Pre-Workshop Activities

1. In order to get participants prepared to engage in active learning as quickly as possible during face-to-face workshop time, it is important to get them up to speed and oriented by providing them with pre-workshop videos or other materials so that they can learn the basics about the technology or skill they will learn before they arrive at the workshop. If you are creating a new workshop or workshop activity, it is very likely that you’ll be able to find most of these materials freely available online, but you may need to create some pre-workshop materials if you cannot find anything suitable to link to on YouTube or on the wider internet.
2. Refer back to the SMART learning outcomes for the workshop and review all the learning outcomes that you will not cover in the in-class activities so that hopefully you can cover them off in pre-workshop videos and/or readings. Keep in mind that:
   • Pre-workshop videos or readings reduce the amount of lecture time required in the face-to-face portion of the workshop.
   • The instructional differentiation pre-class videos and readings provide is particularly helpful when workshop participants bring with them different levels of knowledge and experience. Those with more experience can skim through the videos, while those with less experience can watch the videos more than once. In the case of students with comprehension issues, they can turn on closed-captioning and watch the video multiple times if desired (McCue, 2016).

Good job! Time to move on to teaching tips.

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