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First published in Polish by Agnieszka Leśny

Suppose you lead a group through an engaging exercise, for example, in the outdoors (outdoor education), using gamification, drama or other active methods. In that case, excited people are seated in a circle and asked: how do you feel? What did you learn? – you might lose the group.

Dr Roger Greenaway, the guru of experiential education trainers and the creator of Active Reviewing, usually starts his workshops with this or a similar phrase. 

Active reviewing consists of energetic discussion of an exercise, which is necessary to draw conclusions from the learning situation and apply them in everyday life.

More specifically, what is it about?

Most approaches to experiential learning involve inviting learners to participate in some kind of activity - natural (e.g. an expedition, a walk, an observation) or man-made (e.g. a game, a role-play, an exercise). This is followed by analysis and discussion of various aspects of the experience, usually emotions and ideas, and by "taking in", drawing conclusions, conceptualising, connecting with existing knowledge and developing postulates.

This is also the most common structure for manuals and books for trainers. The objectives, duration, number of participants and props are often given. Then, the procedure of the exercise. The last section usually has questions to ask... And this is what occurs most frequently during training. Something happens, and then the canonical round: "How did you feel about the exercise?" "What feelings do you have now?" "What would you do differently next time?

Just don’t ask me how I feel

Whenever in a workshop or training, there are 2, 3, or 4 exercises in a row, and AFTER EVERY exercise, the trainer starts: "Well, how do you feel? - I feel like leaving. I'm bored; I don't see the point. The more engaging the previous activity was, the more disappointment I felt afterwards when the coach only proposed to talk about feelings. These rounds usually look the same; the 2-3 most active people are talking, and the rest don't care. 

While we already know that people have different preferred learning styles and need variety, and it is helpful to have a mix of activities done at a different pace, reflections are mostly dull. It is always about talking about how one feels, concluding a flipchart, writing on coloured cards or discussing in pairs. Dull. I thought it had to be this way until I met Roger Greenaway's students and then Roger Greenaway himself.

It is Roger Greenaway's method

In 2011, I attended my first outdoor and experiential education training in Germany. During the first exercise, we did something with strings. While we were discussing it, the trainer asked us to use the strings from the exercise to arrange our commitment chart on the sand. Interesting, I thought. As part of the next exercise, we used sticks, and in the discussion phase, we worked in threes to make a figure out of these sticks. And this is how it went on for the next three days. 

I could count on the fingers of one hand the moments for questions, plain talking and the traditional: "How did you feel?". And all the discussions were great, in line with Kolb's cycle, bringing in a lot and giving me a lot of insights. Finally, I was using my head and whole body, walking, running, and making figures. We used a lot of objects in the reviews, and they often referred to the context and the exercise itself.

After that life-changing training, I talked with the instructor and asked him about his inspiration and methodology. I painstakingly wrote them down in a notebook and asked about each one in turn. He would often reply: "Oh, it's Roger Greenaway's method".  This is how I got to know active reviewing. I started reading, looking for inspiration, going to workshops, and eventually becoming friends with Roger, one of the most fascinating people in my development as a coach. When training participants ask me about the sources and ideas for the exercises I use, I say it is Roger Greenaway's method.

Who is Roger?

Roger Greenway was born and educated in Scotland, where he obtained a doctorate in management. He ran training courses and workshops as early as the 1970s and developed his methods for facilitating discussion of the exercises he led. Because of his love of outdoor education, he soon realised that it was pointless to send people on a ropes course and then have them sit in a circle for 40 minutes talking about the experience.

His training was unlike any other. He began giving workshops and training in active exercise methods in the 1980s. Since then, he has written hundreds of articles and taught courses worldwide. He has also published a number of books and online courses. He aims to promote an approach in which discussing is at least as engaging as the preceding experience. Of course, discussion is not his only area of expertise. He constantly invented new exercises and activities and has written many valuable papers on training design and dynamics.

Despite his worldwide celebrity, he is very unassuming and open, with good humour and a distinctly British accent. There is an anecdote about this. When asked where he got the idea for active reviewing, Greenway replied: "Look at me. - And you see a patchy bald guy with big glasses. "Now listen to me. You understand every other word because the guy speaks softly and has this standard British accent you heard last time on tape when at primary school. "Now, do you understand? I had to come up with forms of exercise that would distract the participants from me and happen with my minimal participation".

