The Closing Circle: Debrief Tactics for Course Creators & Online Workshops
Debriefing is a facilitator skill that is crucial to learning. It ensures that concepts stick and that learners take away the most important ideas from your lectures.
When done correctly, your learners can advance quickly and efficiently through your courses and maximize their potential.
What does debriefing mean?
After a session, participants review the topics covered in the session and learn from them through a debriefing. Lessons are learned, and extra information is given to make future sessions more effective.
For more information, visit The Closing Circle: Closing Remarks After a Workshop (Top Facilitation Tips)
Debriefing is an essential part of learning, and it helps to ensure that the activity events are still fresh in everyone’s minds. The purpose of debriefing is to:
- Reflect on what happened during the activity
- Identify gaps in knowledge
- Develop personal awareness and insight
This allows participants to be aware of their own learning goals to continue improving their skills.
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What to expect from debriefing?
You can expect the following from debriefing:
- Enhanced by facilitating recall and insights
- Clarifying learning points
- Increased self-confidence
- Building community trust and relationships
By promoting a positive behavior change, educators can help students retain information more effectively.
Learn more about learner expectations with Learner Expectations for Online Courses (and How to Surpass Them)
Peer Review
A common way of debriefing in an in-person classroom is the ball-toss, where the trainer tosses the ball to a person and asks them to share what they thought were the most critical learnings from the session. They then pass the ball around, with each person explaining what they believe are the most important takeaways. We can model this online by tossing it around in a live session. After everyone has spoken, ask the remaining students to respond to the following questions:
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- What were some of the key concepts covered in this class?
- How well did you understand these concepts? Did any parts confound or confuse you? Why or why not?
- Do your questions overlap with those posed by other participants in this room, either before or after taking my course online/in person/etc.?Â
- If so, how might that be related to your understanding and engagement with these concepts overall?
Summarize Key learning points
After concluding a debriefing session, it is crucial to explicitly summarize the lessons learned and consider how these can be incorporated into future practices. Additionally, ask questions to reinforce learning points:
- What did you do well?
- What did you find difficult and why?
Finally, you can ask participants to comment on how they believe they can improve on these points.
No monthly fees. Join hundreds of talented facilitators.
What is Klatch?
Klatch is a first-of-its-kind all-in-one social learning platform for live, hands-on, virtual workshops across every topic – from hobbies to professional development. Say goodbye to pre-recorded lectures and passive webinars; say hello to real-time, group-based learning. The Klatch platform enables experts to launch a workshop in minutes and provides the tools to unify their communities, grow their audience, and monetize their expertise. Apply to join the Klatch Facilitator community here or browse featured workshops here.
