles are used to create engaging learning content that is delivered in the right way for the audience (i.e. a combination of interactive quizzes, simulations, presentations and informational content.) 
6. The project is managed effectively throughout, with clear and effective collaboration between designers, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), stakeholders and eLearning developers. 
7. An appropriate implementation platform is chosen and materials are handed over to the implementation team in an easy-to-follow format

While I see instructional design as a profession, I also see it as a set of skills and competencies that allow for the creation of effective learning experiences. This distinction is useful for the fact that people who may not have “instructional designer” in their job title will still benefit from the theories, models and best practices of instructional design. 

For me, anyone who is teaching skills or imparting knowledge can benefit from the principles and theories of instructional design. 

That said, instructional design is especially useful anytime you are creating a self-paced learning experience (typically eLearning) or designing a training experience that other trainers will deliver, such as a corporate training or a train-the-trainer course.

What does an instructional designer do?

In simple terms, an instructional designer designs and develops effective learning solutions. They’ll typically follow an instructional design process to go from a first step of determining needs, all the way through to a final stage of implementing a solution, often in the form of an eLearning course or training program. 

The actual work that an instructional designer does on a day-to-day basis goes way beyond the steps of an instructional design process.

In reality, they’ll often project manage the whole process, interview and source material from subject matter experts, create outlines and storyboards, liaise with stakeholders and more.

In some cases, instructional designers will move their storyboard to eLearning authoring tools or a Learning Management System (LMS) and develop learning aids and images, learning aids, slide decks and more. Sometimes, the instructional designer may pass a completed eLearning storyboard to an eLearning developer or graphic designer to implement the course or create materials. 

It’s also worth noting that in different industries and organizations, the exact role and responsibilities of an instructional designer can vary. In one company, the instructional designer may own the entire process and be the one to uncover learner needs and then deploy and monitor the solution they roll out.

In other cases, the instructional designer may receive a brief from another team member or department and design a storyboard that is then passed to someone else to implement in an internal university or course hub. 

Here is an inexhaustive list of the tasks and responsibilities an instructional designer will likely perform throughout the process. 

1. Needs Analysis: Instructional designers identify the learning needs and goals of the target audience. They conduct thorough needs analyses to understand learners’ backgrounds, knowledge gaps, and preferred learning styles.
2. Liaising with subject matter experts: designers will interview subject matter experts to source the content for their course, gain insights that will help them design an effective learning flow and source supporting information and materials. This is often an ongoing process with multiple touchpoints throughout a project. 
3. Conducting research and background reading: while most raw course content typically comes from a SME, it’s often helpful for an instructional designer to become somewhat familiar with the course topic and other instances of learning content in the area they’re working in. 
4. Curriculum Design: Based on the needs analysis, instructional designers develop curriculum outlines and learning objectives. They define the scope of the learning experience and outline the sequence of instructional activities, often in the form of an instructional design storyboard.
5. Content Development: Instructional designers create or curate content that aligns with the learning objectives. This may involve writing instructional materials, designing multimedia resources such as podcasts or videos, or curating or transforming existing content. 
6. Choose instructional design strategies: Instructional designers design instructional strategies and activities to engage learners and facilitate knowledge acquisition. They’ll incorporate interactive elements, simulations, and assessments to promote active learning and create engagement. 
7. Manage stakeholder communication and approval processes: Whether working for an external or internal client, instructional designers will typically need to consult stakeholders and get final approval on their instructional design. Designers will typically be responsible for managing this communication and approval process, as well as managing the nuts and bolts of the project at large. 
8. Prototyping and implementation: In many cases, instructional designers will also be the ones to create a working prototype or implement final course materials in a content authoring tool or LMS. In bigger teams, it’s likely that they’ll pass the storyboard they created to an eLearning developer. In this instance, they’ll likely liaise with the developer and give them the final go-ahead on the complete materials.  
9. Evaluation and Revision of learning experiences: Once the course or learning solution is live instructional designers assess the effectiveness of the learning experience through formative and summative evaluations. They gather feedback from learners, analyze learning outcomes, and make revisions to improve the instructional materials continuously.
10. Briefing trainers and facilitators: When designing and developing instructor-led programs or blended courses, instructional designers will typically brief those people who will be delivering the training or facilitating live elements of a course. They might create a briefing document or conduct a series of meetings to ensure the training is delivered to the desired standard. 
11. Measuring project impact: Behind every learning project is a business need or company goal. A training course designed to help new employees onboard more effectively will likely have some very clear learning objectives such as ensuring core competencies and demonstrable skills. Beyond that, the organization will also have objectives such as improved employee happiness, retention or an impact on business metrics like the average support ticket speed or sales closed. In some teams, instructional designers will be responsible for measuring the effectiveness of the course and the impact on business goals. 

Learning design vs instructional design – what are the differences?

If you’re working in the development of eLearning courses and training programs, you might have heard different terms used in the field: learning design and instructional design. These terms are often used interchangeably, though I’ve found many folks have a preference on which they use and do see a distinction between them. 

In my experience, whether someone says they’re an instructional designer or learning designer, they broadly mean the same thing – a person who creates engaging and effective learning experiences.

Where the distinction often comes in is in how they see the work they do, the approach they take and the usual context of their work. 

Here are some of the key differences I’ve found that might be useful to think about when consider the question of what is instructional design:

• I’ve seen learning design more commonly used in educational contexts while instructional design seems more commonly used in corporate environments and private training contexts. 
• I’ve also seen instructional design used to mean a focused process of creating instructional materials such as eLearning courses while learning design takes a wider approach, thinking about more diverse factors which can affect the learning environment. For example, an instructional designer might be expected create the course materials for an online training program while a learning designer might work with faculty to think about broader factors surrounding the design of learning such as room set-up, learner access, teacher training and more. 
• In many cases, I’ve seen instructional design used to refer to self-paced materials and eLearning, while learning design is more commonly used to refer to instructor-led courses or training programs. Going further, learning design has often been used with an emphasis on learning experiences that go beyond the scope of a single online course and into the realm of experience design, stage setting and the wider context of learning. 
• For some, the distinction between learning experience design (aka learning design) and instructional design is all about outlook and approach. For example, learning experience design discussions often center arout creating experiences and using goal-oriented and human-centred learning approaches. Conversely, conversations about instructional design more often focus on how to create great eLearning courses and learning materials. That said, good instructional design or learning design will often do exactly the same thing and so I personally find the difference a matter of semantics. But if the distinction helps you talk about your work or define your role in a team, that’s great!
• I personally find it helpful to think about the difference like this:
  • instructional design is a more user-led experience where I need to develop effective materials that can be used in a self-paced, self explanatory way. I don’t have control over many factors such as the external environment, and so the design of the course content and materials are more important. 
  • learning design is a more trainer or facilitator-led experience, where an educator or trainer is present to guide the experience and create the ideal learning environment in a more organic manner. I have more control over the learning environment and how I work with the group as a trainer and facilitator is as important as the course materials. 
  • In both cases, materials, learning flow and guidance from a trainer or learning designer are important and it’s just that they index differently depending on the needs of the project.
  • Of course, this definition is highly personal and you might use learning design to describe the development of self-paced online courses. I find this distinction useful as it helps me think about the relative importance of different learning strategies and how I should approach meeting the learning objectives of the project. 

So what is the difference between learning design and instructional design? Short answer: nothing, really. Slightly longer answer: it depends on context, personal outlook and approach.

In reality, much of the work these people do is the same, though they may have a different focus or mindset when it comes to designing and developing learning experiences.

In my experience, this is more often dependent on the industry, job role or project than on the distinction between learning design vs instructional design. That said, I do find the question is interesting when it comes to thinking about the work we do as instructional designers and where our focus should be.

Do you see a distinction or have something to add? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!  

Top instructional design models and theories

Whether we’re talking about instructional design or learning design, the learning experiences we create are built on a foundation of effective learning principles, models and theories. 

So what are they? Instructional design models often comprise a series of steps designed to create an effective learning experience. Think of instructional models as a proven process an instructional designer may follow in order to develop and project manage an instructional design project.

By following a model, you have a framework creating an effective learning experience and can ensure nothing is missed and that your learning solution is fit for purpose.  

Instructional design theories and principles are a collection of learning theories, psychological knowledge and conceptual frameworks that underpin effective learning experiences. In practice, this is a combination of utilizing good pedagogical (and andragogical) practices, learning science and models of learning to inform the experiences and materials you design.   

In practice, many instructional design models and theories overlap and are often utilized in the same way – by providing a set of guidelines to follow in order to create an effective instructional design.

So how do you choose one? Early in your instructional design journey, you’ll likely find a model or theory that chimes with your own learning experiences and style. (The ADDIE model and Robert Gagne’s events of instruction are popular for good reason!) 

You’ll likely find that you organically use many of these concepts in your work anyway – it’s quite common to discover a learning concept and think, “Oh, I already do this!”

That said, a deeper understanding of how these principles and instructional design models work in tandem can only improve your practice and the quality of your training materials.

As you learn and develop as an instructional designer, I’d highly recommend exploring multiple instructional design models and theories to deepen your knowledge and synthesize best practices from each.  

Here are some of the most prominent instructional design models and theories you can use to inform your learning design process.

• ADDIE Model
• SAM Model
• Dick and Carey Model
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Robert Gagne’s events of instruction

ADDIE Model

The ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) model is a systematic approach to instructional design widely used in educational and corporate settings.

ADDIE a proven five step process for developing instructional designs that truly meet learner needs and is probably the most well known model in the field. The five steps of the ADDIE model are:

Analysis

This is where the instructional designers conduct a needs assessment, discover skills gaps and get to know the audience of the online courses and learning resources they may design. You may also conduct research into the needs of the business and the wider space surrounding your potential training.

Design

During the design step, instructional designers begin to ideate on a learning solution designed to meet the needs identified during analysis. You’ll typically create a course outline, craft learning objectives and create an overall structure of your learning process in the form of a storyboard.

Here, you’ll set out to answer any questions about the course or learning experience you’re creating and demonstrate how you’ll meet your goals in order to get approval to move forward.

Development

In the development phase of ADDIE, instructional designers create a storyboard for their chosen learning solution. You’ll also work with subject matter expert to source course content and graphic designers to create course materials.

Once you’ve drafted a storyboard that sings, you’ll often take a different route depending on whether you’re working an online courses or in-person training.

In an eLearning environment, you’ll likely use eLearning authoring tools to create final assets ready to deliver to learners. For in-person training, you’ll likely create instructional manuals or training guides to help in-person trainers lead the program effectively.

Implementation

In this step of the instructional design process, you’re about ready to deliver your instructional materials to learners!

Here, you’ll set up the final learning experience in a learning management system, deliver training directly and distribute other material as necessary. This can also look handing over storyboards to another team to implement or having workshops with trainers and facilitators who will deliver the instructional design content.

Evaluation

Once your learning solution is out in the world, you’ll need to evaluate whether you met your goals and analyse the impact of what you’ve done. Here, you’ll likely look at how learners engaged with your materials while also consider the impact you’ve had on business goals.

The aim is to understand whether you’ve solved the problem or closed the skills gap identifying in your needs assessment and also figure out how you might improve your learning solutions for future learners.

ADDIE is easy to use and is often the first model turned to for even the most complex projects and instructional design processes. Read more in our complete guide to using the ADDIE model or jump into creating your next instructional design with our ADDIE template.

SAM Model

The SAM model (Successive Approximation Model) is an agile instructional design model that focuses on rapid prototyping and iterative development. It encourages collaboration between stakeholders and allows for quick feedback and revisions throughout the design process.

SAM has three distinct phases.

1. Preparation
2. Iterative design
3. Iterative development

In the preparation phase, instructional designers gather background information on learners and seek to understand learner needs, the knowledge and skills they already possess and the skills your team would like them to achieve.

During the iterative design phase, instructional designers will begin planning the learning solution in earnest before designing, prototyping and evaluating the chosen solution over successive rounds of iteration. The goal is to iterate openly and get regular feedback throughout the process.

