Promote small group intimacy and collaboration and make a large group session feel interactive. Focus attention ahead of a session.

This is a Liberating Structure in development (Impromptu networking, a classic Liberating Structure is similar, but we didn’t record a video about it, so we refer to it here as an adaptation, even though it is an established approach in its own right).

Here are some adaptations and alternative tools: 

• This can be done via text chat without break out rooms. Just ask participants to respond to the prompt concisely in the text chat  and read some/all of their responses aloud. If you have time, and participants are willing, you can call on some to elaborate aloud quickly on what they wrote.
• If you want to use this for a more focused activity, instead of varying prompts between rounds, you can do “impromptu networking” (a classic Liberating Structure) where you have several rounds in different groups, but the same 1-2 prompts each time. So each person gets to repeat to 1-2 other people the same thing, and listen to different responses to the prompt in small groups. But give them 2 mins per person to respond.
• If you are using breakout rooms but some participants are having connectivity issues, keep them in the main room and let them respond to the prompt together or with you.