Workshop Design

Design workshop learning experiences for lasting growth and transformation.

The best workshops are impactful learning experiences. The best facilitators, whether they realize it or not, use learning experience design principles to create lasting transformation. In this workshop, we’ll introduce the foundational learning science and learning experience design principles that you can apply in your facilitation to maximize participant potential.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a trainer, these techniques will improve engagement, retention, and participant commitment during and after your workshop. If you value true adoption and continued growth, this workshop is for you.

Date

April 20-21, 2021

Time

11am - 3pm CDT​

Location

Live Online

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What to expect

What to Expect

How do you keep all participants engaged, drive key learning objectives, and facilitate lasting change. Learning experience design principles are not all intuitive, which leads to misconceptions and myths. It takes a pro-level toolkit and mindset to unearth potential and maintain results. In this workshop, you will learn and practice the principals and tools to make change stick.

What You'll Learn

We will coach you on methods to engage more participants and facilitate lasting growth. You'll obtain vocabulary and concepts to provide more meaning to things you already do, understand the learning experience design principles behind what works, and open your mind to new and more advanced approaches. Differentiate your facilitation practice by building your learning experience design skills.

How You'll Learn

The class will be activity-based with facilitation simulations and collaborative sessions. You’ll recognize, practice, and design your workshops based on key learning experience design principles. We won’t just talk at you — you’ll learn through doing, work with other participants, and get feedback. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, so you can learn in real-time from a learning design Ph.D. and a master facilitator with tons of experience running hundreds of workshops at some of the world’s largest institutions and enterprises.

Agenda

Deep Work Session 1

Debunking learning myths and identifying your facilitation purpose

Deep Work Session 2

Exploring learning design principals and designing for your learners

Deep Work Session 3

Redesigning your workshop for optimal learning

Deep Work Session 4

Reflecting forward for lasting growth and transformation

Who Should Attend

Facilitators

who want to their message and methods to stick with participants

Trainers

who want to build engaging and impactful learning for staff and clients

Project Managers

who want to create enduring value alongside their teams

Executives

who want to sustain organizational learning

Key Takeaways

Recognize key learning experience design principles for impactful facilitation

Facilitate workshops using key learning experience design principles

Build community with other facilitators

Practice applying learning insights as a facilitator

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Erik Skogsberg

Erik helps people design lasting growth and transformation. He brings fifteen years of teaching, design, professional learning and development, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), organizational change, and research experiences from across secondary education, higher education, and industry contexts. Whether working with individuals, teams, or organizations, Erik believes that a deep empathy and caring, rooted in human-centered design, systems thinking, and futures thinking best supports clients in finding their solutions.

As Associate Director and Head of Design at the MSU Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology, Erik guides the Hub’s design strategy and design operations, supports Hub project teams as they execute the project portfolio, and helps to infuse design and design thinking across strategic planning for MSU. He has facilitated a variety of courses and workshops focused on designing learning experiences, teaching and facilitation, innovation, design, and organizational change. He earned his B.A. in English Literature from Western Washington University, M.A.T. in Secondary English Education from Brown University, and Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education.

Douglas Ferguson

Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 20 years of experience. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based facilitation agency that specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques. He has helped transform teams from U.S. SOCOM, the Air Force, Adobe, Dropbox, Fidelity, Vrbo, Liberty Mutual, Humana, and SAIC.

Douglas is a thought leader and master facilitator of Design Sprints, Innovation Acceleration, Team Alignment, Meeting Systems, Culture Transitions, and Change Transformations. He is also the author of three books: Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything (co-authored), and Start Within (co-authored).

Motivated by a mission to rid the world of horrible meetings and offer meaningful meetings in their place, Voltage Control is calling upon fellow facilitators to transform meeting and innovation culture. From free weekly community meetups to Control the Room–the annual facilitator summit, Voltage Control is building a community of facilitators to change the world.
What People Are Saying

"If you want to make your message stick, work with Erik. Erik helped me and my co-author develop an online course for our book "Make Time" and coached us on teaching workshops for our other book, "Sprint". Erik's mastery of the latest education research, his ability to quickly synthesize what we were trying to accomplish, and clear, actionable advice were priceless. If you're considering developing a new talk, workshop, training, or online course, Erik will help you get from a fuzzy idea to a crisp and effective plan. Highly recommended."

Jake Knapp

C0-AUTHOR OF NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER SPRINT AND MAKE TIME

"Jake Knapp and I worked with Erik to design the curriculum and learning experience for a new online course. From the first moments of our conversation, I knew Erik was going to make a huge contribution to the project. He bridges education, experience, and behavioral design in a way that is incredibly rare and tremendously valuable. Plus, he's got a super casual facilitation style that makes it easy to jump in and start making progress. During the all-day workshop that Erik facilitated, we moved effortlessly through the design process and ended up with a great structure and plan for our course. Jake and I are both experienced facilitators, and it was a joy to experience and benefit from Erik's facilitation skills! Jake and I are already thinking of new reasons to work with Erik."

John Zeratsky

C0-AUTHOR OF NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER SPRINT AND MAKE TIME

Apply for a Diversity Scholarship

A key part of our mission is to support diverse facilitators from different methodologies, backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, cultures, and ages. If you are a part of, or serve, a traditionally underrepresented group and feel that this scholarship would allow you to amplify this mission, please apply now.

Photo Disclaimer

Please note that photographs, video & audio recordings will be taken throughout this event. These will be used by Voltage Control for marketing and publicity in our publications, on our website and in social media, or in any third-party publication. Please contact us via email if you have any concerns or if you wish to be exempted from this activity.​

The Books

Bring Your Ideas to Life

Innovation can seem complex or reserved for the exceptional. But we believe innovation is for everyone. We’ve set out to illuminate a path for you to generate bold ideas, visualize and share them, overcome obstacles, and turn them into reality. Our books are equal parts guidebook and stories from years of experience helping companies adopt an innovation mindset and culture. They’re practical & actionable, so you can get started now. We hope they’ll help you on your journey to realizing your biggest, boldest ideas.

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