Creating Safe Spaces in Programme Design Workshops

“All the information I got from the other departments is gold” – workshop attendee

In this post I’m going to explore the first stage of a five stage process that I use within a programme design workshop a lot of this work is based on Gilly Salmon’s ‘Carpe Diem’ approach. I’d encourage you to read my other article on the ‘3 Essential Principles of Programme Design‘ before you read this article to get a bit of background.

Today, I’m going to talk about creating a safe space for open discussion.

Purpose

Workshops are a space to explore the art of the possible and to critique current practice. People need to feel comfortable doing this, and feel secure in sharing their views so we can fully explore the programme to be designed.

PREPARATION

The first piece of advice is to be prepared.

You need to understand the processes and frameworks that underpin institutional validation (including projected timelines) and build your workshop practice around those limitations.

Use the processes and frameworks to inform who you want to invite to your workshop. As a Learning Design Manager who has been engaged to support a programme, I’d always include my team in the process. As an indication I’ve listed the other people that I have involved in programme design, this isn’t prescriptive nor exhaustive, you need to carefully consider your context and the power dynamics that may be at play in order to have productive conversations.

• Programme Team
• Students
• Department Head
• Quality Professionals
• Technologists
• SpLD/Learning Support Professionals
• Access and Participation/Inclusion Professionals
• Careers Professionals
• Study skills Professionals
• The Academy
• Library/Resourcing Professionals

I’m advocating for these particular people as they can help to remove barriers to validation, learning, and support the programme team in developing approaches that are inclusive and holistic. Remember that this is rooted in my context and I would encourage you to explore who your ‘barrier removers’ are.

Safe spaces

I want to move onto an interesting topic that has been much maligned in certain outlets, safe spaces. These aren’t a new phenomenon, Chatham House Rule, an example of a safe space in practice, has existed since the 1920’s to protect people’s identities when discussing contentious topics.

The nature of the programme design process is that we interrogate power dynamics and institutional structures. We need to create an environment where people feel comfortable having open conversations, to do this we need to acknowledge that there will be a state of discomfort first. I say discomfort, as it can be difficult to discuss these topics in front of colleagues such as heads of department and even more difficult for our students to speak up.

Creating a Safe Space

Creating a safe space can be tricky. I like to create a nice big circle of chairs so everyone can see each other. As people walk into the room they are asked to remove their work lanyard and put their given/chosen name on a sticker, they can also choose to add pronouns. At this point I try to avoid introductions, I want to try and create an equal footing as much as possible, titles like ‘Dr’ and ‘Prof’ can be intimidating for some people, as can the position of a person in the hierarchy of the institution.

To start the workshop the facilitator can introduce themselves and join the circle. I then always start with the purpose of the workshop, I’ve provided some illustrative words below. Note how I acknowledge the range of people and acknowledge that there are students in the room.

“Hello everyone, I’m really pleased that you’ve been able to join us for this workshop. Today we are going to be designing the new masters programme in Educational Design. We have a wide range of professionals in the room who want to help and support this programme, we also lucky have some students present who can provide us with some valuable insight.”

Next, I like to set some parameters for the discussions to follow, the key, for me, is to acknowledge that this wont be easy and the discussion may be uncomfortable at times. I do usually explain Chatham House Rule and emphasise that it applies to conversations held during the workshop. It’s difficult to police but we need that shared understanding before we can proceed to step 2 of the programme design process.

Your role

As facilitator, your role is to be open and honest. You need to fully participate in the exercises, encourage conversation, storytelling, model the behaviour you are expecting from everybody else. remember that it is a privilege for you to be there working with these people. Be attentive, use active listening techniques.

There may be requirement to coach colleagues in having constructive conversations, I’ve added some further reading around non-violent communication and provided some other resources that may help to establish the safe space better, I’ve used some of the techniques myself and highly recommend taking a look at some of the ideas presented. I’ll talk more about these approaches in the next blog where we explore the first workshop activity.

further reading

Digital Education Participatory Adult Learning Toolkit – this toolkit has some great exercises rooted in critical pedagogy that you can use with participants, part two of the toolkit, “Working With Stories”, is particularly of interest.

Equity Unbound – one of the best online resources to find activities that promote equity. If you want to create safe spaces a lot of these exercises can support getting to that stage. Just click on “Try an Activity” on the webpage.

Non-Violent Communication – sometimes it can be worthwhile to support colleagues in framing conversations, this links to a short article on Non-Violent communication that outlines the approach.

The second stage of this process is the Rich Picture stage, I’ll outline how I like to facilitate these sessions to support equity and participation.