WORKING TOGETHER
Bring the World Café to your institution.
I use the World Café to create conversations that help us understand what students are experiencing and what might make things better.
I can bring that approach to your institution by working directly with students around a question you want to explore, by running a learning and teaching development session with colleagues, or by doing a bit of both – listening to students first and then using what emerges as the starting point for a conversation with staff, or with students and staff together.
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
What would be useful for you?
Student voice
Listen to students differently.
EXPLORE A STUDENT CAFÉ →
Staff development
Explore the approach with colleagues.
EXPLORE A STAFF SESSION →
A BIT OF BOTH
Bring different perspectives together.
We can start with a World Café where students explore an issue, then bring what emerges into a session with colleagues – including the opportunity for staff to explore the same questions from their perspective.
EXPLORE A BIT OF BOTH →
WITH STUDENTS
Start with a question. Then listen.
A World Café works best when there is something you genuinely want to understand about your students’ experience.
We would start by talking about the question or challenge you want to explore. I would then work with you to shape the prompt questions, facilitate the World Café with your students and create the conditions for them to talk openly, build on one another’s ideas and begin thinking about possible responses.
The conversation belongs to the students. My role is to provide enough structure to help it develop without deciding in advance what they are going to tell us.
At the end, we harvest what has emerged together. Depending on what you want from the session, we can also talk afterwards about the themes, questions and possibilities that have surfaced and what might usefully happen next.
SHAPE
What do you genuinely want to understand?
CREATE
Give students space to explore it together.
HARVEST
Listen for themes, possibilities and better questions.
TALK TO ME ABOUT A STUDENT WORLD CAFÉ →
WITH STAFF
Explore the method. Make it your own.
A learning and teaching development session can introduce colleagues to the World Café while also giving them an opportunity to experience some of the thinking behind it.
I can share how I have adapted the approach for legal education, what I have learned from using it with students and some of the things that have surprised me along the way.
But I would not want the session simply to be a presentation about my practice. We can use the time to explore questions that matter in your own institution: where student voice is difficult to hear, how students might become partners in solving problems and where a conversational approach could open up new possibilities.
The aim is not to reproduce my version of the World Café. It is to help colleagues think about what the approach might make possible in their own context.
EXPERIENCE
See what makes the conversation different.
EXPLORE
Draw on examples from real work with students.
ADAPT
Think about where it could be useful in your own context.
TALK TO ME ABOUT A STAFF SESSION →
A BIT OF BOTH
Start with students. Then bring perspectives together.
A combined day lets us explore the same issue from different perspectives.
We might begin with a World Café where students talk about their experience and identify what matters to them. What emerges can then shape what happens next.
Later, I can work with staff to explore the same questions from their perspective. Or we can bring students and colleagues together in a further World Café, using what we have already learned as the starting point for a shared conversation about what might change.
The aim is not simply to compare what students and staff think. It is to create the conditions for different perspectives to inform one another and, where it is useful, to begin co-creating possible responses.
LISTEN
Hear what students are experiencing.
COMBINE
Share perspectives across students and staff.
EXPLORE
Explore what might change together.
TALK TO ME ABOUT DOING A BIT OF BOTH →
START THE CONVERSATION
What might we explore together?
If you have an idea, a question or simply want to find out whether the World Café might be useful in your context, tell me a little about it.
If you would like to talk about a World Café with students, a learning and teaching session with colleagues, or a bit of both, I’d be very happy to hear from you.
TELL ME SOME MORE
You don’t need to have everything worked out. A few details are enough to start the conversation.