Finally, in the iterative development phase, learning designers will seek to quickly implement a solution with their choice of instructional technology.

The alpha, beta and gold versions of their instructional design will each go through a round of testing with SMEs, stakeholders and representative users in order to create the best possible solution as quickly as possible.

Prototyping is the name of the game here, and as a result, SAM is a rapid instructional design system that’s a natural alternative to ADDIE for teams who want to move and iterate quickly.

Read more about using the SAM model in our guide to instructional design models.

Dick and Carey Model

Developed as a deeper exploration of ADDIE designed to help newcomers, the Dick and Carey model of instructional design is a great way to consider the wider context of a learner’s experience. It comprises of ten steps which include:

• Identify Instructional Goal(s)

• Conduct instructional analysis
• Analyze learners and contexts
• Write performance objectives
• Develop assessment instruments
• Develop an instructional strategy 
• Develop and select instructional materials
• Design and conduct a formative evaluation of instruction
• Revise instruction
• Design and conduct summative evaluation

Personally, I found the Dick and Carey model a great tool when starting out in instructional design. It made certain parts of the process more explicit and helped me see the process of developing an instructional design as an often non-linear system than the straight line that ADDIE might imply.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy categorizes how we learn into six levels of cognitive complexity, ranging from simple recall to critical thinking and creativity. Instructional designers and educators use Bloom’s Taxonomy to design learning activities that address different cognitive levels and guide learners towards mastery of a topic or skill. 

Bloom’s taxonomy is heavily informed by educational psychology and comprises of three learning domains: cognitive (knowledge), affective (feelings), and psychomotor (skills).

Those learning domains underpin the six levels of bloom’s taxonomy. In the 1956 version of bloom’s taxonomy, those are:

• Knowledge
• Comprehension
• Application
• Analysis
• Synthesis
• Evaluation

Starting with the first step, learners will demonstrate their mastery of one level of learning before moving to the next. Note that a revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy was also created in 2001 to respond to the more dynamic nature of learning.

The six stages of Bloom’s revised taxonomy are:

• Remember
• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create

Each stage in the hierarchy of Bloom’s taxonomy also comes with its own set of verbs and questions that learning designers can use to easily create learning objectives and inform their instructional design. 

While some learning designers might use Bloom’s Taxonomy to guide their course structure, it’s also a useful tool to use in tandem with other theories and models. If you have trouble with creating learning objectives or setting meaningful and measurable goals for your instructional designs, definitely look deeper into Bloom’s taxonomy.

Robert Gagne’s events of instruction

Gagne’s principles of instructional design is a set of learning events that comprise an effective learning experience. Beginning with gaining learner attention and ending with assessment and learner retention, these 9 events can be used as both the structure of an effective online course and an underlying theory that helps you ensure the learning experience is engaging.

Gagne’s 9 events of instruction are:

1. Gain the attention of your learners
2. State the objectives
3. Stimulate recall of prior learning
4. Present the learning content
5. Provide learning guidance
6. Elicit performance from learners
7. Provide feedback
8. Assess learner performance
9. Enhance retention and transfer

Gagne’s principles have been especially useful in my own practice. I often use the 9 events as a basic course outline or storyboard that I’ll build upon as I move through the stages of the ADDIE model. 

On other occasions, I’ll think about how I’ve implemented the 9 events while revising my design and make changes based on Gagne’s principles. Check out our guide to explore these instructional design principles in greater detail and learn how to deploy them in eLearning and instructor-led-training. 

Note that these instructional design theories are only a small sample of the entire field of instructional design.

We encourage you to explore and find theories and models that resonate with your personal style while helping you develop your foundation of learning knowledge. Our piece on instructional design models is a great next step on that journey! 

I also found this post on fundamental learning theories from Structural Learning helpful when considering how to practically apply theory into my designs.

Instructional design examples

At this stage, you might be wondering what instructional designers end up creating for the clients and companies they work with.

Instructional design principles are applied across various domains, including education, corporate training, personal development, and more to create everything from learning simulations, training courses, employee onboarding and traditional eLearning.

Here are some examples of instructional design in action with a template for each you can use and adapt when developing your own learning solutions.

• Instructional design for eLearning
• Instructional design for instructor-led training programs
• Instructional design for blended learning

Instructional design for eLearning

Instructional designers are often called upon to create interactive eLearning in the form of online courses and online training programs. Typical eLearning projects are mostly self-paced in nature and will include multimedia elements, quizzes, and simulations to enhance learning outcomes.

In addition to traditional long-form course, eLearning can also come in the form of micro-learning, entirely gamified experiences, simulations and more. Instructional designers create a variety of different materials and will deploy a particular format of eLearning based on learner needs and the remit of the project.

eLearning will often be delivered to solve a training need, onboard new employees or develop key skills or knowledge. After an instructional designer has created the course design in the form of a storyboard, this will then be developed into a finished course. Depending on the client and department, completed eLearning might live in an internal learning hub or learning management system or be delivered to a public course platform.

Curious to see what this looks like for an instructional designer? Explore this example of an eLearning course storyboard I delivered for a client. After delivery of the storyboard, I handed the design to an eLearning developer who then implemented the design in their LMS.  

Instructional design for instructor-led training programs

In corporate settings, instructional designers often develop training programs to onboard new employees, upgrade skills, or promote workplace safety. These programs often incorporate scenario-based learning, role-playing activities, and real-world simulations to provide hands-on experience.

A key distinction here is that instructor-led training is often conducted in real-time, with an experienced trainer leading the session for trainees. Traditionally, this was in a live setting where trainees all attended in person, but these days, virtual training is increasingly frequent.

The instructional designer will create training materials, design an effective training flow and then brief trainers on how the training should be delivered. They’ll often also create facilitator guides, instructional manuals, job aids and learning materials to help aid the delivery and retention of training courses. 

Explore this guide on how to create an engaging training session to learn how to plan and design effective employee training and more!

Instructional design for blended learning

Blended learning courses and cohort-based online learning are learning experiences that feature some combination of self-paced learning and live, facilitated content. Instructional systems design is highly useful in such scenarios, as the balance of experiences needs to be finely tuned.

Here, learners typically engage with self-paced eLearning content alongside live workshops and training sessions. Trainers may introduce the blended course with an introductory meeting and then run live workshops or presentations at various points in the program. Often, learners will join such a program in a cohort of other learners that they can interact with in social spaces or even in peer-learning activities. 

Blended learning design can often combine the best of sync and async learning environments, but it can also be a challenging balance to strike. You’ll need to deploy a variety of instructional technology, often providing opportunities for hybrid learning and virtual facilitation too.

Learn more in this guide to blended learning design or see what a design might look like in practice in this blended learning course template. 

Instructional design best practices and tips

The field of instructional design/learning design/learning experience design has existed in some form for decades. Well before the invention of eLearning and advanced instructional technology, academics, psychologists and designers established learning theories and best practices that persist to this day.

Combine this body of existing learning knowledge with the best parts of modern instructional design and you can bolster your practice and inform any learning design process you’re working on. Here’s an in-exhaustive list of some instructional design best practices I’ve learned while creating my own courses and researching the topic.

Take the time to get to know your audience deeply (and meet them where they are.)

Whatever model and approach you take to developing your learning solution, it’s imperative you understand the characteristics, preferences, and learning styles of your target audience. Not only will this help you tailor the learning experience to their needs but you’ll create more authoritative and engaging content too.

Where possible, talk to your audience directly. Getting insights from a third-party or subject matter expert is sometimes the best you can do, but when possible, arrange interviews, focus groups or just send a simple survey. Even a single conversation with a would-be cohort can reveal so much about how you might approach developing training materials.

An example of this going wrong is when developing training for new employees. Instead of talking to new employees who just went through the existing training, an instructional design strapped for time might just speak to the HR team and look at analytics for course completion in the LMS.

While these are great data points, speaking directly to the people taking the training is something you should try and do in order to develop the best possible onboarding materials.

It’s also incredibly useful to source feedback from your audience at various points in the process. A synthesis of data from how they interacted with your course and text or verbal feedback can help ensure your next project is even better suited to their needs.

Learner experience > design

A beautiful course with great material that is hard for users to navigate is not a great learning experience. Whatever you’re designing, ensure that accessibility, easy navigation and legibility is front of mind in order to craft an experience that learners can move through without friction. In practice, this means ensuring that instructions are clear, page navigation is easy and that your course content is always legible.

This is especially important if you’re designing interactive materials that go beyond the scope of a typical “click next slide” or “click the correct answer” format. Every unique format is an opportunity for engagement and excitement but they can also introduce friction. Try and keep core elements simple and consistent throughout so people are never lost with how to proceed through your learning programs.

For courses that are composed entirely in an uncommon format, I try to include a tutorial slide that teaches participants how to engage with the course. Even then, it’s important that as a design, you ask whether the medium or format you’re using is truly the best one for your audience.

Experimentation can be beautiful, but it can also be confusing – on some courses, you simply need to transmit information in an effective manner and don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Recognize when each method is best suited to the task at hand for the most effective learning design.

Test on different platforms and with accessibility in mind

Testing (and testing again!) from the perspective and preferred platforms of your learners is an important aspect of instructional systems design.

Learners will often access your learning materials from different platforms than the one you use to create your online learning. Test your content on mobile and desktop, even when using learning management systems that optimize for different platforms.

What is clearly visible on one platform might only appear while scrolling on another. While these items might seem small, ensuring that even the most basic components work as intended can ensure that your desired learning flow is in place for everyone.

Accessibility is also an important factor when designing your materials. Be sure to surface any accessibility needs early in the project and design your text, UI and any multimedia learning materials with accessibility best practices in mind. Check out this article from eLearning Industry for more on this topic.

Beyond testing navigation and usability, it’s also worth testing your learning flow multiple times through the design process to see what the learning experience feels like. Where possible, source beta testers from your stakeholder team, SMEs or even from a possible learning cohort. Feedback is always invaluable though it’s also worth noting that there’s a right time to share your learning flow with others. I’d recommend having a complete draft of your storyboard before asking people to truly test it.

Respect the time and effort of your SMEs

In most cases, instructional designers will call on the expertise of subject matter experts to provide learning content and provide feedback on storyboards and materials. Whether working in higher education or a corporate training environment, SMEs often have a heap of work on their plate. So try and be conscious of that and respect their time!

Make clear requests or content briefs, set sensible deadlines and provide your SMEs with enough context to make their work easier. It’s often effective to call a short meeting where you guide SMEs through your storyboard and show them what you need, rather than going back and forth over.

Effective collaboration with your SMEs is paramount for making the eLearning development process a joy, rather than a chore. In SessionLab, you can tag your SMEs in your storyboard directly and make requests for content with ease. It can really help save time during development and make content sourcing and implementation a simple, systematic process.

Set clear learning objectives (and share them with stakeholders)

The learning objectives of your course are your north star while designing and developing your learning solution.

Everything you put in your course should be developed with these in mind and as such, they need to be good! There are a heap of ways to set an effective learning objective: using Bloom’s taxonomy (and the verbs and questions therein) and a proven method, though you might also find that asking your stakeholders and participants what they would like to achieve is a good place to begin.

Ensure your learning objectives are measurable (either through learner assessment or the tracking of business goals) and that you clearly reference what learners should come away with or be able to do by the end of the instructional program.

Whatever you come up with, get feedback from stakeholders and where possible, your ideal participants too. When designing learning objectives, I like to think of Einstein’s assertion that if you can’t explain something to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it deeply enough.

I’ll always try to aim for simplicity in the final version. If what I’ve written is too complex, confusing or isn’t clear to all stakeholders, it likely needs another draft.

Create a storyboard (before going into your content authoring tool)

So this advice comes in two parts. First, I’d absolutely recommend creating a storyboard for any eLearning project or online course.

