Activity
Liberating Structures, Ongoing engagement
Conversation Cafe

Maha Bali
Engage everyone in making sense of profound challenges. Use to address difficult or confusing topics.
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According to the Liberating Structures website, it “engages everyone in making sense of profound challenges. It can be used to address difficult or confusing topics, build trust and share perspectives.”
Encouraging equitable conversations and perspective-taking. Encouraging constructive listening.
Prompt, instructions, and space for students to take notes.
This activity involves sending students into breakout rooms of 4-5 with timed rounds of conversation to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to participate. They will need one person to be the “host” and manage time and take notes (though you could split those roles).
Detailed Liberating Structures description: http://www.liberatingstructures.com/17-conversation-cafe/
Virtual conversation cafe description here.
At a minimum: Around 16 minutes if you have 4 participants per group, or 20 minutes if you have 5 participants in the group. However, you can increase the time for the “open” round of conversation to 10 minutes instead of 4-5.
N/A
Breakout rooms and either asking students to record them, or take notes in a shared space like a Google slide or Google doc.
Liberating structures description: http://www.liberatingstructures.com/17-conversation-cafe/
This activity is one of a series of activities from Equity Unbound, focused on equitable online community building.
Find out moreIntroductory activities
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