WLD Guide to Facilitating_UMass Amherst 1 | Page 7

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Tips on how to bring each element of the cycle into your workshop plan:
Experience: This element often takes the most time,
and is crucial for learning. Sometimes it’ll be
possible to actually do it for real, e.g. making a bike
trailer or climbing a tree. At other times you’ll need
to create conditions as close as possible to the real
deal, for example through using roleplay.

Reflection provides an opportunity for participants
to think about what they did and what the effects
were. This can be done through building on
experiences from the workshop or real life. This
might be as simple as checking whether they’ve tied
their knot right, exploring how they felt in a role play
or considering how they interact with authority
figures in their own lives. Make time for a debrief
after any roleplay or practical activity and work out
in advance what questions would be useful to ask.

Generalization: Generalizing turns our reflections on
a specific situation into abstract understanding that
can be applied to other contexts. Often this will be
integrated into the reflection process. Whenever we
think about an experience we automatically start
formulating rules or generating ideas for how we
might do it next time.