Creating a storyboard will not only help you create an engaging learning flow –it’s also a vital part of an instructional design process and you’ll often use it to communicate your design to stakeholders, SMEs and developers.

Skipping this step can lead to wasted time creating content you don’t actually need or later realizing you have an imperfect flow that won’t satisfy your training needs.

Secondly, I would recommend creating a completed storyboard before moving into your content authoring tool or LMS. In my experience, as soon as you start working in your content authoring tool, it’s easy to get lost in page design, button interactions and the technical nuts and bolts of your course. While these are all important, they don’t guarantee a well-designed and structured learning flow.

I always create a storyboard and review it multiple times to ensure I’m meeting the desired learning objective of the course before I get started in an eLearning authoring tool. It’s easier to overview the learning experience from start to finish and ensure the training material I’ve designed follows a logical flow.

Use an instructional design template

Most instructional designers have their own preference of storyboard format. I’ve seen dozens of variations in storyboard templates that factor in everything from the eLearning format to chosen learning theory or the knowledge and skills being applied by learners.

Save time in your development process by copying what works, reusing a proven template or even creating your own template from your favorite storyboard design. Personally, I favour storyboard templates that have a repeatable slide structure for easy iteration and have some implicit structure based on an instructional design model. See a sample storyboard using Gagne’s principles here.

In SessionLab, you can create a library of your best storyboard templates to reuse whenever you need. I tend to have a heap of variations based on the kind of project I’m working on and even the choice of platform of LMS my client might be working with.

Keep your training materials organized and label them diligently

Online courses can easily become sprawling projects with pages and pages of content, storyboards and assets. Dumping everything in a single folder called My great online course is a recipe for wasted time and frustrating collaboration. Take the time to file, name and organize your materials for a more effective process and to ensure you don’t lose anything important.

In SessionLab, you can attach course materials directly to the relevant slide in your storyboard so its easy to find and keep organized. Settle on a slide naming and numbering convention with your development team so it’s easy to follow and implement later.

Account for limiting factors like course platform or development time

With all the time and resources in the world, many instructional designers would go to town with bespoke interactive games, professional quality video and more. In reality, the turnaround for a project or the course platform being used can create constraints or caveats the instructional design must consider when design their content.

Ensure you know what tools you or your developers will be using to create and implement your course content and design accordingly. Scope out the key logistical details of project at the outset and get a clear sense of what’s possible. Nothing is more gutting than having to go back to the drawing board because your vision simply can’t be implemented with the time and resources available.

Bring learning theory and instructional design principles to your course design

When putting together this list, so many small tips came to mind regarding cognitive psychology, human learning design and instructional design theory. Learning theorists and instructional design experts have charted this territory far better than I ever could and my advice here is to learn from them, borrow from them and use those principles to inform your course design.

Going it alone or using your gut can get you so far, but you run the risk of creating disengaging courses or failing to satisfy training needs. Do your research, commit to your own learning and use everything from instructional design models to adult learning theory to ensure your materials are the best they can be.

Conclusion and next steps

Instructional design is a dynamic field that blends learning principles and educational theory with technology and creativity to create effective learning experiences and instructional materials. It’s also a skillset and methodology that can be used by everyone from instructional designers to trainers, facilitators and educators.

It’s an exciting profession that is only likely to grow as more companies use eLearning to train employees and resolve skills gap in their teams and organizations.

We hope that we’ve helped you understand the fundamentals of instructional design and gain some insight into how you might improve your practice and design even better online courses and training sessions.

Want to learn more? See how Vlerick Business School deploys instructional design practices across their team and how they use SessionLab to improve instructional systems design at scale.

Developing an eLearning storyboard? Check out our post on how to create an instructional design storyboard to better understand how it fits into instructional design processes and create more effective storyboards too!

Designing instructor-led training? Explore our guide on creating an unforgettable training session to ensure your next course is an engaging experience for all participants.

What is an instructional design storyboard?

An instructional design storyboard serves as a design blueprint for an instructional design project or elearning course. This typically comes in the form of a slide deck or design document that outlines all details of the course including structure, content, interactions, assessments and more.

You’ll tend to have a single slide or block for every page of your course and include details for what should be on each page, how each page should function and what should happen next. 

Your elearning storyboard will effectively map out the learning journey from start to finish, showing the different kinds of interaction and content and demonstrating how the design will enable learning goals to be achieved. 

The exact level of detail and format of a storyboard depends on a few key factors.

1. Who is it for?
2. What is its purpose?
3. What is the format of the course or project?

For example, in the event you are creating a storyboard for an elearning course that a developer or content designer will help you implement, your storyboard will include notes on what visuals to include, what animations and page styles will be used, the kind of interactions you’ll have and more. It’ll be a complete design brief that will make it easy for a developer to create the final course materials.

Another key consideration is the format of the project itself. A storyboard for a video and voiceover heavy course will likely differ from one that is a more gamified experience. A blended course design featuring live and async elements or using cohort learning will likely have a different format to an entirely self-serve course. 

In most storyboard formats, you’ll use one slide to represent one page of your elearning course. A simple two column elearning storyboard format like this one which includes space for: the slide title and number, voiceover script, on-page content (written and visuals), programming notes and animations/interactions is sufficient for most design storyboards. 

Tailor your storyboard to best serve your project and enable whoever is creating the finished course to easily understand what is expected and how the course should function.

Legibility is one of the most important aspects of an effective storyboard, and so keep this in mind when creating something to pass on to others. 

How is an instructional design storyboard used?

The format and use case for storyboards can vary based on the project. For a solo instructional designer, the storyboard might be solely used as a working document that helps you map your ideas and create an effective elearning prototype.

When working for clients, the storyboard might be used to show the flow of a proposed course or learning program in order to get feedback and approval from other team members.

Storyboards for elearning are also a vital part of the project management process and you’ll regularly pass them to elearning developers to actually implement the design.

Here’s some examples of how storyboards are used which might help you determine the role your storyboard will play.

Storyboarding for clients and stakeholders 

An elearning storyboard is a vital tool when working with clients and stakeholders. You’ll likely deliver a storyboard to clients to get feedback and receive input on what needs to be changed. In SessionLab, you can share your storyboard directly and receive comments on specific activities as well as the entire storyboard. This makes it easy to iterate on your storyboard whether async or in real-time. 

Effective elearning storyboards are those that clearly communicate how each element contributes to reaching your learning goals. SessionLab’s colour-categories and simple overview are useful tools here. They allow learning designers to quickly communicate and present material to stakeholders in an easy-to-understand, visual format. 

Storyboarding for an elearning developer

For many instructional design teams, there comes a point when an approved storyboard is passed over to a developer or content expert to recreate the material in a content authoring tool or LMS.

In this case, the elearning storyboard is designed to make it easy for developers to create the elearning slides or pages of your course. You’ll include clear instructions for how animations or interactive elements should work and put all of your elearning content into a structured and legible flow. You’ll also include visual elements or descriptions of visuals you would like the content team to produce. 

It’s helpful to know what tool(s) will be used to develop or host the course content and factor that into your instructions. For example, if you’re adding an interactive game, you should propose something that meets with the feature set of the tool you’re using. Just as you factor these items into your course design, try and make it easy for developers to create your vision and be respectful of their time and expertise.  

Storyboarding for yourself 

Even for solo learning designers, the storyboard is an invaluable tool in the design and creation process. In my own practice, I think of the storyboard as a low-fidelity prototype that allows me to both create and go through my proposed learning flow. It makes it really easy to identify what works, what needs to be changed and see how everything hangs together.

Typically, I’ll first send a simple course outline to my clients to get approval. Next, I’ll turn that outline into a full storyboard in order to design an effective learning journey and either implement it in an LMS or course platform myself or pass it to a developer. 

Building a course in an elearning platform without a storyboard can lead to a ton of wasted time. I’ve made the mistake of creating slides and elearning content that I then didn’t need, or only realizing that the learning flow was all wrong after completing a full draft.

Your storyboard will help you identify any issues early and quickly iterate on your chosen content and learning flow. It’s so much easier to edit a PowerPoint slide or SessionLab session than it is to make edits to a course in an LMS or authoring tool.  

Storyboarding for subject matter experts and collaborators

Collaboration with subject matter experts (SMEs) can come in many forms. Sometimes, the learning designer will receive materials in bulk at the start of the project. Other times, it’s a back and forth dialogue where the instructional designer will work more closely with SMEs as they develop the learning design. 

In my own practice, I’ve often invited SMEs to my storyboards to add their insights and material directly or ideate on content with me.

If I’m particularly unfamiliar with the subject or course material, getting a sanity check on the learning flow from a content expert has been extremely helpful in moving things forward and reaching a deadline.  In SessionLab, I’ll assign a subject matter expert to a specific blocks where I want their opinion and invite them to attach PDFs and images to the learning flow too. 

You might also share your elearning storyboards with a graphic designer or other team members in your capacity as a project manager. As with your SMEs, it’s great to tag them and let them know what you need from them. I also tend to include a note at the top of the storyboard that outlines the project so they can get oriented easily.

What are the 9 steps in storyboarding for eLearning and instructional design? 

During my own research, I found a heap of different processes and suggestions for anyone who needs to create storyboards for elearning.

While every learning designer (and project) is different, the step by step process I’ve outlined below is one that encompasses what I’ve heard from learning designers who use SessionLab and my own experience of creating elearning projects.

The nine (and a half!) steps to create a storyboard are:

We’ll explore each of them in order below and include best practices, tips and examples for each. Let’s dig in!

1. Define the project

The first stage of any learning design project is to define a few key parameters so you can design intelligently. In simple terms, you’ll want to kick your project off by determining:

• What are you creating? 
• Who is the target audience?
• What are the desired outcomes and learning objectives?
• What tools and platforms will you be using? 

For many learning designers, you’ll be starting from scratch and as such create a needs assessment to determine your audience, their needs, and then create learning objectives and a project outline. 

In other scenarios, you might receive a design brief based on an assessment that has already been done. If this is you, be sure to check that the brief provides everything you need to correctly scope and move forward with the project. 

Whatever the scenario, the goal of this step is to answer all key questions relating to your elearning project so you can design it (and your storyboard) accordingly. Get this right and your workflow can be efficient and smooth. Get this wrong and you can end up designing a video based course for a client who actually wanted an interactive simulation to best engage their employees. 

1.5 Identify your instructional design model and approach

At this stage, most learning designers will use an instructional design model to help guide and project manage the process. Popular models like Addie have a first step that includes analyzing the needs of your audience and determining the problems you seek to address. 

I’ve put this point as 1.5 in the flow because depending on your personal preference, choosing a suitable model might be the first thing you do.

In my experience, newer learning designers (myself included) benefit the most from starting with a model and using it to guide the entire process from start to finish. Expert learning designers sometimes choose to conduct a needs assessment before selecting what they feel is the most appropriate model. 

In any case, we highly recommend using a proven process such as those outlined in this post on instructional design models to help optimize your workflow and ensure nothing important is missed. 

In addition to a model, you’ll also want to choose a learning framework or approach for your project. Popular frameworks such as Robert Gagne’s 9 events of instruction effectively create a skeleton for an effective learning experience, whether a single training session or a complete elearning course.

Depending on the project, I’ll use Gagne’s framework as the structure for my first course outline or I might simply have the steps open in the next screen as a reminder of best practices. 

If this isn’t your first rodeo, your approach might be to start with a course or learning framework you used before. I’ll often use an existing storyboard template in SessionLab as the basis of the next, saving me time and ensuring I leverage previous hard work into this new project. 

2. Decide who the storyboard is for (and choose the format)

Now you have some project scaffolding in place, it’s time to turn your attention to the format and use case for your storyboard. 

Every project is different. As discussed above, there are various use cases and audiences for any elearning storyboard. The format and depth of your storyboard will differ depending on who it is for, so take steps to determine the role your storyboard will play in your project.

