Skip to main content
Guide to running great live workshop sessions

How to design engaging live sessions for your course using the "I do, We do, You do" framework

Chelsea Wilson avatar
Written by Chelsea Wilson
Updated over 3 months ago

Summary

In most courses, the majority of students' learning will happen during live sessions (aka workshops), so this is where you should focus your efforts as you build your course content. To help you design a engaging lessons where learning happens, here are two frameworks:

  1. The "I do, We do, You do" lesson plan structure

  2. The State Change Method

I do, We do, You do

When hosting your live sessions, avoid monologuing or lecturing for 60-90 minutes at a time. This means that in a typical course workshop, there's no need for ultra-fancy slide decks with 100s of slides. It's a common misconception that you need to cram more information to make the course "worth it" for students - don't fall into this trap. Instead, design effective lessons by building your workshops around 1-2 main objectives or topics and using the "I do, We do, You do" lesson structure.

Here's a short video on this lesson framework:

In a 90-minute workshop, you'll probably cycle through the "I do, We do, You do" framework 1-2 times. Here's a timing breakdown with teaching ideas:

The importance of state changes

Many students joining your course will be on Zoom all day long for work. Even if they don't have Zoom fatigue, the average learner has multiple demands on their attention (which only has span of about 3-5 minutes). To keep your students' attention, you should avoid the dreaded monologue and implement The State Change Method.

Wes Kao's State Change Method helps you change the pace at just the right moments in your lesson to keep engagement high. Students will leave your class energized and excited to learn more.

State changes include:

  • Q&A

  • breakout rooms

  • group discussions

  • asking students to guess

  • literally having anyone else talk

  • cracking a joke and adding humor

  • asking students to unmute to chime in

  • giving the mic to other students to share

  • asking students to comment in the chat box

  • asking students to pause to internalize what was said

  • putting a question on the screen to ask students to reflect silently

  • switching from screen share back to gallery view mode, vice versa

Related articles

Did this answer your question?