Louisiana

In the Building Extension’s Public Value Presenter’s Guide, a small-group activity follows the presentation of the various ways a program creates public value. It is a brainstorming exercise, during which groups record as many ways as they can that their program satisfies any of the public value criteria, listed below.

How I handle reporting back at the end of this activity depends on time constraints. If I have plenty of time, I ask groups to report back any number of the ways their program meets any of the criteria. When time is tight, I ask them only to share their reactions to the activity, itself (what worked, what didn’t, what questions came up), noting that they will use all of their notes from the exercise later in the workshop.

I tried something different last week when I taught the workshop for LSU AgCenter in Baton Rouge, LA. Instead of asking each table to report, one by one, I went down the list of criteria. First, any group was welcome to share ways their program satisfied the information criterion, next any group could report how their program addressed fairness, etc. This approach takes a bit of time, but I think it might help to break up the workshop structure a little bit.

What do you think? Have you taught the BEPV workshop? Have you tried different ways of having groups report back? Were you at the LSU workshop? How do you think it worked there, aside from the fact that I gave confusing directions to start ?