The Closing Circle: Closing Remarks After a Workshop (Top Facilitation Tips)

How do You Deliver Good Closing Remarks After a Workshop?

Every speech or presentation has a goal and something the audience can learn from. The key message of your presentation will be forgotten and scattered just as fast if you don’t end it properly.

Your final opportunity to be creative and fill in any gaps will be in your closing remarks after a workshop has ended.

It is important to close an online workshop on time and provide a sense of closure for participants. This can be done by providing value or meaning, setting action plans, highlighting accomplishments, and concluding the workshop with a sense of completeness.

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While it may be overlooked, your closing can have some great benefits to your online workshop if it is done well. These are the benefits of having closing remarks after an online workshop:

• Providing space for reflection on lessons learned.
• Gain insight into others’ main takeaways.
• Facilitators get a feel of what has been beneficial to the group.
• You are aware that the day has come to an end.

In this article, we’ll go over some facilitation tips on how you can make compelling closing remarks after a workshop has finished!

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What Makes a Good Closing Remark

While closing a workshop may seem simple, there are a lot of factors to consider. For a closing to be effective, it needs to:

1. Communicate the Value of the Online Workshop to Students: Students can determine what is important to their daily activities 

2. Provide Meaningful and Relevant Content: It applies to students’ actual workplace situations.

3. Allow Students to Think About How They Can Apply This New Information Outside of the Online Workshop: It’s time to let students choose how and where to apply this new knowledge while also allowing them to record it.

4. Let Students Know How Far They Have Come: A beneficial learning trip has been taken by the learners, who have transformed as a result of their new knowledge.

5. Have a Sense of Completeness: No loose ends exist, and learners have all they require.

Different Activities and Closing Remarks After a Workshop Has Ended

Value For Me

1. Request that students take two minutes to write down what they valued most about the (current piece of) information and how they might apply it to their daily tasks.

2. Instruct students to team up with someone who they’ve never interacted with or do not interact as much with.

3. Request that students discuss with their companions what they learned and how they will put it to use.

4. Request that a few pairs present their thoughts to the entire group.

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Slogan

1. Divide students into 3-5 small groups

2. Ask students to list the lessons they just learned that would help them the most at their jobs. In each small group, ask the participants to express their ideas.

3. Request that students spend seven minutes coming up with a phrase that encapsulates the main points of all the group members.

4. Request that each team come up and declare their slogan aloud for the benefit of the entire group. 

Fill In the Blank

Inform the participants that they will be reflecting on their online workshop experiences as a group during this exercise. The facilitator will pose an unfinished question to a student, and the student will answer that question and then move to the next student until everyone has gone. Some questions you can use are: 

• My favorite lesson was 

• The part I liked the least was 

I enjoyed myself the most when:

• The task that was the hardest was

• I still have concerns about

1:4

1. Request that students create four columns on a piece of blank paper.

2. Request that students put the headings “Fact,” “Question,” “Aha!” and “Action” at the top of each column, respectively.

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3. Request that students consider the information they have just learned and in:

a. In column 1, list one knowledge gained that was previously unknown;

b. In column 2 (if they still have a query), they should write it;

c. In column 3, describe an “Aha!” moment, including one or more fresh ideas; and

d. In column 4, list the action(s) they plan to take in light of their recent discoveries.

4. Instruct students to work in groups of two or three and share the 1:4 sheets, adding any information they feel their companions may have missed.

Feeling Sounds

Each person in the group makes a sound that expresses how they are feeling right now. The group copies that sound. Then, the next person adds their sound. The group replicates that sound, as well as the sounds of the previous two people.

The goals of this exercise are to ultimately:

Encourage everyone to participate, give people a nonverbal channel to express their emotions, and enliven and conclude an activity.

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Note to Future Self

For a workshop-related topic or notion where participants need to demonstrate the progression of thought, ask participants to compose a letter to their “future selves” that reflects their current thinking. The steps are as follows:

1. Assemble the letters
2. Re-distribute the letters to the online workshop attendees at a later time.
3. Request that participants read their letters and consider how their perspectives have evolved.

One-Sentence Summary

1. Participants write a one-sentence summary of the discussion that includes the relevant who, what, when, where, why, and how.
2. You can either assign them to complete this work alone or in pairs.
3. Share the participants’ sentences with the group.

Harvesting

Ask participants to consider and record the following after engaging in an experience or activity in the online workshop:

• What they discovered.
• What to do next: how to put this knowledge to use.

What follows is a discussion of the significance of what they have learned and its consequences. Then, share the participants’ responses either with the entire group or in smaller groups.

Give One, Get One

1. On a piece of paper that has been folded in half, instruct participants to write “Give One” and “Get One,” respectively.
2. Ask them to write four key takeaways from today’s material on the “Give One” side.
3. Get people to get up and locate a companion. Everyone takes turns writing one suggestion on the “Get One” side of the paper and sharing one from the “Give One” side.
4. Encourage participants to keep looking for new partners to continue adding fresh ideas to their “Get One” side of the paper.

Conclusion

Writing closing remarks after a workshop has ended is crucial because, without one, your session will sound incomplete. To end on a positive note, facilitators must time their sessions and plan with an ideal conclusion.

Closing remarks can take many forms, but choosing the right one for the occasion and situation can significantly improve your session.

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