Individual work with showcasing

• Begin by demonstrating a fluent, correct solution, or otherwise reminding people what good looks like.
• Everyone in the group works on the same task individually, in parallel, for a fixed time.
• Ask people to share their results with the whole group - eg everyone voluntarily reports their score or shares their work in an online document.
• Celebrate success and encourage people with praise. The facilitator can pick one person’s work to showcase. Give feedback on what consequences this design/code/idea would have in different situations.

Usually you repeat this activity several times in a session - 2 minute intro, 5-10 minutes everyone creates something, 5-10 minutes showcasing, repeat 3-5 times. Each activity can build on the previous one, so you improve competency at the same skill, or you can cover several unrelated topics.

Benefits and Pitfalls

• Most people are actively doing something most of the time, which is more fun than watching.
• Frequent feedback and encouragement makes people more likely to want to improve and to remember the skill.
• The facilitator can steer the group towards better solutions during the showcasing part.
• This is a good way to gain fluency with applying a technique, since there is so much hands-on time for each person.
• If the individual work goes on for more than about 10 minutes people may get bored or off-track.
• If individuals don’t have any competency or understanding of the technique beforehand, they may get stuck or confused and not produce anything useful during their individual work.