Appreciative Interviews

Activity

Liberating Structures, Ongoing engagement

Appreciative Interviews

Maha Bali

Autumm Caines

Mia Zamora

This activity will help students prepare for working in groups by discovering and building on the roots of their successes.

Tech needed: Video conferencing, Breakout rooms, Shared online space

Duration: Variable

Student preparation: None

Educator preparation: None

ACTIVITY PURPOSE

To help groups identify elements of success.

USEFUL FOR

Helping students prepare for working together in groups or on a project or on something with a common output.

PREPARATION

None.

INSTRUCTIONS

Students work in pairs then in fours, then regroup with the whole group, using breakout rooms and Google docs.

Each pair interviews each other for 5 minutes at a time, asking the other “Think of a time when you did _______ successfully, what made that experience successful? The interviewer stays quiet, and can ask probing questions that just encourage the interviewee to expand, such as “why do you think that is?” or “tell me more” but does not offer their own reaction/feedback. After 5 minutes, they switch roles. It helps to take notes of key elements in the other person’ story.
Pairs match up with other pairs to make fours. Each person in a pair tells the story of the person they were interviewing and brings out key elements of success. After all have shared, they make a list of elements of success that they can try to take forward.

DURATION

10 minutes for the first round in breakouts of pairs.
10 minutes for the second round in breakouts of four (you can skip this step if you wish).
And then debrief in the main room would vary, depending on how much depth you go into in terms of letting all groups share out orally or in writing.

ADAPTATIONS AND EXAMPLES

This can potentially be done asynchronously where each person writes up (or does a video of) what they would say in an interview, and then the group analyses the written text of each other to identify elements of success using annotations or create a list separately.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

Breakout rooms and Google docs if done synchronously.

USEFUL RESOURCES

Appreciative Interviews (AI) – Liberating Structures website
What are Liberating Structures?