Is your storyboard going to be passed to developers who will implement the design in a content authoring tool? Or is it intended to be a simple outline to share with stakeholders? Perhaps it’s just to help you create an engaging and well-structured learning experience.

Once you’ve determined how the storyboard will be used and who will use it, you can then move towards selecting a format. 

For most projects, a simple two-column storyboard is sufficient. That said, you may wish to tailor your storyboard based on some of the details you ironed out while defining your project. 

For example, an animation-heavy course has different needs to a solely text-based or gamified experience and so visual storyboards are often a better fit here. The purpose of your storyboard is to make it easy for people to understand and implement and it should be tailored as such. 

Running a blended learning or cohort based course? You’ll want a tailored blended course template in order to best organize and realize your project.

It’s possible that you won’t know the exact format for your elearning storyboard until after you’ve received content from subject matter experts and had a chance to ideate on how best to meet your learning objectives. That’s okay! So long as you know who it’s for and how it will be used, that’s enough to move to the next step of this process. 

Want to see a simple storyboard structure? Check out this free elearning storyboard template to get cracking. Prefer to see an example of a real-life elearning project? Check out this elearning storyboard for the first module of an elearning course I delivered for the National Centre for Writing.

3. Collect course content

In most cases, learning designers will source course content from subject matter experts (SMEs) and fashion that content into an engaging learning experience. This might look like making direct requests for content on a specific topic or training gap and then turning that raw material into quizzes, games and other learning content. 

In some cases, that raw material might come fully formed – like a presentation or video – or it can come in a Google Doc full of notes and links. It’s helpful to set expectations on both sides early in this process. Be explicit about what you need, ask questions and let SMEs know the desired outcomes of the course and each training block. 

Wherever possible, I’d also recommend conducting interviews or phone calls with your SMEs. There are countless times where I’ve learned more from a quick chat with an expert than dozens of articles, podcasts and books.

If you can, go further and encourage more collaboration by inviting them to review your storyboard and elearning content in SessionLab too. They’ll often be able to point out errors or inconsistencies in your tone or content and generally improve the learning experience. Where this isn’t possible, aim to gain some rudimentary knowledge of the subject area yourself in order to inform your design and copy, even if you aren’t a primary source of knowledge. 

In my experience, it feels so clear when a course has been written by someone with no understanding of the subject VS someone who does. Those courses where the language matches the subject and everything is delivered with some background knowledge of the topic are often more authoritative and engaging.
 
However you’re working with SMEs, it’s so important to be respectful of their time and to try and make things easier for them wherever possible. Be clear with deadlines and where possible, make it easy for them to collaborate. Sometimes, it can be easier to call a meeting and simply show them your course outline and ask for input then and there, rather than going back and forth over email. Check out some more tips for working with SMEs in this article on Forbes.

At this stage, it can also be helpful to start curating and organizing your course content into a flow in SessionLab. I tend to start by creating the absolute simplest course outline with blocks in SessionLab and then attach materials I receive to the relevant blocks in the flow.

This way, I can stay organized and also start to shape the learning experience – some content naturally flows from another, and I can start structuring the experience.

It’s also worth noting that content collection is often a process that will run in tandem with the rest of your project. In an ideal world, you’d receive most or all necessary content at this early stage, but in reality, SMEs can take time to respond and things take time to source and produce.

Initiate this process early and plan around what you have and expect to receive. 

In some cases, you might be the subject matter expert yourself! Kudos to you! When this happens to me, I often find that I’ll often use a combination of new, bespoke content and previously designed material and proven activities from my personal library.

In SessionLab, I’ll simply pull up the applicable content in my library and drag and drop it into my new learning flow. 

4. Determine instructional design methods and how you’ll present your content

Once you have a clear definition of your elearning project and you’ve started collecting your content, you’re ready to begin thinking about how to present the material. The aim here is to figure out how to best achieve your desired learning outcomes and engage your audience in a way that speaks to them. 

For me, this is one of the most fun parts of the process. By now, I know who my target audience is, I have a clear understanding of the needs of the course and I’ve received some or all of the material I need to build out the project. This is where I get to be creative and leverage my instructional design skills to take raw content and turn it into something special.   

Start by going back to the desired outcomes of the project. Is the aim to simply transfer knowledge or build specific, practical skills? Next, you’ll want to think about the best way to achieve those goals with the materials, platform and possibility space open to you. 

My advice here is to leverage your previous experience alongside a creative brainstorm to see what else might be possible. Every project is different and for some clients, you might simply be repeating what’s worked before. For me, this is a perfect time to consider everything I know so far and stretch myself in order to best engage and excite my audience in a way that’s perfect for them.

This is also a great place to use the instructional design approach you chose in step 1.5. For example, the first three events of Gagne’s 9 instructional design principles are Gain attention, State objectives and Stimulate recall of prior learning. Generally, I want to make sure I do those things in that order at the start of every learning experience. 

Knowing my audience, my tool and my content, what’s the best way to achieve each step of the learning flow? Would it be most effective to have an authoritative, knowledgeable SME state the objectives for this course, or have participants first reflect on their own objectives? Should I stimulate prior learning for this cohort with a simulation game that helps me also determine their skill level, or is a short quiz more suitable?

In this stage, you’ll also start thinking about interactivity and multimedia types. Some learning content may be best transmitted visually or with an instructive video. Other learning content might be best engaged with experientially, in the form of a simulation or exercise.

Variation is a key element of creating engaging learning experiences, and here’s a great time to start thinking about how you’ll create variation that also helps learners to engage with and retain the information you provide. 

All that said, it’s easy to get carried away. Keep your available resources, time, authoring tool and elearning platform in mind when starting to brainstorm around how to present your content. Branching scenarios and complex interactive simulations are great, but only if your tool supports them and you have the expertise to create them in time. 

This is also a great time to consider any feedback you received from previous elearning courses you created. While we all hopefully go through a process of learning from experience, I find it useful to pull up a previous storyboard in a second window with any engagement statistics while creating one that’s similar.

Seeing that people loved the short quizzes and interactive games but found video instructions unnecessary or the formal assessment quiz format confusing can help inform how I present the content I’m designing now. 

5. Create a course outline 

It’s starting to get real now! At this stage, you should have everything you need to create a high level overview of your course structure in the form of a course outline. In many ways, this can be considered a simplified version of the storyboard you’ll create in the next step and a rough skeleton for your completed course.

The detail and format of your course outline will differ based on your project and who you’ll be sharing your outline and storyboard with. If it’s just for you, you can use whatever format works best for you. Notes, Word Doc or a visual course outline in Twine – your choice! This is intended to help you visualize your learning flow and provide the foundation for your forthcoming storyboarding. 

If your outline is needed to get approval from your client or stakeholders, you’ll likely want to use a simple but legible format that makes it easy to demonstrate your vision to others. This can be as simple as a Google document with a bullet point list, project intro or brief and a short explanation of how you’ll be achieving the desired learning outcomes.

For me, I’ll export a simple PDF of my SessionLab outline with colour-coding as a PDF to share with stakeholders. The color-coding can really help tell the story of the course and make it easy for them to parse. 

In many cases, some form of outline may already exist before you reach this stage – whether that’s as a note on your phone or a bullet point document. For me, the course outline starts to take shape as soon as I start the project or receive a brief. What begins as a few blocks with simple titles in SessionLab will grow as I start collecting content, better understand my audience and shape the format of the course. 

In my case, I start building the course outline in SessionLab as soon as the project has begun and then once I reach this step, I’ll finalize that into a form that’s ready to show to others. I’ll then duplicate my SessionLab course outline and begin turning that into a storyboard while keeping a copy of the original course outline. This helps me save time while also keeping a record of my design process. 

An alternative approach is to use a standard course outline format, such as this template inspired by Robert Gagne’s events of learning.

You might also have your own template that you use for all your elearning courses and simply fill in with your newest project. In this case, I’d recommend turning your best outline formats into a SessionLab template so you can reuse it as many times as needed. 

When you’re done, it’s helpful to review your outline with fresh eyes, consider the learning journey it implies and whether it will successfully achieve your desired learning outcomes. This is a good time to catch anything that’s missing or could be improved. After reflection and iteration, you can then share this with the necessary stakeholders to get approval to move forward with your design. Great work!  

6. Finalize your storyboard template and format 

Once your outline has been approved (either by your own internal quality board or key stakeholders), you’re almost ready to create your elearning storyboard!

First, you’ll want to finalize your choice of storyboard template and format. While it’s quite common to have some idea of this much earlier in the project, now that your overarching course design is approved, you can lock this in. 

Based on the course format, content and who the storyboard is for, you can choose the storyboard template that will best help you and your team make it a reality. As mentioned previously, a simple two-column written storyboard is the best bet for most projects while a visual storyboard that contains a mock-up of your course page designs might work best for others. 

So how do you choose between a written or visual elearning storyboard? First, consider the content and format of your course. If it’s includes a large audio narration script or is mainly text based, that’s a good candidate for a written storyboard. If its highly visual in nature and a mock-up of the design will be useful for everyone involved, perhaps a visual storyboard template is better.

Next, consider your collaborators and their needs. Are you handing over to a graphic designer who needs very little direction or to a developer who benefits from a simple mock-up in order to create a course that matches your vision? 

It’s also worth knowing yourself and how you work best. For some learning designers I know, things don’t really come to life until they have a low-fidelity prototype in front of them. In this case, a visual storyboard is helpful to their design process.

For me, I work best in text and the extra effort it takes to create visual elements for my storyboard feel unnecessary. That said, when working on a client brief where the client needed extra direction, I made quick mock-ups in InDesign as this made it easy for them to envision what I wanted the final product to look like and kept the project on schedule.    

In any case, know your own limits and where your expertise is best utilized. I’m not a visual designer, so taking the time to create a detailed mock-up for an interactive simulation isn’t the best use of my skills, especially when I have a great designer I can trust to turn my written content into beautiful visuals in half the time.

7. Draft your storyboard

Drafting the storyboard is when you finally add meat to the bones of the course outline you created earlier. This is when your final course truly begins to take shape.

As outlined in the intro, your storyboard will take the form of a series of slides that will each represent a page of your online course. You’ll finalize your sequence of activities and pages, add your elearning content and include all the instructions needed to turn the storyboard into your completed course. 

One effective way to begin is to use your own storyboard template from a previous project or to use one of our free storyboard templates to kick-start your process.

I tend to start by building out an existing course outline. I tend to think of this as the underlying foundation which I’ll build around and on top of as I go. 

In practice, this looks like opening up the SessionLab course outline and adding additional blocks under each key section to represent each page of the elearning course.

On particularly big courses, I’ll spin out separate modules into separate days in SessionLab to make it easier to parse and overview each one. As I go, I’ll attach new course content to the relevant block as it comes in and begin to turn the raw course content into an engaging storyboard. 

This is why it’s useful to have started curating your content and building an outline in SessionLab. Everything you need is already organized in the right place and you can save time instead of repeating busy-work. 

I’ll use colour coding to help me organize my content and easily visualize my learning flow. With some courses reaching the 100+ slide count, it really helps to be able to see what the goal, interaction style or learning stage of my blocks are at a glance. I’ll switch between a single module view to a complete overview of the course to see the balance and help make informed decisions about what to amend. 

I also tend to customize my colour-coding based on the project. In this online reading and writing course where almost every slide contained a practical exercise, I found it most effective to show the format of the exercise.

This helped me ensure I had a varied flow that would help engage different learners and keep things fresh throughout. I could easily see where I should add more interactivity, encourage reflection and also ensure a good balance between reading exercises (getting new ideas and fresh perspectives) with writing (creative expression and output.) 

While I’ll already have a sequence in mind at the outline stage, the exact sequence tends to change during the drafting process. In SessionLab, this is as easy as dragging and dropping a block to a new place in the sequence. I can even move items between separate modules and courses if I need to.

Remember that your goal of elearning storyboarding is to make it easy for whoever comes next to successfully implement the course design. This means being thorough, exact and explicit. You’ll want to include every bit of information you want included on each course page and detail exactly how you’d like any animations, interactions and transitions to work. 

