Facilitated learning formats
The formats we work with, each with the year it appeared, its source and the question it answers best. We design and facilitate them for you, or start them and hand them over to your people. The diagnosis makes the choice, not the catalogue.
Learning between people
- Learning circles (lernOS, 2018)
- A small, fixed group meeting regularly on a topic, with no expert in the room. Each meeting starts from a question or a case brought by a member. It needs a facilitator at least for the first meetings, so the group learns the rhythm. Our reference is the lernOS Circle, Cogneon's open system (Simon Dueckert), with guides under a CC BY licence, version 1.0 from September 2018. A good fit when expertise exists in the organisation but does not circulate.
- Internal open space (Harrison Owen, 1985)
- Half a day or a full day in which the participants build the agenda on the spot, around a framing question set by the organisation. Whoever proposes a session hosts it. Harrison Owen's format (Open Space Technology, 1985) works from a few dozen people to a few hundred. A good fit when you want to find out what really concerns people and let the solutions come from them.
- Communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991)
- Cross-functional groups around a shared competence: new managers, project managers, salespeople. They meet periodically, with facilitation, to compare how they do things rather than to receive instructions. The concept comes from Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger (1991): learning as social participation, identity and shared repertoire. A good fit when the same problem is solved ten times, in ten teams, without anyone finding out.
- Peer consulting (intervision, 1970s; Troika Consulting, 2014)
- A short, structured format: a colleague brings a real problem, the group asks questions, then offers perspectives, and the person who brought the case says what they take away. Under an hour, with clear roles, no unsolicited advice. It has two roots: intervision, going back to the Balint groups of the 1950s and structured in the Netherlands from the 1970s, and Troika Consulting from Liberating Structures (Lipmanowicz and McCandless, 2014). A good fit for groups of managers or experts who rarely have time to think together.
Learning through practice
- Practice labs
- Facilitated rehearsal of your real situations, with role players, observers and structured feedback: the feedback conversation, the negotiation, the meeting with the difficult client. People rehearse several times, with variations. The in-room version of the conversation simulator, where the rehearsal partner is an AI (a product category that appeared after 2022); the two work well together.
- Cohort learning sprints (2020)
- One competence, four to six weeks, applied to a real project in the organisation, with facilitated check-ins. The group makes a concrete commitment at the start and reports at the end on what came out. The pattern comes from the cohort-based courses that took off online from 2020 (the Maven platform). A good fit when you want learning to produce a visible result, not just a declared skill.
- Prototyping workshops
- Participants build and test rather than listen. This is where projective methods such as LEGO® Serious Play® (developed at LEGO in the 1990s, an open method since 2010; Romanian page), rapid prototyping from design thinking or applied improvisation exercises come in. A good fit when the topic is abstract (strategy, identity, collaboration) and people need something concrete in their hands to discuss it.
Integration, so it stays
- Transfer sessions after training
- Two to four weeks after any course, a facilitated session: what we applied, what got stuck, what we change. There is no established named format for this (we checked in 2026 in English, German and French; only generic terms exist, such as "booster session"), so we name it ourselves. The basis is the research on learning transfer: Holton, Bates and Ruona (2000) show that what decides whether a course gets applied is the climate afterwards, meaning the manager's support, the colleagues' support and a real opportunity to practise. The simplest format on this page and the one with the most direct effect on a training already paid for.
- Learning retrospectives (After Action Review, 1993)
- After a project, a launch or a hard quarter: what we intended, what happened, why, what we do differently. The structure comes from the After Action Review, the US Army guide from 1993, adapted for office teams. Different from a process retrospective through its focus on what each person learned, not only on what went well. Connects with the retrospectives under strategic alignment.
- From debrief to experiment
- Our format for teams that leave every retrospective with a list of lessons and change nothing. One team, a two-hour launch session (structured retrospective plus an experiment sheet: one change of practice, who, by when, what signal shows it worked), then three reviews over six to eight weeks, in which the experiment is checked and the next one is chosen. A single active experiment per team, no software, no individual reporting to HR: the team records for itself what changed. It sells the transfer, not the event.
Beyond these, smaller rituals (internal fishbowl, demo days, show-and-tell sessions) are designed on request, usually as part of a wider path.
New formats, appeared after 2015
We collected them in 2026, with the year and the source, from a review of 133 learning formats. They change the frame in which learning happens, not the content. We propose each one only where it answers a real question of the team, and none of them replaces the debrief at the end.
- Walkshop (2015)
- The workshop is held walking: 20 minutes of framing, then a route with three question stops, then harvesting at a fixed point. The terrain is part of the thinking. The method was described by Wickson, Strand and Kjølberg in 2015, in an academic article; the practice is open.
