Content Processing ActivitiesThis is a featured page

Content Processing Activities (CPAs) are interactive strategies that you can use to process content without relying too much on frontal lectures and visual aids. Lecturing participants provides the trainer and the learners with consistenty and efficiency. Yet, it is frequently conducive to boredom, it lacks two-way communication and participants are not involved. Participants learn the content and apply it easier when they can interact with it. These templates will allow you to process the content through participative and experiential activities. Each of these templates can be used with different contents.


Build the Content This activity helps participants to explore the content through stories and examples. Instead of preparing a theoretical lecture you prepare and tell a story that illustrates them (in whatever format you think appropriate). Sub-groups work to extract meaning from your story, trying to shift from “what actually happened” to “what tends to happen”.
Exploring the Content You break down the content to introduce in small chunks that provide for short 5-minute lectures. Sub-groups reflect on your lectures and develop questions; choosing then the most relevant ones. Then you use the sub-groups’ questions to deepen investigation of the content with participants.
For Example After your presentation, participants in sub-groups share experiences related to the topics introduced and generate stories/examples to share with the plenary. You use their stories/examples to boost discussion and exploration of the topics treated.
Groups Teach You divide the content to introduce in chunks and divide the plenary into as many sub-groups a the chunks of content. Each group works on a chunk of the content. Then, participants form new groups composed with one participant from each of the previous groups. Each participants in the newly formed groups shares what she has learned of the specific chunk of content she knows. The groups’ task it to re-integrate all chunks so that they make sense together and then develop a story/example illustrating the whole content.
Homework You develop clusters of questions on the contents you wish to introduce during the workshop. Before the workshop, you get in touch with participants, send them your questions and ask them to research in order to develop answers to your questions. During the workshop, participants who have worked on the same clusters of questions gather in small groups. They share their research and develop a presentation on the topic.
Leading Questions Instead of lecturing the content, you prepare a list of questions on and around it. The exploration of the content with participants starts with your questions.
Let Them Present It Before the workshop you prepare copies of one or more handouts with the contents you wish to introduce during the workshop. You get in touch with participants, send them the handouts and ask them to prepare to present it. During the workshop, volunteers deliver presentations to the plenary.
Make It Shorter You introduce the content through a lecture. Then you ask groups to generate a summary of your presentation with maximum 99 words. Then participants choose the best summary and the authors present it to the plenary.
Put It Together You break the content down into small pieces. Through a procedure that involves group work, participants’ task is to re-connect the pieces into a whole, so that the content makes sense.
Q&As You prepare a handout with the content you plan to introduce during the workshop. You divide the plenary in two teams, one has to formulate questions on the content in the handout, and the other has to answer. You can play this CPA as a quiz show.
Questions After your presentation triads brainstorm questions and choose the most relevant. Then each triad couples with another triad and they exchange Q&As.
Study Groups Before the workshop you prepare handouts with the contents you plan to introduce. You get in touch with participants and send them the handouts, together with a short guideline for homework. During the workshop, sub-groups choose the most important questions, comments and critiques related to the content in the handouts. You boost plenary discussion using these questions, comments and critiques.
Taking Positions This CPA works well with controversial content, when you can assign different groups of participants to support potentially opposite positions. By generating controversy and taking position, participants deepen their understanding of the content processed.
They Ask Before You Tell You pack the content into a very, very short but inclusive introduction, no more than 2-3 minutes. Then, through a procedure, participants develop questions related to your introduction that they would like to see answered during the workshop. After choosing the most relevant questions, you use them to guide discussion through the rest of the workshop.



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