03/11/2019

Daily Buzz: Participant-driven Learning

Enhance participation to ensure attendees' learning experiences

Education is a main component of many meetings, but providing attendees with a true learning experience often relies heavily on participation.

“Learning is not something done to attendees. It is something they do,” said Dave Lutz on the Velvet Chainsaw blog. “Learner-centric conferences provide education sessions where attendees act as participants in their own learning. Participants construct meaning and sense-making as they hear and consider content. They grasp how and why the content is relevant to their work.”

On the flip side, speaker-centric meetings tend to focus more on emphasizing subject-matter experts and their knowledge. But that doesn’t mean participant-driven meetings shouldn’t lean on expert panels or sessions, either.

“In learner-centric conferences, organizers secure presenters and facilitators that focus on designing real-world learning experiences,” Lutz wrote. “They facilitate discovery-based, experiential and collaborative activities for participants to actively construct their own knowledge.”

As with finding the right speaker, meetings focused on learning should be planned with intention. So, look at different elements of your event. Do they prioritize education? If not, alter your meeting program so that it contributes to nurturing attendees’ educational pursuits—and gets them involved in the process.

Please select this link to read the original article from Associations Now.