18. Modified World Café Discussion Model for Conference and Course Settings

Alice Cassidy,Joanne Fox

doi:10.22329/celt.v6i0.3767

Abstract

A group facilitation technique called World Café usually involves dividing a large number of people into smaller groups at tables, exploring a variety of topics around a key focus, and collecting ideas from the discussions to debrief later as a large group. We used a modified version of World Café during the new Cracker Barrel session format at the 2012 STLHE conference. Inviting conference participants to explore science through writing, we met our goal of interactivity and collected ideas from 33 people in spite of the challenges of time (a 15-minute session repeated three times for different groups) and space (11 participants around one table each time). The success of involving conference participants actively in this new conference format shows its value as a conference technique and also led us to consider its utility in the classroom or other settings.

Highlights

The organizers of the 2012 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference launched a new session format called Cracker Barrel Discussions: 15-minute sessions repeated three times for different groups
We describe the modified World Café model we used in our Cracker Barrel Discussion
In spite of challenges of space and time, rich discussion can take place in a conference session, and the cumulative contributions from participants we captured are a great set of key points as one outcome

Summary

Introduction

The organizers of the 2012 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference launched a new session format called Cracker Barrel Discussions: 15-minute sessions repeated three times for different groups. We achieved these two goals by using a modified World Café discussion model (Cassidy, 2012), capped with a one-page handout overview of the course (Appendix). We describe the modified World Café model we used in our Cracker Barrel Discussion.

Results

Conclusion