To this end, it’s also worth attaching any visuals, handouts, PDFs and more to your specific blocks in SessionLab. Whether you’re using these to inform your course design or they’re intended for developers to include in the final course, having everything in the right spot here is a massive time-saver. 

8. Get feedback, review and edit your storyboard 

After you’ve created a first draft of your storyboard, the first step is probably to take a walk and get some air! Great work! Next, you’ll likely want to get some feedback from relevant parties, review your material with a critical eye and make some edits to turn your storyboard into the final version, ready to move to the next step. 

The purpose of this storyboarding phase is to give yourself and key involved parties the opportunity to check for accuracy, provide feedback on the content and learning flow and ensure that your course design is well positioned to meet learning needs. Getting feedback now means that you’ll iron out any kinks before you actually create the course and save time overall. 

When sharing your storyboard, you may wish to tailor the format based on your audience. When sharing with direct collaborators and SMEs, I’ll invite them directly to the storyboard in SessionLab. Often, they’ll leave comments for me to work on later though with some projects, we’ll edit together in real-time. 

With clients and stakeholders, I’ll often share a PDF or PowerPoint export of the storyboard based on their needs. With some clients, I’ll sometimes omit some of the deeper details and columns to give them a general overview that can be easily visualized without getting bogged down in the details. 

However you share, it’s often useful to include a brief summary or introduction to the storyboard and the project at large. Sometimes, you might be sharing the storyboard with a fellow instructional designer who would benefit from an overview of the project or a developer who would benefit from some additional context or some examples of what you might like the project to look like.

This stage of the storyboarding process is also a great time to reflect critically on your work. It’s not uncommon to be so deep in the project that you’ve lost sight of certain elements and how each part corresponds to your learning objectives. 

I tend to review the storyboard with a few key questions in mind:

• Does the course design successfully meet the desired learning outcomes?
• Is the elearning experience engaging and varied? 
• Does this course work for all possible experience levels?
• Can I easily visualize the final course based on what’s present in the storyboard? 
• Am I confident that all the material present is accurate and strong? 

After receiving that feedback and looking at your storyboard with fresh eyes, you’ll want to iterate and make changes. In lots of tools, this can be a painful manual process, though in SessionLab, I’ve found it much easier to keep track of pending tasks, comments and make quick changes to the learning flow. 

9. Prototyping and implementation 

Once you have a completed and approved eLearning storyboard that everyone is happy with, you’re ready to move into the realms of course development and implementation.

In some projects, you and your developer may create a prototype of your course design in your choice of content authoring tool, LMS or prototyping software. This can be as simple as creating a (usually barebones) wireframe prototype that is designed primarily to test interactions and overview the learning flow. 

In other cases, you and your content team may create a visual prototype that helps demonstrate the style of the course and ensure everyone is aligned on the presentation and aesthetic elements of the course. 

At the greatest level of effort and fidelity, you might create a functional prototype in your content authoring software or LMS that showcases the final experience for your stakeholders. In this case, you might create a vertical slice that demonstrates the different activity types you’ll use throughout the course or create a near final version of the first section of your course. 

In other cases, it’s enough for you to pass your storyboard on to the development team or start to create your online courses yourself. The storyboard you created will serve to guide any involved parties in creating the final course and provide everything needed to make it a reality. 

In SessionLab, you can invite your collaborators directly to the storyboard or export it as a Word Doc, PDF, or PowerPoint. I tend to invite developers directly to SessionLab though set them to viewers without editing rights, just so the final design is locked and won’t be accidentally changed or broken in some way

If you have a storyboarding format you’re happy with and will likely reuse in the future, this is also a great time to consider making it into your own storyboard template. With SessionLab, you can make any session or storyboard into a reusable template that you can share with other instructional designers on your team too! 

What do you need to include in an eLearning storyboard?

So while this is largely dependent on your project, there are common elements which should ideally be included in every storyboard in order for it to be legible to others and provide all the information needed to move forward and implement the design.

While you’ll likely tailor the headings and format slightly for your own storyboard templates, you’ll almost certainly find these items present in some form. You can see some examples of these in on our free elearning storyboard template or this example of an elearning storyboard for an online course. 

Slide titles and numbers/intended sequence

Most eLearning storyboards are designed to provide a screen-by-screen breakdown of your course content in a (mostly) linear fashion. As such, you’ll want to make it easy for yourself and others to easily follow the intended structure of the course. Label all your slides/blocks and number them too. Not only does this make it easier to follow, but it’s then easy to reference certain slides throughout the development process. 

In branching structures, you may want to follow a tailored numbering scheme to make it easier for developers to follow what should come next in a given flow. If in doubt, talk to your development team and choose a number convention that works for you both. 

On-screen text

Almost every online course contains text of some description. In video heavy courses, this might only be page titles and summary text, while in other courses, the text forms the bulk of your delivered material. 

Include all the text you’d like included on the page, alongside formatting instructions where needed. For me, I find it best to work on the understanding that everything under this heading on a slide should be presented as is, retaining the general structure and any rich text formatting. In other cases, I’ve worked with designers who will take whatever I write and turn it into an engaging format based on their own expertise and the tool being used. 

Be sure to also include any text you’d like included in pop-up windows or as feedback messages for your users. In some cases, I’ll include this in the body of the text though for quizzes or multiple choice questions, I have a separate slide format to make this easier for everyone to follow. In this example storyboard, there’s a consequence set for each possible user choice, with green denoting a successful action and red an unsuccessful one. 

Voiceover or audio narration script

For online courses that include narration or a voiceover, you’ll want to include a script or direct link of what the learner will hear during each slide. 

In some projects, I’ll include the written script of the entire voiceover to pass to a voiceover artist though in others, I’ll simply include a link to the completed audio file. It really depends on whether this is already done, whether it needs to be approved and passed over, or whether the written script is something I also want input on. 

Early in the project, I’ll often have a simple description of what will be there and build out the script as I go. If I’m recording it myself, I’ll then record the voiceover and attach a link directly to the block in SessionLab so that anyone reviewing or implementing the storyboard can find it easily.

Visuals

Where applicable include either links to any visual elements you want included, or a written description of any desired graphic elements you’d like your content team to create/source.

In some cases, an instructional designer might include a simple mock-up or screenshots to demonstrate what they’d like the course page to look like. In my experience, it’s worth having a conversation with whoever is implementing the storyboard to determine what is best for you both and what’s possible for your project. 

In the example eLearning storyboard, I had an understanding with the client that the visual format of the pages was already set, and so the only visual elements I needed to attach were any images I’d like included on the pre-formatted page. 

Programming notes

This is where you’ll put any technical instructions for the person implementing the storyboard. Often, this person is a developer or content producer who only needs some brief direction on how you’d like any interactivity, page transitions or other technical elements to function. Often, this will be as simple as letting them know the navigation buttons you want on the page and where to send learners after they complete an action or slide. 

For some interactive projects with complex user interaction, you might have certain text only show after a correct answer, or have a help pop-up show if a person appears stuck on a simulation after 15 seconds. Include any such technical instructions here, with simple and clear directions for how you’d like things to work. 

However simple or complex your project, it really helps to have a shared language with your developer so that you can use shorthand to let them know what you want efficiently. Either have an explainer or brief guide attached to your storyboard or have a quick call with your developer before you get started. As with everything else in the storyboarding process, it pays to be clear and simple.

Animations

Elearning courses that include a voiceover or have audio or video elements will often contain a series of simple animations to accompany the content. This might be as simple as images or text appearing at certain points in the voiceover or use simple graphics to demonstrate certain concepts.

Not every project will have complicated animations but it’s worth being clear as to what you want to happen when. Even something as simple as having text appear at a contextually relevant time can really help improve the learning experience. A simple series of explicit text instructions often works best here. 

Optional elements of an eLearning storyboard

Every elearning design and training course is different. It’s highly likely you’ll need to add bespoke headings depending on your tool, storyboard content and personal style.

In my experience, the following storyboard elements have been useful during the design, development and review process and you may wish to include them in your elearning storyboard templates too.

Intended Duration

While activity duration is an absolute must for instructor-led training and workshop activities, it’s generally considered an optional item to include on an eLearning storyboard. Participants will often engage with your material in a self-paced manner and while some folks might speed through a quiz page, others might read all the tips and pop-ups carefully.

Personally, I find that understanding how long I’d like and expect participants to spend on each activity and module is really helpful for improving the learning experience. For example, if I can see that I have an hour’s worth of content without any interactivity, that’s a clear sign I need to include some. The expected course duration is also something I’ll typically add to the intro for each module and any marketing materials.  

In SessionLab, I’ll add the expected duration of each storyboard block and as a result, I’ll get an automatically calculated length for each module. 

Color-coded categorization

Whatever the format of your storyboard, we recommend adding color coding to your slides in order to better organize and overview your materials. 

The taxonomy you use is best chosen based on your needs and the needs of the course. Learning designers using SessionLab typically categorize in one of the following ways:

1. By activity type format 
   1. (i.e. quiz, simulation, presentation, video, summary page, etc.)
2. Applicable learning objective 
   • So this is highly dependent on your project, but as an example, I had multiple learning objectives and desired outcomes for an eLearning course which included:
     1. Engage and improve participants’ critical reading abilities 
     2. Improve participants’ general writing ability
     3. Develop participants’ creative confidence  
     4. Encourage participants to engage with concepts of mental wellness

While many slides in my storyboard would aim to have an impact on multiple learning objectives, it can useful to show the primary learning objective each slide aims to engage with. This can help ensure these objectives stay front of mind. It’s also a practical way to show stakeholders how the desired outcomes of the project will be achieved.

3. Stage in the instructional design process. 
   • For example, if you’re using Merill’s instructional design principles, you might have color-categorization for problem centred activities, activation activities, demonstrative activities, application activities and integration activities. By marking your storyboard pages with these, you can ensure that your content flows sensibly and that you engage all the principles of effective learning in your eLearning course. 

SessionLab’s color-coding is flexible and customizable so you can choose whatever categorization works best for you. In this real-world example of an eLearning storyboard, you’ll see that I’ve used a bespoke activity type categorization to show whether it’s a reading exercise, written exercise and more.

This helped me see the balance between various activities at a glance and design accordingly. It also really helped for telling the story of the course to my client and easily guiding them through the storyboard overview in a visual manner. 

Goal or learning objective

I’ve often found a simple statement of the goal of each slide in my storyboard is helpful for both shaping and reviewing an eLearning course. This might be a single sentence for what each storyboard slide is hoping to achieve as part of the learning flow or a note for which learning objective is being touched on.

For stakeholders, it can be useful to understand the purpose of each page, especially in cases where I’ve been especially creative or am experimenting with my format or approach. It can really help the story of the course come across clearly and prevent any undue friction or misunderstandings.

I’ve also found that including a goal for each slide or section useful when working collaboratively with other learning designers or developers. It can help make my thinking legible to others, prevent misunderstandings and also provide a critical focus for any reviewers. Does this slide and activity meet the intended goal? How can we break down the overall learning objectives into small chunks? 

Background material and references

Whether you’re including them for learners or not, it can be helpful to collect all your background materials and references in one-place. I’ll often add these items to each block as a link or written reference. In the review process, an SME will likely take a peek or add additional suggestions too.

Designated subject matter experts 

On complex projects with many collaborators, I’ve found it helpful to assign specific SMEs and collaborators to blocks in the storyboard. This is often to show which items they are responsible for reviewing or which they should be consulted on for accuracy. In SessionLab, you can assign and tag collaborators to help improve your workflow too.

What tools can you use to create storyboards for elearning?

In the instructional design world, there are a few tools that are regularly used to create learning designs and which fit well into any development project. Here are some of the common tools used by learning designers and instructional design professionals to design a storyboard for elearning.

SessionLab 

SessionLab is a powerful and flexible storyboarding tool that makes it easy to design course outlines, elearning storyboards and full training programs. 

