Chapter 5: Facilitating Your Project Management Training

What ‚ s in This Chapter?

• How to define your role as a facilitator of project management learning

• Why facilitated project management training is more effective than other alternatives

• How collaborative learning supports and augments the project management training effort

• How facilitation can be effective in three different methods of project management training

• How to anticipate and manage problem situations and problem students

Now that you have largely determined the content and format of your first project management workshop offerings, it ‚ s time to start looking at what may be the single most important success factor for your training effort. A skilled facilitator needs to make the materials come alive so the participants can master the content and apply it once the workshops are over. Facilitation is much more than mere presentation of course materials. A facilitator leads workshop participants to a shared understanding of key concepts, helps each learner find relevance and applicability in the knowledge gained , and leaves each individual with a desire to continue learning and applying new knowledge. In this chapter, we ‚ ll see what makes for good facilitation, why facilitated training is preferable to most other alternatives, how participant interaction adds value to the training experience, how to facilitate online and in other nontraditional workshop settings, and how to handle sticky training situations that may crop up during the delivery of the workshops.