What Do We Know? A Room-Readiness Drill

An eight-minute practice for adult workplace-learning sessions. The full example, pair task, running order and facilitator notes are included here, so no purchase or extra case-writing is needed. Participants practise a bounded problem statement and a next evidence question; they do not diagnose a real organization.

Duration, group and difficulty

8 minutes after preparation. Suggested minimum and maximum: 8 minutes for the sequence below; allow a longer block if reading or access needs require it. The timing has not been tested with live participants.

4-24 adult participants, in pairs: an even total of 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 or 24. One facilitator, not counted in that total. English reading ability sufficient for the short example is assumed. Facilitation difficulty: low.

Materials and preparation

One sheet of paper and a pen per pair, a visible clock, and the four statements below, printed once per pair or displayed where everyone can read them. No paid materials, registration, slides, cut-out cards or additional case-writing are needed to run the activity offline.

Seat participants in pairs with a clear view of the statements. Copy the short task beneath the statements onto the same page or display. The facilitator reads the example response and notes below before starting.

Fictional example: four statements

A. Room log: Eight meetings were logged last week. Two entries were marked 'room not ready at booked start'.

B. Setup checklist: For one of those two meetings, the checklist was marked complete at 08:50. That meeting was booked for 09:00.

C. Review comment: 'The organizers ignored the instructions.'

D. Review comment: 'A mandatory reminder will prevent every future room-readiness problem.'

For this exercise, A and B accurately describe the supplied fictional records. They do not establish how reliable those records are, what 'ready' meant, or why either problem occurred. There is no additional evidence or hidden answer to reveal.

Pair task: identify what the records establish and what goes beyond them. Write one problem statement using the available evidence. Then write one specific question whose answer would help check an explanation. Do not invent an answer to that question.

Instructions and timing

0:00-1:00 - Frame the task. Say: 'We are examining claims, not judging the people in the story. A record can tell us what was written without proving the explanation inside a comment. Our output is a problem statement and a next evidence question, not a solution.'

1:00-2:00 - Read. Give participants one quiet minute to read A-D and the pair task.

2:00-4:00 - Compare claims. Pairs underline what they can point to in the supplied records and circle explanations or predictions that need more evidence. Ask them to discuss what B does and does not show. Do not ask every pair to report to the room.

4:00-5:00 - Rewrite. Each pair writes a problem statement of no more than two sentences. It should preserve the time window and counts, avoid assigning blame, and keep uncertainty visible.

5:00-6:00 - Choose the next check. Each pair writes one specific evidence question. Ask: 'What would you inspect or ask about, and how might the answer change your explanation?' This is a proposed check within the fiction; nobody collects real workplace data.

6:00-8:00 - Debrief. Invite no more than two pairs to share a statement and question, with 20 seconds per pair. Spend the next 40 seconds comparing their wording with the example below. Use the final 40 seconds for pairs to answer: 'Which word in our first explanation claimed more than we knew?' Keep any remaining pair reports within pairs, so the sequence stays bounded at 24 participants.

Example response and facilitator notes

Possible problem statement: 'Last week, two of eight logged meetings were marked room not ready at booked start. We do not yet know what was missing in those two entries or why one relevant checklist was already marked complete.'

Possible next question: 'For each of the two entries, what exactly was missing at the booked start, and where was that recorded?' This could distinguish different meanings of 'not ready' before assuming that the two entries have the same cause.

Another valid next check is to compare the booked setup requirements with the items on the 08:50 checklist for that one meeting. Do not supply an invented comparison result.

A and B support statements about the records, not a general claim that meetings started late. B does not prove that a checklist was dishonest, that the room stayed unchanged after 08:50, or that instructions were ignored. C is an explanation and D is a prediction whose contents are not established by A and B. If a participant calls C a recorded comment, accept that distinction: the existence of a comment does not establish that its allegation is true.

Accept different concise problem statements and useful evidence questions. Do not award a 'correct root cause', select a remedy, or treat a mandatory reminder as justified by the supplied information. If pairs struggle, offer the stem 'The records show ...; they do not yet show ...'.

For accessibility, provide readable print or a spoken reading of the same text. If this needs extra time, extend the block explicitly instead of promising an unchanged eight-minute duration. Keep discussion in the fictional setting rather than requesting personal or confidential examples.

Participant response space (copy with the fictional example)

Problem statement:

Next evidence question:

Reflection: Which word in our first explanation claimed more than we knew?

Use only the fictional information. Do not include employer, customer or learner data.

This fictional example and wording were created for this resource with AI assistance. They are not copied from a commercial case or from another library method. Separating observations from interpretations is a general practice; no invention of a new facilitation framework is claimed. The draft has received an internal desk review only. Live timing, trainer usability and learning outcomes remain untested.

Training Module Lab creates English-language exercises for adult workplace learning. These small activities are designed to be useful on their own and adaptable by facilitators. We distinguish fictional practice from evidence of learning results, and disclose AI assistance where used.

What Do We Know? A Room-Readiness Drill — Training Module Lab. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ . Created with AI assistance. Adaptations should identify their changes and retain the licence and attribution.

This licence applies to this free method and its included participant text. It does not apply to the separate paid trainer pack.

Optional separate 30-minute trainer pack (paid): https://trainingmodule.booth.pm/items/9017113

No purchase is required to run this method.