In SessionLab, start by creating the basic blocks of your storyboard and include the information you need in each block. Quickly add detailed instructions for your developers and attach images, handouts and other resources to each block so you can easily find what you need for each slide of your course. 

If you need to rearrange your slides and learning materials, simply drag and drop them into place. Add colour-coded categories to easily see a visual breakdown of your interaction type or learning objective.

When you’re done with an initial draft, invite stakeholders or subject matter experts to collaborate on your storyboard in realtime. 

SessionLab also makes it easy to refine and optimize your instructional design workflow. When you’ve built a storyboard that works for you, make it into reusable storyboard template. Save common block types to your team library for quick use and save time throughout the elearning development process.

Want to hear more about using SessionLab to create engaging elearning? Explore how Vlerick Business School has saved time and improved organizational efficiency by using SessionLab to design and host storyboards for their entire school. 

You can also get started quickly with a free elearning storyboard template you can customize to your needs.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Whether you’re creating a written or visual storyboard, PowerPoint can be a cost effective, simple to use tool for creating basic storyboards.

In my experience, isn’t always easy to get a sense of your learning flow or to quickly overview how each slide contributes to learner objectives in PowerPoint. That said, if you want to simulate the experience and build a very simple prototype at speed, PowerPoint is easy to get started with.

Microsoft Word

Like PowerPoint, word processing tools like Google Docs or Microsoft Word can be a simple entry point for creating elearning storyboards and course outlines.

While getting started is as simple as just typing, creating and editing complex tables in Word can quickly become a pain. I’ve also found that storyboards and course materials hosted in Word can be difficult to navigate and oversee. All that said, if you and your collaborators need a low detail storyboard and are most comfortable with a word processing tool, Microsoft Word can still get the job done.

Articulate Storyline 

Articulate Storyline is perhaps best described as PowerPoint plus. On first look, it’s very similar to Microsoft’s tool, though it has a heap of bells and whistles that makes the work of designing a storyboard easier.

Storyline is a powerful and widely used instructional design tool that you’ll hear about from many instructional design professionals. Sadly, it’s only available on Windows and is quite expensive to boot, coming as part of the Articulate 360 suite at $1,399 per user. 

If you’re looking for an entire Enterprise level stack that covers the entire flow from content creation to LMS, it’s worth considering. If you’re looking for a tool to create a storyboard, PowerPoint or SessionLab are much more cost effective options.  

Twine

Twine is a free tool for designing interactive and non-linear stories. Twine is perhaps the most niche tool on this list, but for instructional designers creating highly gamified courses with branching or conditional structures, it can be a really intuitive solution. Projects built in Twine can effectively function as low fidelity elearning prototypes. 

Let’s say you want to create a course where participants took different routes and saw different learning material based on their answers to certain questions.

Plotting out a design with multiple branches and then prototyping it would be very time consuming. In Twine, it’s easy to create simple pages that take different paths based on user input and simple conditional logic. Twine isn’t going to be for every instructional designer, but for the right project, it’s an absolute life saver. Plus, it’s free!

For most learning designers, the storyboarding tool is one piece of a bigger software stack including content authoring software, an LMS, and more. Check out this guide to explore other instructional design software you might use in your everyday work. 

Next steps 

We hope you’ve found this guide to creating effective elearning storyboards helpful! Whether you’re creating visual storyboards or a more traditional storyboard to outline your elearning experience, the step-by-step process above will help you make it a cinch.

Want to continue learning? Here are some more resources to check out!

• Looking for help designing effective learning flows? Explore how to deploy Robert Gagne’s events of instruction in your next elearning course with this complete guide to instructional design principles.
• Designing instructor-led training or an online course that includes live sessions with your cohort? Learn an effective step-by-step process for creating an engaging training session plan.
• An instructional design model like ADDIE, SAM or Dick and Carey’s model can help us intelligently approach the entire instructional design process. Learn more in this practical guide to instructional design models.

Whether you’re creating elearning courses, training sessions or working in blended environments, this guide will help you understand how to deploy these instructional strategies and engage your learners. We’ll explore each principle in turn and provide practical examples and advice for applying them in your instructional design process.

Good instructional design is an art and a science.

Even if you’re new to learning design, chances are you’ll already be practicing some of the learning principles I’ll outline below. In my own practice, I learned from mentors and teachers I admired and through trial and error long before I came across learning theory.

Creativity and experience got me so far, but then I realized that a deeper understanding of how people learn would help me improve the courses and workshops I designed. Instructional design theories and learning frameworks provide a solid foundation that you can build upon with your signature style.

In this guide, we’ll explore Robert Gagne’s 9 principles of instructional design and how to apply them. You’ll learn what principles need to be considered in designing instruction that resonates with learners and how the framework can inform your design process.

By better understanding these principles and how to practically action them as an instructional designer, you can create more engaging learning experiences that will help participants retain and better utilize what they learn after the course is complete. 

What are Gagne’s instructional design principles and why are they important? 

Robert M. Gagne was an American psychologist whose worked centred on educational psychology. He is best known for his 1965 book The Conditions of Learning. There, he demonstrated a nine-step process for creating effective learning called the events of instruction.

The 9 instructional design principles (also known as Gagne’s nine events of instruction) as outlined by Gagne are:

1. Gain the attention of your learners
2. State the objectives 
3. Stimulate recall of prior learning
4. Present the learning content 
5. Provide learning guidance
6. Elicit performance from learners
7. Provide feedback
8. Assess learner performance 
9. Enhance retention and transfer

You’ll find a detailed explanation of each of Gagne’s instructional design principles below alongside practical tips for implementing them in your eLearning course, classroom or live training session. 

Instructional design principles are important because they provide a proven framework for designing an effective learning experience. They successfully incorporate the key concepts and psychological principles at the heart of learning into a practical, easy to follow process.

In my experience, these principles help concretize all the learning theory out there and make it easy for me to ensure the course I’m designing will engage students and achieve the desired learning outcomes. They provide a systematic process that is easy for any instructional designer to follow, repeat and internalize.

While most of these principles will occur in your course roughly in the order presented above, it’s worth noting that these events can overlap and you’ll revisit them at various points in your learning flow. 

For example, it’s common that an eLearning course will present the content of one training block alongside an interactive game that gives learners an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and for instructors to gauge their progress.

Afterwards, you might then go into another learning block that repeats this process, perhaps even restating objectives at certain points and asking learners to remember previous learning when pertinent. 

In most effective courses, many of these instructional principles are repeated throughout and learners will have multiple opportunities to receive feedback, interact with experiential content and practice their skills.

Try thinking of the list as both a rough skeleton of the points you will want to hit in your learning flow as well as practice advice for improving individual sections of your course or training programs. 

When designing an eLearning course outline or instructional design storyboard, it’s helpful to detail how each training block aligns with your learning objectives.

In SessionLab, instructional designers can add colour-coding to training blocks to delineate the learning objective, activity type or even which stage of the learning process it touches upon. This can help ensure you have a balanced learning flow that will be engaging for your learners. 

As Gagne writes, “organisation is the hallmark of effective instructional materials.”

Start by creating a simple course outline that meets your learner needs. Turn that outline into a storyboard by adding detailed text, timing and clear instructions. Attach learning materials, images, links and other multimedia to each training block so that your content team can easily find what they need.   

By combining the following instructional design principles for course creation with SessionLab, you can quickly structure your online course and ensure nothing is missed. 

1) Gain attention

Effective learning can only begin once learners’ attention is in the room or on the course provided. Gagne’s first event of instruction is all about getting the attention of your learners, sparking their curiosity and drawing them into the session. 

In a live setting, gaining attention often means actually starting the session, asking for people to settle into the room and leave what’s outside of the session for later. While this can be as simple as raising your voice and saying, let’s begin, it can be especially effective to engage learners’ curiosity and help them be present in the moment with a game or activity.

For a learning program or online course delivered via an LMS or course platform, getting the attention of your learners also needs to consider a combination of good design and simple, but engaging content.

How to gain attention in instructor-led training

• Call the room to action by using your voice and presence. Often, this looks like standing up at the front of the room, raising the volume of your voice and calling the group to attention. In traditional learning environments, lots of learners expect some kind of formal signal to begin so don’t be afraid to lean into this.
• Use an icebreaker game to help people mentally arrive in the room. Bonus points if it relates to the topic of the day and starts getting people engaging and learning with one another.
• Don’t forget the body! A simple invitation to take a few deep breaths, stretch or do an energizer can help people give their attention to what’s happening in the room, rather than what’s happening on their phone or after the session.  
• Use music or other audio tool to signal the start of the session. One facilitator friend swears by the use of a Tibetan gong!
• Create engaging visuals. Have a thought-provoking cover slide on your visual presentation or have posters or images relating to your topic around the room. 
• Place question cards, quotes or image cards on tables and chairs ready for when people come in. Pique their interest or invite them to start thinking about the session and their own understanding of the topic at hand while everyone arrives.

How to gain attention in eLearning courses

• Share a short, engaging intro video. Video content that features the instructor behind the training can be very effective, adding a human touch to forthcoming material while also introducing the key points of the course.
• Share a story relevant to the topic at hand. Good stories are highly engaging for us as people, whatever the medium. A real world example that engages with the topic of your course is also a great shout – if it’s personal, even better! 
• Have an interactive moment early on, preferably including some element of user choice. Picking an avatar, a favourite colour or simply answering a question in the first moments of the course can help get the attention of learners in this environment. Bonus points if it’s persistent! 
• Use compelling visuals. As above, attractive, thought provoking visual material can be a great way to get attention immediately. Good design can go a long way here!  
• Make a big claim or bold statement to grab learner attention and encouraging critical thinking. Something a learner strongly agrees (or disagrees!) which can be a compelling hook to move forward. On other occasions, using evocative language and restating the ideal goal state or benefit of the course can be a great way to gain learner attention. Let them know what real world problems they’ll solve after taking your course!

2) State objectives

In adult learning, it’s been shown that people learn better when they know why they’re doing a particular activity and what the goals or desired outcomes of a training program are. Gagne’s second event of instruction is all about outlining the goals and objectives of the training they’re about undertake.

Stating course objectives can help learners engage with each step of the learning flow, understanding what the overall goal is and how each step can help them reach that goal. 

This stage is often about building trust too – giving your learners an overview of what they’re going to learn and some sense of how you’re going to help them learn it. Whatever your learning format and audience, try to use language that speaks to them and relates to their personal goals, as well as those of the wider training program.

Unsure about the learning goals or your audience? Check out this guide on how to run a training needs assessment to ensure you thoroughly understand your audience and their goals.

How to state objectives in instructor-led training 

• Let your learners know the objectives of the training session early in the process. Practically, this looks like having a slide in your presentation to present the objectives or a handout which includes learning objectives close to the top. For some sessions, you might even state the objectives of the training in the invitation email or in a shareable agenda so participants can come to the session fully prepared. 
• Try making objectives personal and aspirational. Statements such as “by the end of this training you will be able to:” can help the goals of a session more concrete. Aspirational statements that invite participants to consider their personal goals can also be effective ways to motivate learners.
• In live environments, it can also be effective to ask learners and trainees what their own objectives are at the beginning of a training session. This can help ensure alignment, create a participatory environment and also create the potential to cover peripheral topics (if able) that learners will respond to. 
• Having learners share those desired learning outcomes with the rest of the group can also be an effective way to cover the objectives of the course and also begin the active learning process. Ask participants to share their own goals with the group and then add any core learning outcomes they’ve missed at the end.