^{Aga Leśny and  Roger Greenway in 2017. Photo: author's archive}

Smart design

It should be emphasised that this is not about making a show of the review or forcing sticks and strings. Sometimes, Roger suggests a completely different arrangement of chairs, and suddenly, everything changes. He suggests looking at the discussion of one experience as another experience. To give a new answer to the question of purpose, form and duration. To find an appropriate format. To involve as many participants as possible in a new way. As if the discussion were to be a further exercise or an extension of the exercise. 

"It always seemed pointless to me when I saw participants fully engaged in a team task, only to see all that energy and interest dissipate later in an overplayed discussion. There is no reason why full engagement should not continue throughout the experiential learning process." ^[1]

I have come to fully understand this premise after attending Roger's workshops and delivering training using this approach. Training based on reviewing alone can be successfully delivered using other reviewing formats as a key experience.

Greenaway's approach assumes that review is a method. It seeks to engage in different ways and uses multiple senses. Thanks to its diversity, it reaches out to participants with various preferences in terms of activities and learning styles. Some methods are casual. They do not require dialogue with the trainer or speaking in front of a group. This helps participants overcome their fear or reluctance to share their thoughts and, over time, become ready for deeper forms.

In the long run, they acquire the skills needed to express their opinions or reflections in different ways, engage in dialogue, formulate conclusions, and take responsibility for them. Are these not the skills needed for building an active civil society?

Horseshoe

The horseshoe is a minimalist form I have learnt from Greenaway and use a lot.

The horseshoe is used when you want participants to indicate how they feel about a particular issue - as in scale questions (e.g. rate from 1 to 10 how engaged you were in this exercise). The horseshoe allows you to turn up the heat on the discussion, as each participant's rating is immediately visible to others.

The exercise is based on the well-known methods known as "line up" and "spectrum", etc. The difference is that this line is curved, like a horseshoe. It can be visualised using a rope or tape on the floor or left to the imagination of the participants. A more conservative way would be to arrange chairs to form a horseshoe.

In this exercise, you should define the values at either end of the horseshoe and then ask participants to stand at a point online that best represents their opinion.

For example, one end means 'I was 100% involved in the exercise', and the other means 'my involvement was close to zero'. You then ask the participants to stand at the appropriate point on the line. This is where the activity begins, as the participants agree with the people standing in each position regarding their rating to line up in front or behind them.

^{Horseshoe. Sou: Reprint za R. Greenaway, B. Vaida, C.Iepure, Active reviewing. A practical Guide for Trainers and Facilitators, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015 s.44.}

The next step is to ask the people lined up at the extremes about their involvement and why they are standing there. You will often find that the person at the zero end doesn't think that way because 'actually I was a bit involved', and the whole company will start to shift and mix. Once the group has settled down, you can encourage participants to talk to their neighbours - why they are standing there and whether their views on involvement are the same. There is no social exposure or public speaking, just each person talking to 1-2 people standing next to each other. Again, there may be changes in the positioning of some participants as a result of these conversations. Sometimes, you can ask people facing each other - i.e., those with very polarised opinions - to share their thoughts and impressions if it serves the purpose of the exercise and you have time. A variation of the exercise could be to ask a series of questions (e.g. "How would you rate your involvement before the exercise?", "How would you rate your contribution to the problem-solving strategy?") and have the participants line up several times.

The method is easily scalable - it can be used with groups of 10 and 50 people. A great context is a highly polarising issue. It can be about values or morals, such as ecology, parenting or social justice. It provides valuable reflections on: 'how far' or 'how close' we are in our opinions and what precisely that means.

Roger Greenaway in Poland

Greenaway has rarely come to Poland to run workshops. He led only two coaching courses in 2017 – one for trainers at the invitation of Pracownia Nauki i Przygody and Experience Corner and the other for managers at the request of the Akademia Biznesu Level Up. An article about the approach (by me) was published at that time. Unfortunately, the trainer has now retired due to his age, and it isn't easy to register for his workshops, even those organised in other countries. However, a unique opportunity has arisen. Roger will attend the next edition of the Experiential Educators Europe conference in Poland, near Krakow, at the end of April/beginning of May.

Roger Greenaway may conduct a workshop. The conference's full programme is not yet known as it has an unconference format. But certainly, there will be plenty of informal opportunities for interaction with one of the most famous trainers in experiential education.