Design and Run Your Own KNoT

Everyone knows something worth teaching. This KNoT asks you to pick one thing, design a session around it, and then run it with real people.

It is not tied to a date. The session can be anywhere you can gather a room full of people — a club, a residence, a workplace, a study group. If you would rather run it inside a SoCIETIE class, start with a conversation with the Course Convenor.

The preparation is the plan, and the plan is most of the work.

Write a 'Secret Plan' before you run anything — a page or two, naming:

• the take-home message, in one sentence: what should people leave knowing
• one goal that is specific, achievable and positive — "everyone speaks at least once" is a good one
• the run sheet: activities, timings, and who does what if there are two of you
• what you will cut if you are running long, and what you will stretch if you are running short

The session will run better if you run it as a co-facilitation with a partner (who doesn't need to be in the course).

Facilitating is not presenting. A presentation works if you are clear. A session works if the people in the room do something, and leave holding something they did not walk in with. That is a different skill, and almost nobody is taught how to do it.

You will practise the whole arc: narrowing a topic until it fits the time you have, designing an activity that makes people engage, reading a room that is moving faster or slower than you planned, and judging afterwards what actually worked.

What you'll do

• Pick one idea you know well enough to be questioned about
• Write a Secret Plan — the take-home message, the activities, the timings, and who does what
• Run the session with real people
• Evaluate yourself against what you planned, honestly

• VCUG3001 Learning Guide (archived) — a good resource for Facilitation, and where the term Secret Plan (thank you Prof Richard Baker) comes from. Pages 6 and 7 set out what one contains, and what makes a session awesome rather than awful.
• KNoTs Explained — what a KNoT is and what makes one creditable.
• Any three KNoT pages in this catalogue, read as examples rather than as offerings. The structure you see there is the structure a proposal needs.

Two things reliably go wrong. Almost every first session is planned for twice the content that fits, so when in doubt, halve it. And the silence after you ask a question is much shorter than it feels — count to five before you rescue it.

If it works, it does not have to stop there. A good session is the raw material of a KNoT: the reusable definition of a learning activity, which is what every page in this catalogue is. Write it up in your Course Pathway Plan and confirm it with the Course Convenor — that conversation is how a session becomes a KNoT other students can take.

Feel free to talk to the Course Convenor or any other facilitator you know - they would be privileged to work with you on developing your craft.

Submit two things.

1. Your Secret Plan — the version you wrote beforehand, not a tidied-up one.

2. A 300–500 word self-evaluation covering:

• Where you ran off the plan, and where you ran off the cuff. The first is facilitation. The second is improvisation, and you should be able to tell them apart.
• One moment the room did something you did not expect, and what you did about it.
• What you would cut if you ran it again.
• A great picture of you or the room in action

Run it with real people. A tutorial, a club meeting, a team at work, through school outreach or a study group.