The Dialogue Facilitation Lab is a professional learning seminar for teaching and professional faculty, staff and graduate assistants looking to integrate critical dialogue facilitation skills into their daily practice.

For winter term 2021, the Office of Institutional Diversity continues the Dialogue Facilitation Lab in an online format.

Each cohort consists of 12-16 participants that include perspectives from diverse roles and disciplines.

The program consists of an intensive, asynchronous orientation followed by weekly 90-minute sessions all taking place online.

Application

Applications for winter term 2021 are closed.

Program Structure

The Dialogue Facilitation Lab consists of the following elements:

  • An intensive, virtual orientation will take place on Thursday, December 10, 2020 from 3 – 4:30 pm.
  • Weekly 90-minute sessions for ten weeks (15 hours total) during winter term 2020. 
  • Winter DFL 2021 will take place on Wednesdays from 3 – 4:30 pm starting on January 6, 2021.

In weekly meetings, participants will have the opportunity to practice utilizing the techniques of critical dialogue facilitation.

Program Goals

The Dialogue Facilitation Lab aims to: 

  • Raise confidence and capacity of faculty, staff, and graduate assistants to facilitate cognitively and emotionally complex learning spaces
  • Dynamically train facilitators to support strategic dialogic efforts and respond nimbly to emerging community needs
  • Cultivate dialogic practices throughout diverse functional areas
  • Grow and sustain a community of practice which maintains continued development for dialogue facilitation

Participant Outcomes

As a result of the Dialogue Facilitation Lab, we hope participants will, demonstrate facilitation competencies, related to:

  • Guiding difficult dialogue among diverse constituents
  • Empowering participation in ways which challenge traditional educational norms
  • Attending to dialogue content and process
  • Attending to procedures which enable full and equitable participation
  • Engage in critical self-examination, specifically the pedagogical implications of one’s world view
  • Thoughtfully integrate newly acquired concepts and skills in their institutional roles
  • Articulate a uniquely authored dialogue facilitation philosophy