How to state objectives in eLearning courses

• A simple bullet point list or slide that tells learners exactly what they’ll learn on the course is a tried and tested method for stating objectives. This might also come in the form of a course outline where objectives are linked to the main sections of your course. 
• Outlining before and after states is also an effective way to sell the self-paced course they’re on and carry them through the first screens and into the training proper. What will it look like after the course has been completed? How will the learnings benefit their day-to-day work?
• A short video where the instructor introduces learning objectives works well. The human touch can help demystify tricky objectives or help demonstrate an ideal future state. For example, if you were running a course on improving facilitation skills, a video where an expert facilitator tells trainees how achieving learning objectives has improved their personal practice can do wonders to get participant buy-in. 
• I’ve found that including an activity that asks participants to write down their personal objectives is a great way to start people on their learning journey. If you’ve gotten the right people on the course at the right time, most personal objectives will overlap with those of the course, but it’s an effective exercise to get participants thinking about what they most want to get out of the material ahead. 

3) Stimulate recall of prior learning

In Cagne’s principles of instructional design, the recall of previous learning is an integral part of the learning process. By creating connections between new material and their existing knowledge and experiences, it’s easier for learners to retain what they learn. 

In many cases, the recollection of previous material is also a great tool to allow a trainer to assess participants’ existing knowledge or skill level. You can use this to tailor the learning experience and to measure the impact of your course – for example, running a short quiz at the beginning and end of the training and seeing how the results change.

Remember that previous learning doesn’t just mean “what previous courses or training have you taken on this subject?”

If the subject of your training is conflict resolution, it might be more effective to ask participants about recent conflicts and how they resolved them. Personal experience and parallels to real life situations can be very effective at stimulating the recall of prior knowledge. 

How to stimulate recall in instructor-led training

• Group discussions where participants are encouraged to share their experiences around a core training topic is a highly effective method of stimulating recall. In my experience, 1-2-4 All provides the best structure of this kind of discussion. It allows trainees to have some personal time thinking about the subject before a pair and small group discussion. It also ensures that one person doesn’t dominate a whole group discussion and that multiple viewpoints are shared. 
• Experiential activities can also be a great way to stimulate recall. For example, a simple problem solving game might require participants to use skills they’ve learned in order to be successful. In my experience, using an energizer game as an opportunity for people to use problem solving skills related to the topic at hand can also help.
• One simple way to stimulate recall is to simply ask all participants to summarize their knowledge on a chosen topic and present those summaries to the group. 

How to stimulate recall in eLearning courses

• Quizzes and other interactive content are highly effective in a self-paced format. A short quiz can help you engage learners early on, providing variation in your course content while also allowing you to gauge their level of knowledge.  
• Asking learners to recall prior knowledge and summarize can work in a self-paced format, though without peer feedback, it might not suit every training topic or learning format. That said, even as a self-reflection activity it can be effective. You can even begin the process of multimedia learning by asking participants to create a slide-deck or image to summarize their existing knowledge.  
• Referencing previous learning content or well known material in your course material can help gently nudge learner recall. If you know your trainees have engaged in a previous course or will likely have read a well known book on the topic, organically referencing these in your course is a good idea.
• Sending preparatory reading material to your trainees in your invitation or prep materials can give participants an opportunity to prepare and also give you something to refer back to later. Be aware that not every trainee will do this reading, but don’t be afraid to refer back to it to help stimulate recall either. 
• A single great question can also pave the way for this kind of recall. Ask a question that invites participants to reflect (and take time to do so!) on a given topic or an inspiring subject can be all it takes to promote this learning principle. 

4) Present the content

So this is the big one – actually presenting your learning content to your trainees. In most training sessions, this is where the bulk of time is spent. Here, you’ll organize your learning content into a methodical, engaging learning flow that will help learners understand and engage with the learning material. 

In live training, presenting content can often look like a trainer running through a slide deck, asking questions from the group, encouraging reflection and perhaps including an experiential game to demonstrate some of the content in action. 

In eLearning environments, content will likely live in an LMS or learning platform, and be a sequence of interactive slides, games and other material. Using the key principles of multimedia learning and varying your content style is a great place to begin, though you’ll want to go further in order to produce a truly effective instructional design.

In any format, there are some solid best practices for ensuring your learning content is presented in an engaging fashion that will help learners move efficiently to the next stage. 

How to present content in instructor-led training

• Try presenting your content in different ways to engage different learning styles. Standing at the front of the room and simply talking to your trainees without any variation or interactivity can quickly grow stale and lower engagement with your content. Use slides, videos, audio, handouts and images in your visual presentations to cater to different learning styles. You might also encourage active participation in the form of a training activity that involves your participants in presenting content.
• Simplicity and legibility is important. Your content should follow a structured learning flow that makes it easy for learners to follow, understand and synthesize. Be sure to contextualize anything you present and that it’s suitable for the level of understanding your learners have.
  Using SessionLab to design your content flow and storyboards is one effective way of ensuring your content is well structured and follows a logical sequence.
• Summarizing content and describing key points to learners either at the beginning or end of a training block can be helpful at switching your participants into the right mode for learning while also reinforcing the key takeaways. 
• Relating your material to real world contexts can provide learners with a way to relate this new knowledge to their own experience. Try using multiple examples or even ask for examples from your group.
• Encouraging note-taking is another effective method of helping participants engage with the content you’re presenting. In some training activities, you might ask learners to share notes with each other between learning blocks or to summarize the content you just presented using their own notes. 

How to present content in eLearning courses

• Presenting content in different forms is especially important for keeping learners attention in self-paced eLearning. Using a blend of text, video, audio, infographics, slides and other media are all useful at creating engagement.
• Interactivity can be an effective way of presenting your content in a more memorable and experiential manner. Simple learning games developed with the help of subject matter experts can make all the difference when it comes to helping learners actively engage with your content.  
• Ensure that any additional media or interactivity you add is relevant to the topic and learning goals. Making things visually appealing is a bonus, but adding heaps of images that aren’t relevant to your central content can distract the learner. As with everything in instructional design, balance is key. 
• Segment your content into digestible chunks and add simple, measurable goals to each section. This can help keep your learners on track and ensure they don’t lose sight of why they’re being given a particular piece of content. 

5) Provide learning guidance

Gagne’s fifth event of instruction is where the instructor or trainer provides learning guidance. This guidance can come in many forms, though it should always have the aim of helping learners better understand the material provided and helping them learn how to learn. 

In my experience, learning guidance comes in two main forms: 

1. Learning guidance that is baked into the content
2. Learning guidance offered alongside main content by the instructor or course

Making learning guidance present on a content level is often a design decision. For example, instructional designers will often start with simple material before increasing in complexity in order to facilitate learning.

They may distribute handouts which help guide a learner towards answering questions on the training content or include step by step instructions that facilitate deeper comprehension. They might also include practical examples of what is being learned in the form of a case study or training activity. 

Learning guidance offered alongside the main content is often about helping learners improve their own ability to learn.

Instructional designers might include a PDF on best practices for studying, taking breaks and keeping learning alive. In cohort based learning, that guidance might also look like providing office hours or online chat groups where participants can help one another learn too.

How to provide learning guidance in instructor-led training

• Develop step-by-step lessons that start with simple, easy to understand concepts before moving towards more complex material. This allows learners to build on existing knowledge and develop their understanding as they go.
• Break your content into small chunks and create opportunities for the group to ask simple qualifying questions at regular intervals. You might also solicit relevant experiences from the group or step to one side and talk about how to best internalize the content effectively.
• Using an instructional design model such as the ADDIE model to thoroughly understand your learners needs can really help you choose the right method of learning guidance. Ensure you’ve investigated what will wok best for your learners in order to produce the most effective instruction.
• Talking through a question and how you might arrive at an answer for the group can be really effective at demonstrating a learning mindset. You might do this yourself or by doing a pop-quiz and asking the correct respondent to talk more about the process they went through when finding the answer.
• Practical examples are a great tool for providing learning guidance. You might include a real world example or case study in your content that shows how someone might deploy the knowledge being learned in your training. You might also use a training activity involving role play that gives participants an opportunity to practice in a safe environment where you as a trainer can also provide guidance. 

How to provide learning guidance in eLearning courses

• Most content authoring tools offer features like image hotspots or buttons that allow users to explore a subject in more detail. Add links to additional material where you can. Include tooltips on key terms and learning points so that those learners who may need extra help can find it without leaving your course and come out of their learning flow. 
• Add a section with advice on how to get the most out of the course. Set expectations for how long learners should spend on each section, how much extra reading they should do and how they should approach the material. Even something as simple as a reminder to silence phones and give learning material their full attention can help here!
• Peer-support and activities can be effective, even in a self-paced environment. With cohort based learning, give opportunities for learners to discuss material or complete a group task to support your self-paced material. Blended courses are a great way to make this dance between self-directed learning and group discussion a reality – see more in this blended course template! 

6) Elicit performance

Gagné’s sixth event of instruction is eliciting performance. This is typically where learners are able to practice new skills, demonstrate what they’ve learned and begin retaining information. Practical exercises, role playing simulations and quizzes are all common methods trainers and instructional designers will use in order to elicit performance from learners. 

By tapping into experiential learning methods, this stage of the learning process can help learners retain information and file it in their long term memory. 

This is arguably the most important step of the learning process. Whatever the topic or format of your training, you’ll want to ensure you give ample opportunity for participants to practice their skills and demonstrate their knowledge within your course – simply providing lots of informational content isn’t enough, however great that content might be. 

Eliciting performance is also an important step for the instructor. If learners are having continually difficulty with a particular concept, the instructor may want to revisit that topic in greater detail. In a self-paced format, the input you get from participants at this stage can also be used for improving your learning experiences. 

How to elicit performance in instructor-led training

• Role-playing games and training activities where learners must deploy their new skills are great ways to elicit learner performance. In some scenarios such as soft skills training, participants are able to use what they’ve learned in a real-life situation immediately while in others, you may need to offer a simulation – such as for workers operating specialized machinery which may not be available on site. Wherever possible, consider how you can create opportunities to directly employ what’s being learned in a “as true to life” manner as possible. 
• Simple quizzes and Q&A sessions can also be an effective way to give participants a chance to show what they’ve learned. It’s often useful to go beyond repetition and ask learners how they arrived at an answer or how they might use their answer in the real world. 
• Giving participants an opportunity to present what they’ve learned and demonstrate their understanding is another common method of eliciting performance. Put folks into groups and ask them to discuss what they’ve learned, how they might apply it and then presenting those ideas to the rest of the cohort. This is an effective way of encouraging people to not only repeat what they heard, but to start putting those learnings into practice. 
• In a live session, it’s important to consider how a balanced agenda can pave the way for effective practice. Add breaks to your SessionLab agenda and use the automatic timing calculations to ensure participants haven’t been digesting content for 3 hours straight before then being asked to demonstrate new knowledge!

How to elicit performance in eLearning courses

• Interactive activities are the name of the game for this stage of the learning process. Use quizzes and games where participants need to demonstrate their knowledge in order to proceed. You can gate progress or create fail states so that participants can only go to the next step when they provide correct answers and demonstrate their understanding. 
• Simulations are even better if they’re relevant to your learning objectives. For example, if you’re delivering a sales training course, you might simulate a few customer calls and ask respondents to select the best responses.
• If you’re running cohort based training or a blended learning course, get participants to do an activity together or in a facilitated group activity. This provides a great opportunity to practice new skills with the guidance and feedback of peers and an instructor. 
• In some scenarios, using open-ended questions and giving participants an opportunity to respond creatively to a problem and use their new skills can be effective. This approach requires peer or instructor feedback to be effective, and so is best used in a blended format, or at the end of a larger unit of self-paced training. 
• It can also be effective to give participants some homework or ask them to practice what they’ve learned in a real-life environment between training content. Give participants a clear call to action on what to do next with some practical ideas for how to use what they’ve learned. Even with entirely self-directed learning, it’s possible to give direction for employing new skills between training content and then ask participants to reflect on what they did when they come back for the next block.
• Allow participants to retake or repeat key sections, particularly if they’ve not satisfied performance expectations. You might link back to sections contextually or simply provide an index or course overview so learners can go back over what they need to whenever necessary. 

