Developing Across Differences: A-ha! Activities

About

As team leaders, educators, and facilitators, it can be hard to break through the many demands on our audiences’ attention to engage them meaningfully around sensitive topics. This is especially true when working with groups with a wide array of interests and backgrounds.

Jolts are small yet powerful, unexpected, and often delightful learning experiences that, when used strategically, can help you do this.

Attend to help your audiences challenge assumptions, prompt deep reflection and discussion about difficult topics, provoke new insights, and, ultimately, better work together across diversity.

Emphasis is on activities that can be facilitated with diverse groups, i.e. varying contexts, experience-levels, topics, dynamics, and sizes.

Why Attend?
By engaging audiences in highly engaging ways, these highly flexible, resource-friendly activities are a gateway to deeper learning and development. They can spark new insights and motivate stakeholders to want to learn more.

In the context of appreciating differences, use them to broach topics around diversity, intercultural and cross-cultural communication, perspective-taking, recognizing and managing bias, influencing team / group dynamics, adapting behaviors, and more.

Course leader

Prof. Annette Gisevius

Target group

Level requirements
The DAD is for multipliers who help individuals, organizations and societies better recognize, appreciate and use differences as a way of better communicating, working and thriving together.

These are (in-house and external) trainers, educators, consultants, coaches, researchers, scholars, facilitators, HR staff, advanced-level (MA+) students, and professional development specialists with 5+ years of experience/study in the greater Differences field. Contact the organisers at ic@rug.nl or info@iddifferences.org for consultation about appropriateness and eligibility.

It is expected that the participants have a sufficient command of the English language to actively participate in the discussions and to present their own work in English.

Participant profile
This course is for you if are a consultant/trainer/multiplier/educator who:

- Seeking innovative ways of learning / experiencing to promote perspective shifting — especially around sensitive topics,
- Leading diverse teams and want to incorporate creative, highly engaging activities that support team growth and cohesion,
- Providing coaching, training, or on-the-job professional development to help groups better collaborate and communicate.
- You should already have at least a preliminary understanding of and experience with —either through your own work or participation in ‘training for trainers’ type programs— team-building, training and (adult) learning best practices.\

Contact the organisers at ic@rug.nl or info@iddifferences.org if you have questions about the suitability of this course for your circumstances.

Course aim

In this course, you will learn how to help yourself—and those you work with—so that you/they can better:
- Better understand how short, engaging learning activities (jolts) work both pedagogically and in everyday practice,
- Appropriately select and facilitate jolts to create powerful a-ha! moments to inspire reflection and discussion and motivate additional learning,
- Adapt these activities to suit different contexts, topics, group dynamics, group sizes, etc.,
- Facilitate effective debriefings that maximize learning and help achieve desired outcomes.

Workload
6 hours of in-class learning and active participation using experiential methods.

Upon successful completion of the programme, the Summer School offers a Certificate of Attendance that mentions the workload of 6 hours (28 hours corresponds to 1 ECTS). Students can apply for recognition of these credits to the relevant authorities in their home institutions, therefore the final decision on awarding credits is at the discretion of their home institutions. We will be happy to provide any necessary information that might be requested in addition to the certificate of attendance.

Fee info