What can educators and facilitators learn from each other to benefit their practice? And where do the two crossover?

 These are wide-ranging questions and the kind that open up rabbit holes of complexity… but this is exactly why I wanted to explore them with Bjarne Holmes.

 Bjarne is a Professor of Psychology at Champlain College, a relationships expert, and a researcher for the remote video conferencing tool InSpace. His experience of both facilitation and education, with the added factor of developing a remote learning tool, made him the perfect person to explore this topic.

 Find out about:

•  Identifying the microcultures of each individual workshop and lesson
• The perils of overpreparing and how to balance our need for safety with the group’s need for self-determination
• The power in peer learning and handing participants and learners the reins
• Why experiential education should be our priority and why the lecture format is the fastest way to lose a room
• Exploring collective consciousness and group intelligence
• The merits of online, asynchronous learning (and its drawbacks)

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Questions and Answers

[01:13] When did you start calling yourself a facilitator – do you at all?

[03:48] Do you find yourself applying the same skills in teaching as you did in mountaineering?

[06:53] When participants are key to the success of a workshop, does that remove the concept of a ‘leader’?

[09:45] How did you get rid of your ego?

[10:49] How do you create learning experiences for your students?

[13:03] Why do people overprepare?

[18:25] How can educators challenge the default status of being on a pedestal and breaking the concept of ‘the person teaching and the people learning’?

[24:06] Is it the educator or the student’s responsibility if a student zones out?

[29:45] You mentioned that your classes take breaks every 20 minutes?

[30:51] Does the fact we talk about collaboration, rather than lecturing, show that our education system has developed recently?

[38:26] What have you learned from your research into relationships that helped you become a better educator and facilitator?

[42:13] What makes a workshop fail?

[43:06] Is it easier to facilitate experiential learning in an online environment?

[56:58] Do you think teachers are hesitant to adopt new tools because they don’t want to risk ‘not knowing’?

[01:02:41] Can we create digital tools that enhance learning experiences, rather than just replicate them?

[01:07:55] What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?

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