Guidelines for Planners and Facilitators


These guidelines are based on our experiences facilitating case study workshops at Penn State. Our bank of cases is a starting point for inviting faculty to consider how they would respond to student questions, conflicts, and concerns that could arise in any classroom about how individuals or groups define themselves; and how to create a more inclusive teaching environment. Our hope is to make it easy for you to facilitate workshops based on these materials. If you find that key issues you need to discuss are not raised by the cases provided, please consider writing additional cases and submitting them to site@psu.edu to be added to our case bank. See Guidelines for Writing Cases for more information.


Finding Good Workshop Facilitators

We recommend that you tap as facilitators one or more instructors in your academic unit who have experience with inclusive teaching strategies, e.g., discussion teaching that invites and seeks to validate the experiences of all students. It is not essential that facilitators have experience teaching courses that meet the United States Cultures (US) or International Cultures (IL) general education requirements. We can help academic units adapt these resources, train new facilitators, or locate experienced facilitators. Contact us at site@psu.edu or call (814) 863-2599 if you need assistance.


Recommended Room Set-Up and Time Allotment for Workshops

The case studies have been used most successfully in settings where three or more round table groups of six to eight participants each can discuss cases in detail and, afterwards, share their insights and questions with the larger group.

You will need fifteen to thirty minutes for preparing participants to discuss the cases, twenty minutes per case for round table discussions, and ten to twenty minutes per case for large group Q/A and facilitator conclusions. We also recommend that you conduct a 5-minute program assessment afterward. For example, in a 90-minute workshop, you could not realistically expect to discuss more than two cases thoroughly, no more than three in a 2-hour workshop.


Typical Workshop Outline

  1. Overview of workshop goals
  2. Participant introductions (if needed)
  3. Review of Penn State policies AD42 and HR64
  4. Review of ground rules for case study discussions
  5. Brief overview of related identity/intellectual development theories as applied to college students
  6. Round table discussions of case(s)
  7. Small groups share insights/questions about case(s)
  8. Facilitator wrap-up
  9. Program feedback questionnaire

Tips for Facilitators

  • Plan all material efficiently, with necessary handouts for participants’ subsequent review, so that you can get to the case or cases no later than thirty minutes into the workshop.
  • If you are not well-read in identity development theory and/or intellectual development theory, simply provide a layman’s overview, include an article or two in the workshop packet, and refer participants to the bibliography provided with these on-line resources. Do not claim to be an expert, and do not try to answer questions about which you are uninformed.
  • Let participants self-select their groups. In other words, it’s generally best not to assign seating, if the room is set up for tables of six to eight. It is a good idea to designate a discussion facilitator for each table. That person’s job might simply be to make sure everyone at his/her table gets an opportunity to share (or pass) at least once before anyone can share a second time. This can be added to the ground rules, if desired.
  • Remember that the purpose of any good case discussion is NOT to agree on a best possible course of action, even within a small group. Rather, the purpose is to seek some agreement on what kinds of outcomes would be considered favorable and then sketch out several courses of action that might reasonably be expected to achieve those outcomes. Diverse participants will need to have a range of good solutions from which to choose.
  • If a group is confident they’ve cornered the best solution, their solution should be subjected to a fairly rigorous evaluation, if time permits. Try to get other groups to conduct this evaluation, playing devil’s advocate only as needed to advance the dialogue.
  • If a group cannot agree on what outcome(s) would be favorable, invite them to share where they are getting stuck. Discourage them from passing up a "teachable moment" simply to avoid conflict.
  • Allow sufficient time for summarizing the areas of consensus or near consensus and the areas of greatest disagreement.
  • Do not rely too heavily on informal feedback when deciding what, if any, related programs to offer in future. Remember that you will only ever hear from a certain kind of participant. The larger your group, the more important that you collect some kind of written feedback prior to the conclusion of your program.