- Collages (Climate Fresk, 2015; Digital Collage, 2020)
- The team rebuilds, from 42 cards on the table, the cause-and-effect chain of a complex problem. The facilitator asks questions and keeps time. Three hours, zero slides. Climate Fresk started as a game by Cédric Ringenbach in 2015; the Digital Collage comes from Aurélien Deragne and Yvain Mouneu, 2020. Both are trademarks with mandatory facilitator training, so we do not run them without it.
- The Week (2020)
- Three evenings, a one-hour film and a 30-minute circle each time. Created in Brussels in 2020, with Frédéric Laloux on the team, for a hard topic (climate); the mechanism travels to other topics: first you go through what you feel, together, then you decide what you do. A trademark with a group licence.
- Silent meeting (Amazon, 2004)
- The meeting starts with 20 to 30 minutes in which everyone reads the same few-page document in silence. Only then does the talking start. The practice comes from the six-page memo Jeff Bezos introduced at Amazon in 2004; the charismatic presentation disappears, the quality of the question remains.
- Positive Gossip (Liberating Structures, 2026)
- Three rounds of three minutes, in new pairs each time: you gossip well about someone as if they were not in the room. The third round is about the partner in front of you. Appreciation heard behind one's back gets around the embarrassment. A structure from the second generation of Liberating Structures (Keith McCandless and Nancy White, Liberating Structures Fieldbook 2026), published under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence; the description here is an adaptation under the same licence.
The Debrief Workshop, for the people who run the formats
All the formats above are decided in the last 20 minutes: the debrief is where the experience becomes something to apply on Monday. It is also the part internal trainers and facilitators improvise most often. For them we built, at the Școala de Facilitare (our school, in Romanian), the Debrief Workshop: one day in the room, followed by two online practice sessions, at two and at six weeks, for 8 to 14 practitioners.
In the room, the work runs on six micro-cases written for the workshop, in groups of three or four: a facilitator, one or two role players, an observer with a debrief assessment grid. The theory fits on one page. At the online practice sessions, everyone brings a real debrief they held in the meantime and we work on it together. We did not find an equivalent course in Romania as of 19 September 2026. The first cohort is in preparation; if you are interested, write to us and we will tell you when it starts.
How we choose the format
- What you want to be different three months from now. If the answer is "people should know what their colleagues know", we start with the between-people formats. If it is "handle a specific conversation better", with practice. If it is "not lose last month's course", with integration.
- Who can keep them going. A learning circle without someone holding it dies after three meetings. We agree from the start who takes over and how we prepare them.
- How much exposure people can take. A practice lab needs more safety in the group than an open space. We sequence the formats in the order the group can handle.
Where it leads
The parent page of this topic: learning facilitation. For your people who will run these formats: the Facilitation Academy and the Debrief Workshop above.
Frequently asked questions
From a review we did in 2026 of 133 formats, five that appeared after 2015 change the frame in which learning happens: the walkshop, a workshop held walking (2015); the Fresk-type collages, in which the team rebuilds a complex system on the table (2015 and 2020); The Week, three evenings of film and discussion circle (2020); the silent meeting, which starts with reading in silence (an Amazon practice from 2004, widespread after 2018); Positive Gossip, appreciation spoken "behind someone's back", from the second generation of Liberating Structures (2026). Add to these cohort-based courses (2020) and conversation practice with AI (after 2022). The classic formats, such as open space (1985) or communities of practice (1991), remain just as useful.
The transfer session after training. It sits two to four weeks after a course already paid for and answers three questions: what we applied, what got stuck, what we change. It asks little of the calendar and shows right away whether the organisation has an appetite for facilitated learning formats. If you want the change to be verified as well, the next step is "From debrief to experiment".
They look alike but have different purposes. A learning circle is a small, fixed group working on a topic and on the members' cases. A community of practice is cross-functional, larger, built around a shared competence (new managers, project managers) and changes its membership over time. Many organisations start with a circle and, if it catches on, turn it into a community.
No. A train-the-trainer course covers the whole cycle, from design to delivery. The Debrief Workshop works on a single competence, the one after the exercise: how you take a group from what happened to what each person does differently, without leading questions and without turning reflection into theory. It is practised on micro-cases, with role players and an observer, then on real debriefs brought to the online practice sessions. It is for practitioners who already have groups in front of them: internal trainers, facilitators, managers who run retrospectives.
Yes, and it is how we recommend working on recurring formats. We facilitate the first meetings with an internal facilitator alongside, then the internal facilitator takes over, with us in the background when needed. Their preparation happens through the Facilitation Academy, on the exact format they will run.
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