7) Provide feedback

Gagné’s seventh event of instruction is providing feedback. This is where the instructor provides direct feedback on learner progress and how they’re performing in comparison to the desired learning goal. This kind of feedback is most often given in direct response to learner input, such as when they are answering questions about a new learning, conducting a practical exercise or practicing new skills. 

In a training context, feedback is most effective when given immediately following learner action. It should also provide enough detail for the learner to understand what went well or what needs improvement. The idea is not to just tell the learner why they were wrong but also to help them make adjustments and move towards the desired learning goal.

The best kind of feedback to give your learners is often dependent on context, where they are in the learning journey and the relative importance of a given point. Here are some of the different kinds of feedback you might provide to your learners:

• Confirmation feedback: this kind of feedback lets the learner know they did the right thing or gave the right answer. This typically includes a positive affirmation that futher encourages the learner.
• Corrective feedback: the type of feedback tells learners that they did the wrong thing or an incorrect answer was given and explain why. Remedial feedback will typically direct learners to where they can find the right answer or prompt them to try again. 
• Evaluative feedback: this feedback method gives the learner a sense of how they performed, often in the form of a score. You might also include a description of what that score means, often in line with an assessment criteria document. This kind of feedback is often short and to the point, with learners expected to take some ownership of next steps based on the score they received. 
• Descriptive feedback: descriptive feedback can be used in both correct and incorrect scenarios, giving participants a deeper level of feedback that often includes suggestions, additional information and next steps that will help learners improve their performance and progress on the learning journey. 
• Peer feedback: peer feedback is an opportunity for learners to reflect on the performance of others and provide input to one another. This is especially useful during group activities or as a point of contact in a blended learning environment.
• Self evaluation/self feedback: this kind of feedback method involves prompting the learner to self reflect on their progress or performance. Self reflection is a great habit to encourage at various points in the learning process.

How to provide feedback in instructor-led training

• In a live environment, feedback is often given immediately following learner input or during a practical exercise. The faster you’re able to help learners correct their actions, the easier it is for them to make changes and incorporate the desired learning. 
• Create space for learners to ask follow-up questions. The best learning experiences are rarely one way and giving participants a deeper understanding of what to improve, change or why their answer was correct can help deepen the process.
• In many cases, it’s vital for learners to understand why they were wrong, as well as being given the correct answer. Contextualize your feedback and where necessary, detail the process of finding the right answer. This can help ensure participants develop the skills they need, rather than just parroting the correct answer in a training context.  
• When learners are practicing their skills or conducting role-play exercises, ensure there’s an opportunity to course correct and practice the ideal behaviour. This can help switch context from a potentially negative to positive relationship with the training material and help reinforce the desired outcome. 
• Positive affirmation that helps reinforce ideal behaviour is as important as correcting undesired responses. Tell people when they’ve done well and explain why their response was ideal. In a group setting, it can also be helpful to share what a great response or effective application looks like.     

How to provide feedback in eLearning courses

• It’s worth noting that giving people a chance to learn from their mistakes is especially important during eLearning. Just telling people they were wrong and then moving on isn’t an ideal flow for learning. After providing feedback on a wrong answer be sure to then provide the opportunity for participants to give the right answer or demonstrate their knowledge some other way. You might also offer a simpler or adjusted version of the simulation or provide a quiz that offers additional hints or tooltips. 
• As with live training, any feedback should be given in a direct, immediate and clear manner. Your content authoring tool will have everything from tooltips, pop-ups, audio tools and more. Leverage these tools thoughtfully to congratulate participants on a correct response or gently let them know that the response was incorrect and provide them with feedback that can help them do better next time. 
• As a rule of thumb, try to ensure every point of learner input provides feedback of some kind. Whether it’s a positive affirmation of correct practice or an incorrect answer message, each point of input is an opportunity to guide participants to the ideal learning journey.  
• Achieving clarity in a self-paced training course isn’t just about the text. Visual design is a vital element of providing feedback that is easy for the learner to understand and doesn’t create friction. Think about how to make feedback visually distinct from other learning material and try to employ a consistent method of delivering feedback throughout your course. 
• Test your courts and explore how it feels to receive feedback to an incorrect response. If every incorrect answer triggers a warning klaxon and a wall of text, that’s unlikely to feel good for your learner, and may negatively impact the learning journey. 
• Remember that feedback is about guiding participants to the correct response and deepening the learning journey. Messages will want to let people know what went wrong but also guide them towards understanding. It’s not fun to be told you’re incorrect over and over again without context or support! 
• Providing links to additional material or opportunities to revisit content is easily achieved in most content authoring tools. Giving learners an opportunity to improve their understanding by linking to supporting material can help ensure they get the right answer while also reinforcing key points. This can be an effective way of helping learners gain an understanding of the material, rather than just brute forcing your quiz. 

8) Assess performance

Gagné’s eight event of instruction is an assessment of learner performance. This is where trainers officially evaluate how well learners have performed against the desired learning objectives. In practice, this can look like a written or oral exam, practical demonstration, scored quiz or other form of assessment. 

For most learning scenarios, it’s important that trainers do not offer additional guidance or help while assessing performance. Participant ability will typically be measured on individual performance and with a pass/fail model. 

The results of these assessments are used in multiple ways. First, they’re often given back to participants to either congratulate them or provide an opportunity to retake an assessment or deepen their learning.

Assessments are also a great tool for trainers and instructional designers to improve the quality of their materials – if participants struggle with certain elements, it’s potentially a sign you need to make something clearer or cover certain topics in greater detail. 

How to assess performance in instructor-led training

• Demonstrations and practical activities that are supervised or observed by the instructor is a common method of assessment in live training. Typically, those assessing the performance will score or grade each trainee as they progress through a pre-defined scenario. This is especially useful when training participants in practical skills.
• A formative assessment in the form of a written or oral exam is also common. These often include a series of questions that are scored by the trainer in order to determine performance. 
• Individual outputs such as essays, reports or creative products are another tried and tested assessment method – many university courses include essays and other personal outputs to assess learner progress and performance. Note that these can be more difficult and time consuming to assess, and require thorough assessment criteria used by every instructor in order to be fair and effective. 
• Be sure to outline how performance will be assessed at the outset of the course and again just before an assessment. Trainees should know exactly how they’ll be assessed and there shouldn’t be any surprise criteria that doesn’t relate to what they learned. Include it in your training agenda and provide links to supporting material where appropriate.
• In some cases, it can also be effective to assess participants before the course begins and then assess them again at the end. Measuring the improvement in skills or knowledge can provide a finer degree of assessment and also help the trainer understand the true impact of their material. 
• Going further, it can also be helpful for learners to get used to being assessed in some small form throughout the course. You might sprinkle various assessment techniques such as quizzes and group questioning throughout your course to help you and your learners be aware of performance throughout the course. 

How to assess performance in eLearning courses

• Scored quizzes are a common feature of self-paced courses for good reason. They provide an opportunity to cover many learning events in turn and effectively assess the performance of learners. 
• Vary the format of your assessments so that they’re engaging and can’t be brute forced. Using a mix of multiple-choice questions, word games and other quiz formats can help you assess performance while avoiding burnout.
• Challenges and simulations provide an experiential way to assess performance. Remember that even if your assessment method is gamified, participants still need to know how they are being assessed. Clear instructions and good feedback are key here. 
• Include links to assessment criteria and supporting materials in your course introduction and ensure participants can access what they need when preparing for assessment. 
• Clearly signpost when a section of your online course is part of the formal assessment of course progress. You might distinguish these sections visually while also clearly spelling out that this section is important. 
• Milestone tests or short assessments spread throughout the course are especially important in a self-paced environment where the instructor does not have the ability to organically gauge performance. 
• Pre-testing before the start of an eLearning course can be an effective way to tailor the experience for your learners. You might allow them to skip certain sections or draw more attention to others based on the results.

9) Enhance retention and transfer

Gagné’s ninth event of instruction is about enhancing the transfer of knowledge and helping learners retain what they’ve learned during the course so they can apply it in real-life. The goal of any learning experience isn’t to just help participants pass the course – it’s to equip them with skills and knowledge that will be used from here on out.

Instructional designers tend to achieve this in two ways. First, by using activities that improve retention and knowledge transfer throughout the course, often in the form of simulations and practice exercises.

They’ll also provide resources to help participants continue learning once the training is over. Static resources like PDFs, checklists and job aids are helpful, though you might go further and offer feedback loops with line managers or group forums for peer support. 

How to enhance retention and transfer in instructor-led training

• A summary of key points and core topics in the form of a one-pager can be a great resource to provide to learners at the end of a training session. A job-aid that helps demonstrate the connection between what’s been learned and how to apply it in day-to-day work is also an effective resource to share at the end of a course. 
• End your training session with a final opportunity to practice key skills or demonstrate knowledge. You might do a final group role play, quick-fire quiz or practical exercise. 
• Close the session with a group reflection or debrief. Giving everyone the opportunity to reflect on what they learned and share different perspectives how they’ll use what their new skills or knowledge can be a great way to ensure next steps are taken and that learning is retained. Closing activities like Letter to Myself or I used to think…Now I think are proven methods you can use here. 
• Create opportunities to check-in following the training session. You might have line-managers or trainers check-in with trainees to discuss progress and to reinforce key learnings. Alternatively, create an accountability group where a cohort of trainees can share experiences and tips while keeping what they learned alive. 
• Have trainees create an action plan for how and when they’ll use their new skills following the workshop. Setting an intention for a real-life application of what’s been learned can ensure trainees are in a good position to retain material following the course. 

How to enhance retention and knowledge transfer in eLearning courses

• The steps trainees take immediately following the completion of an online course are key. Encourage learners to think about how they’ll apply their new skills and knowledge throughout or ask them to create an action plan with next steps. 
• Ask participants to create their own artefacts related to the course. You might have an activity where they create a one-pager with key points or create a visual that would help others (and themselves) to remember the most important elements. 
• Remind learners of the journey they’ve been on and give them some guidance of what they might do next. If there’s a story at the heart of your training, you might use the end of your course to give that story a compelling ending or show how other learners have achieved great things following the course. 
• Links to further reading and interesting resources related to the course can encourage trainees to continue engaging with the material and go deeper. 
• Repeatable simulations which trainees can use to practice their skills are a great method of encouraging knowledge retention. You might allow participants to simply repeat previous practical simulations or include a more difficult version that encourages them to go further. How about creating a scored simulation where trainees in a cohort might be encouraged to achieve and share a high score?  

Next steps

Now we’ve explored these core instructional design principles, you might be wondering what’s next and how you might go about using these principles to design effective learning experiences.

Beyond these core principles, most instructional designers will use a tool such as the ADDIE model to effectively project manage the process of creating a completed learning experience.

It’s also worth acknowledging that alternative principles of instructional design are out there.

Some learning designers prefer David Merrill’s principles, which includes five principles: task-centered, activation, demonstration, application, and integration. The successive approximation model (SAM model) is also a popular method for creating a learning program.

I would recommend using these instructional design models to get a broader view of how you might progress from conducting a needs assessment to working with subject matter experts and sharing a completed course with participants. 

Whatever instructional design model you use, a storyboarding and learning design tool like SessionLab is a simple and effective way to go from an outline to a fully realized learning design while keeping these principles in mind.

You can invite your subject matter experts to collaborate on your design and attach materials to each learning block, ready for your content team to recreate in your LMS.

Want to learn more? Explore how learning designers at Vlerick Business School use SessionLab to design instructor led training and eLearning courses at scale. 

Working on a blended learning course? See how to apply instructional design principles in a blended environment with this in-depth guide to blended learning design.

Designing instructor led training? You might also find this step-by-step process for creating a training session plan helpful. You’ll find tips on creating engagement and realizing a live training session with the help of a detailed agenda.  

We hope that the above guide and these additional resources will help you take a systematic approach to learning design that also leaves space for your personal touch.

Did we miss anything or is there something we should explore further? Let us know in our community of facilitators and learning professionals!