2.5: Facilitation Development

Facilitation Development

Facilitation Skills

As a facilitator, your role is to help the LAT or CAT accomplish efficient and meaningful work by guiding them through the learning process together. Facilitation is about developing a supportive structure and process that ensures everyone is heard and feels comfortable participating. Through our experience leading LAT and CAT meetings, we have leaned on several valuable facilitation skills:

• Being adaptable to the team’s needs. Team members often bring up on-going issues during the meetings, such as faculty concerns about change. These issues may not always be relevant to the planned meeting topic, but it’s important to remain flexible when certain needs arise. You will have to decide in the moment how much time you should devote to their issue during the meeting, or whether it’s something that is best addressed outside the meeting itself.
• Conflict management. Conflicts can arise during meetings for all kinds of reasons–disagreements between team members, skepticism about change, or maybe someone is just having a really bad day. As the facilitator, your role is to address hot moments when they happen and not let them derail the meeting. Remain calm, take a deep breath, then address the situation. Ask questions to try to figure out the meaning behind their words. Focus on the problem, and not the individuals. If necessary, follow-up with team members involved in the conflict after the meeting.
• Establishing community norms. Facilitators should establish community norms early to create the foundation for productive dialogue during meetings. This can be accomplished during the first LAT and CAT meetings by providing participants with a set of guidelines on a slide, asking participants if there are any guidelines they would like to add, then having the group collectively agree to uphold the final set of guidelines. As the facilitator, you are primarily responsible for addressing violations to established community norms, although collectively the group is also responsible.
• Keeping the discussion on track. Faculty are notorious for getting off topic. Oftentimes, these conversations can be unproductive. An important facilitation skill is being able to gently steer the conversation back to the agenda. Sometimes these conversations can be useful, however. We recommend remaining open to tangents that still serve the learning objectives for the session. We find it helpful to address tangents by acknowledging the team’s contributions directly, and then redirecting their attention back to the agenda.
• Monitoring participation. The dynamics for each team and cohort are different, but more than likely there will be some people who talk more and other people who talk less. This difference is more noticeable in larger teams. Not everyone will want to participate the same amount during a meeting, but it’s important to provide everyone with an equal opportunity to participate. We recommend continually observing the team’s dynamics and monitoring for inequitable participation by loosely keeping track of how much each person is participating. You may also consider using techniques to encourage broader participation, such as round-robin responses, small group discussions, and gently calling on those who haven’t spoken up in the meeting.
• Providing clear instructions. Most LAT/CAT meetings include structured activities and discussions. LAT/CAT participants will benefit from receiving clear instructions about what they should do during these activities. When introducing an activity, we typically will explain the purpose of the activity first, state how long we expect it will take, and then ask participants if they have any clarifying questions. These instructions will also be presented visually on slide.
• Time management. In the facilitation guides, you will find breakdowns of the expected time for each segment of the meetings. The times are based on our prior experience running the meetings, but are approximations at best. As the facilitator, your role is to adjust those agendas for your own purposes, monitor progress toward each part of the agenda during the meetings themselves, and adjust on-the-fly as needed. We encourage you to be flexible with time during group discussions and extend discussions as needed when they prove to be valuable.

Resources

If you would like to learn more about facilitation, explore the following resources:

• Axner, M. (n.d.). Developing facilitation skills. Community Tool Box. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/leadership/group-facilitation/facilitation-skills/main
• Parker, P. (2020). The art of gathering: How we meet and why it matters. Riverhead Books.
• Schmitz, P. (2018, Aug 29). Making meetings work. Collective Impact Forum. https://collectiveimpactforum.org/blog/making-meetings-work/
• Vogt, E. E., Brown, J., & Isaacs, D. (2003). The art of powerful questions: Catalyzing insight, innovation, and action. Whole Systems Associates. https://www.sparc.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/the-art-of-powerful-questions.pdf

We also recommend reviewing resources to expand your knowledge of teaching evaluation. During LAT/CAT meetings, DeLTA participants often ask questions that require us to draw on our expertise in effective teaching evaluation practices.

• DeLTA (2023). Engaging in teaching evaluation. University of Georgia. https://ctl.uga.edu/teaching-resources/feedback-and-evaluation-of-teaching/engaging-in-teaching-evaluation/
• Dennin, M., Schultz, Z. D., Feig, A., Finkelstein, N., Greenhoot, A. F., Hildreth, M., Leibovich, A. K., Martin, J. D., Moldwin, M. B., O’Dowd, D. K., Posey, L. A., Smith, T. L., & Miller, E. R. (2017). Aligning practice to policies: Changing the culture to recognize and reward teaching at research universities. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(4), es5. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-02-0032
• Dunbar, T. A., Brickman, P., & Hill, J. R. (2025). Triangulating teaching growth: A three-voice approach to evaluating and documenting your teaching. In K. deJonge-Kannan and T. N. Thurston (Eds.), Documenting teaching excellence: Promoting the university’s vital mission. UEN Digital Press. https://uen.pressbooks.pub/documentingteachingexcellence/chapter/triangulating-teaching-growth-a-three-voice-approach-to-evaluating-and-documenting-your-teaching-2/
• Krishnan, S., Gehrtz, J., Lemons, P. P., Dolan, E. L., Brickman, P., & Andrews, T. C. (2022). Guides to advance teaching evaluation (GATEs): A resource for STEM departments planning robust and equitable evaluation practices. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 21(3), ar42. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-08-0198
• TEval. (2019). Transforming higher education—Multidimensional evaluation of teaching. https://teval.net