Debriefing Workshop Activities

A simple but effective closing activity that could lead to identify the learning point or outcomes for participants and measure the change in their behavior, mindset or opinion regarding the subject.

Any breakout group activity to capture ideas and generate dialogue around them.

You might be familiar with Thirty-Five as a structured-sharing activity. Thirty-Five can also be used as an effective debriefing game.

In this version, participants reflect on an earlier experience and identify important lessons they learned. They write one of these lessons as a brief item. The winner in this activity is not the best player, but the best lesson learned.

This activity begins with reflection, proceeds through nonverbal communication, and ends in a discussion. You can use ARTFUL CLOSER to debrief participants after an experiential activity. You may also use it as the final activity at the end of a workshop. You may even use it as an opening ice-breaker by asking participants to think about common personal experiences. For example, I began a recent session on presentation skills by asking participants to process their experiences with the most inspiring speech they had ever heard.

It can be hard to involve everyone during a closing of a session. Some might stay in the background or get unheard because of louder participants. However, with the use of Response Cards, everyone will be involved in providing feedback or clarify questions at the end of a session.

Here's a closer that encourages participants to recall what happened in the session and to come up with second thoughts about how they could have benefited more. It also creates useful materials for an interesting icebreaker.

This is a practical training module to teach how to brief and debrief an exercise.

There is a strong 'meta' aspect in this session: you have a real experiential exercise during the session, and you will narrow down on the experience of how the briefing and the debriefing were done by the trainers.

This way participants will have the chance to first take part in a debriefing as participants, and then analyse the experience they just had.

Encourage team reflection in a fun and expressive way!

Asking listeners to summarize your presentation from time to time is a good technique for encouraging people to listen carefully, take notes, and to review the content. Best Summaries uses this basic concept.