Twelve tips for conducting effective workshops.

Workshops are a common educational format for transmitting information and promoting skill acquisition. However, they frequently fall short of their teaching potential. Many workshops do not seem like workshops at all. Participants are often quiet, passive onlookers; the workshop coordinator gives a ‘lecture’ to the group; and questions and discussion are frequently absent. A workshop has been defined as: . . . A usually brief, intensive educational program for a relatively small group of people in a given field that emphasizes participation in problem solving efforts.. . (Webster, 1977) And yet, it is the latter-active participation with an emphasis on problem solving -that is often lacking. Why is this? What can be done to make workshops more effective? Although numerous articles describe workshops as a common method of teaching adults, few offer specific directions on how to make this teaching format more productive. The goal of this article is to offer a number of suggestions which may help to make workshops more effective-and more fun. (These recommendations are summarized in Table I.)