How does workshop size effect delivery?

How accurate is evaluative data about large workshop groups, compared to smaller workshop groups and how do we know?

There is plenty of research pointing to the benefits to arts activities in reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, improving cognition and boosting confidence and creativity. As a writer in residence, these health benefits can empower school pupils with self-expression, offer organisations a less stressed and more creative workforce and to an older generation, a chance to grow in confidence, to connect, reflect and to enjoy themselves.

As Emma and I are both delivering writing, painting and bookbinding workshops and evaluating, inevitably, we’ll need to talk about data some more, before we get to the good stuff. As any data analyst will tell you, the richness of your data is reliant on a combination of existing data, careful observation and asking the right questions. As a writer, there is a certain amount of guesswork in this.

So, with this in mind, should we take everyone aside for a stress test and a blood pressure test? Do we hand out IQ tests to participants? Do we make them lead a team of people through an obstacle course of car tyres and slides leading into troughs filled with ice water, or put them into an fMRI? Er… while the outcomes of these would give us some hard, accurate, rich data, we also don’t want to spend the night in Accident and Emergency with a clipboard, apologising to children, grandchildren and community police officers alike. In addition that data will be more about diastolic pressure and timed challenges rather than the story of the individual’s life and the activity’s impact on their lives as a person.

The three key questions for any data analysis summarised are: What do we know? What do we want to know? and What are the right questions to ask? Let’s apply this to the creative workshop model. A good length of workshop varies, but for the sake of ease, let’s assume (based on a variety of robust data sources) that a maximum concentration span is about 10-15 minutes for information and about double that for an extended creative exercise.

We also want enough time to get orientated, to understand the tools we need to do the main task, the ability to know how to complete the task and where they might take their work / explore the art form further. This gives us a satisfying feeling – to get a sense that we have learned a new skill. Fingers crossed at the end, participants will feel happy and creative.

To put these two ideas together: we want a good level of concentration and we want a good level of satisfaction.

In a 90 minute workshop for around 10-12 participants, this is how that breaks down:

Introductions and Warm-up – 10 minutes
Reading Example Poems and Group Discussion – 15 minutes
Writing Poems / Main Exercise – 40 minutes
Read aloud feedback – 15-20 minutes (based on 5 minutes per person for four people)
Evaluation – 5-10 minutes

Total time (90 minutes – approx)

Of course there are more questions around pedagogical methods, but for now, I am going to set those to one side.

If we increase the number of participants, the amount of time for introductions, group discussion and feedback increases. The chance of someone being able to make a point, or share their work with their peers decreases. This means that the larger the group, the lower the concentration and the lower the satisfaction.

Key factors in concentration in a workshop are talked about in this paper. These are: information available, drowsiness, noise pollution, the workshop leader’s mastery of the content and the sense that there is a duty to participate. It’s not rocket science to see that increasing numbers of participants will put strain on this. We have higher drowsiness with more people in the room, greater noise pollution and these can also have a knock-on effect on the confidence and effectiveness of the workshop leader.

As a workshop leader, it’s also important to give one to one time to individuals as much as possible in order to see their skill in action and to steer each person. I am a big believer that participants bring their own natural skills to the table as writers. Some people are naturally highly skilled at pin sharp description, some people have a natural ear for alliterative sounds through the line of a poem and at a unity of sound and emphasis. As yet they may not have the technical vocabulary to describe what they have made, or how it is made, but they can be shown how to identify their own skill, a skill others will marvel at. This will also bring an earned satisfaction. This is not because writing is an easy art form to learn and master, but we have all had some experience of writing during the course of our lives. This gives rise to a sense of the goal gradient hypothesis – which in layman’s terms is going to the coffee shop and getting two free stamps before we fill the rest of the card. When the first two steps were so easy, it creates satisfaction and encourages us to go further and to take our writing further. This is what becomes endangered if participants are not given sufficient one to one time.

Teaching is a lifelong endeavour both in the spirit and in the science of believing in your students and empowering them with the ability to create outstanding work, you hold the ladder while they climb. You want this too, to be as efficient as possible.

So, to sum up, you want to hire a writer to lead a workshop? Here’s a model that I’ve created, based on very approximate averaging from available data to show you how effective your workshop is going to be:

Time of workshop in minutes x 0.08 = S

S x 2 = Mood of the Room

Time of Workshop – Mood of the Room = Score as a percent of satisfaction

To give you an idea, here’s how it looks in practice:

Time in minutes and % satisfaction

120 = 100%
90 = 75.6%
80 = 67.2%
60 = 50.4%
40 = 33%

So although it’s not quite perfect (technically it’s 100.8% at 90 minutes) it will give you an approximate picture of the satisfaction felt by participants. This considers time spent on introductions, group discussion and any main exercise / main content. When students feel heard, they feel validated and this boosts satisfaction.

[This also factors in adaptations made to the design and content, such as the removal of introductions to extend one to one time during the main exercise]

Let’s do concentration:

Initial concentration = 100%
Number of participants x 1.45 = reduction in concentration

Initial concentration – reduction in concentration = Group concentration

This is based on an addition of approximately 1.5db per person and an overall duty to participate, meaning your workshop leader will have to shout instructions at around 35-36 participants as decibels hit anywhere between 90-110db, which is about the level of a club or a leafblower at close range. This is fine for a fitness class, but probably not so great for something that requires bespoke, person to person instruction and can tire pupils.

This will give you another set of values:

Concentration

5 people = 92.75%
10 people = 85.5%
20 people = 71%
30 people = 56.5%

And at around 35 people we lose half the room.

If you average these two scores together, you can get an idea of what to expect. Let’s call this “engagement”. We want our engagement to be as high as possible. This allows you to both commission, design and deliver workshops effectively and to understand what to expect from your feedback.

This background information is important, because it informs our data sets and discovery during the delivery of our project.

The initial spec was for:

A two hour workshop (100% satisfaction) with 10-12 people (88.4% concentration), giving us an average engagement of around 94%.

Participants from the specified age group of 65 years and above.

We were given:

A one and half hour workshop (75.6% satisfaction) with 65 people (8.7% concentration) giving us an average engagment of 42.15%, which means we anticipate that around 57-58% of the room will simply not engage with the workshop.

In addition the age group was very broad with some significantly younger participants and those with disabilities that might be categorised as profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD).

Why is this important?

For our project, before we start delivery, we already know our evaluative data will be adversely impacted by low engagement. Emma and I are both experienced workshop leaders and the people we are teaching are kind, pro-active, thoughtful and imaginative, so any numbers above 42% will be great and the accuracy of our evaluation is likely to suffer from about the same amount.

So getting back to our original questions then…

What do we know already?

We know the health benefits of arts activities and specifically Creative Writing as outlined above and more here.

What do we want to know?

We want to know if, in particular, writing will help people to have a better life as we all grow older.

What are the right questions to ask?

First and foremost – our control – how are people feeling before the activity and secondly – our result – how do they feel afterwards?

More questions are interesting to ask too – “Did this give me a chance to reflect on my life?” or “Do I feel more confident afterwards or more satisfied, or more qualified in some way to concentrate on individual tasks?” These questions would dovetail with existing research. We also have to consider that our engagement is low, so our responses may be affected by this.

This is all very well and good, but how did we do? That’s next time…

Thanks for reading!