Water into wine?

[MCSTEVENS at aol.com]

I like Peg's idea.  Another approach we have used is instead of having people
read for an hour, divide the group into max mix small groups of 7-8 and let a
panel present various aspects of the document or the process they used to get
there.  These panel members only get to talk for 5-7 minutes (brief overview
hitting the high points only).  After 4 of them talk -- about 20-25 minutes
worth (and no overheads -- only flipcharts)  then the tables talk together
answering these questions:  1) what did we hear  2) what were our reactions
and 3) What questions of understanding do we have?  They record all the
questions of understanding on flipcharts and then prioritize them.  If they
are directed to a particular panel member, they note that.  This table group
section is 20 minutes long.  Then the panel reassembles and the facilitator
takes the top question from each table group, going round robin until the
questions are answered.  (This generally doesn't take all that long since
most of the tables will have generated teh same questions.)

At that point, the expository stuff is done and done in a way that folks have
been able to ask what they want to know (rather than being talked at for
hours).   The purpose so far has simply been to UNDERSTAND THE PERSPECTIVE OF
THE DOCUMENT PREPARES.

After that, you can move into OS as Peg suggested.  We use this alot and it
works very well.

Cathy