Examples

Case Study: Consider the description of the process below as a starting point for your thinking and not a prescriptive recipe. As a World Café activity should be planned as a gathering, not a meeting, people (teachers or students) are not mandated to participate.

The Café host welcomes the participants.

The host initiates a short session to help connect people. This often takes the form of three short rounds of speed conversation, and then briefly explains the intent or purpose of the Café and the Café process.

The host makes the point that during the small group conversations, it is OK to go off-topic.

The host then introduces the Café Speaker.

The speaker gives a short talk. Ideally, this is without PowerPoint slides, but a few slides are acceptable in some contexts.

The speaker typically speaks for less than 10 minutes but usually no more than 20 minutes.

At the end of the talk, the speaker poses a provocative question to the participants to initiate the conversation.

The participants sit in small groups of 3 or 4.

Everyone has an equal voice. There are not any table hosts, leaders, or note-takers.

Three rounds of small group conversation now follow. Each round lasts 10 to 15 minutes.

At the end of each round, the host asks a few people from each table to move to another table. The instruction is not more prescriptive than that.

At the end of the three rounds, the host stops the conversation and asks the participants to move the tables to one side of the room and to form a circle of chairs.

A whole group conversation then continues in the circle.

The host goes around the circle (a round-robin) and asks each person to share one actionable insight that they are taking away from the Café.

     Source: Knowledge Café: Small group design | Conversational Leadership