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Course Description

Working professionals in a wide range of fields need to share information with and generate buy-in from young professionals in training, industry stakeholders, or the public more broadly. Effective workshop design is a skillset that benefits from practice and training, like any other. In this six-week online course using asynchronous modules on Moodle and synchronous Zoom meetings at the beginning and end of the course, we’ll learn a series of research-based principles for designing engaging and effective workshops and explore different ways to implement them in your own professional context.

By the end of the course, we will design and create the materials to deliver a workshop tailored to our unique professional contexts and expertise, enhanced by peer and instructor feedback given along the way.

Course Outline

• Zoom Session 1 (4/15, 6-7:30p ET): Overview of the course, meeting colleagues in similar fields, and setting our workshop objectives
• Module 1 (Week of 4/21): Evoking participants’ prior knowledge
• Module 2 (Week of 4/21): Helping participants organize ideas and information
• Module 3 (Week of 4/28): Understanding and enhancing participants’ motivation
• Module 4 (Week of 4/28): Creating meaningful practice opportunities
• Module 5 (Week of 5/5): Enhancing learning with feedback
• Module 6 (Week of 5/5): Putting it all together
• Zoom Session 2 (5/13, 6-7:30p ET): Workshop overview presentations and peer review

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, learners will be able to:

• Explain research-based principles for learning and a variety of ways to incorporate them into workshops.
• Select and apply a few of these principles to design an engaging and effective workshop on a topic of their choice.

Instructor Information

Dr. Kelsey Bitting
Assisstant Professor, Environmental Studies, Elon University

Dr. Kelsey Bitting holds a Ph.D. in in Geological Sciences from Rutgers University. Throughout her career, she has designed and facilitated over 100 workshops and other learning experiences, including science education workshops for kids, teaching techniques workshops for university faculty and teaching assistants, workshops on workshops for higher education staff and permaculture professionals, workshops on ecological landscaping and soil analysis for homeowners, and wellbeing workshops for students. After a decade-long career working in university teaching and learning centers, Dr. Bitting transitioned to her current role as Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at Elon University.