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Why review activities and games?

Learning is most effective when you take time to think through the process and impact of your experiences and attempt to make sense of your thoughts, feelings and reactions; alternatively, you can support others to undergo that process. Such reflection can help to identify patterns of behaviour, resolve issues and make decisions for tackling similar or new situations in the future. This is the reviewing process.

Reviewing is simply learning from experience, or enabling others to do so, by revisiting the event and by working through the way in which it was tackled and the outcome that was achieved. This is a valuable process that helps to make use of personal experience and setting it in the context of what you already know and understand, so that you can learn and develop by it.

These reviewing processes can include:

• • Carrying out the activity, through visualisation and verbalisation.
• • Reflecting on the experience, emotionally and psychologically as well as physically.
• • Analysing and making sense of experience, looking at how it affected participants and why.
• • Communicating experience, verbalising thoughts to others and expressing oneself.
• • Reframing experience, relating experiences to different contexts.
• • Learning from experience, realising how experiences correlate to ‘normal’ life.

Alternative terms for reviewing are ‘processing’, ‘debriefing’ and ‘reflection’. Reviewing is also:

• • Learning – the process of learning from experience itself (e.g. by keeping a diary, confiding in a friend, or talking with your mentor). This is about what the individual does themselves.
• • Helping others to learn – the process of facilitating learning from experience for others (e.g. by asking questions, giving feedback, or exploring alternative explanations).This is about what the facilitator does.

Other aspects of reviewing include:

• • Adding value to the experience – the value gained from experiences depends very much on how experiences are reviewed. Reviewing is an opportunity to add value and meaning to experiences however ‘small’ or ‘large’, ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ they may be.
• • Getting unstuck – without reviewing, groups and individuals can be stuck at a particular stage of development. Reviewing provides a range of strategies for moving beyond this stage and for getting the cycles of learning and development turning again.
• • Achieving objectives – reviewing can help to clarify, achieve, measure and celebrate objectives.
• • Opening new perspectives – people generally review experiences from their ‘normal’ perspective. By also ‘seeing’ an experience from the perspectives of others and by ‘re-viewing’ an experience through a variety of ‘windows’ (reviewing techniques), people can escape from tunnel (or normal) vision and learn from the ‘bigger picture’.
• • Developing observation and awareness – the more involving an experience, the harder it is to observe what is happening. Reviewing can encourage observation, perception and realisation both during and after experiences.
• • Caring – by reviewing activities, we show that we care about what people experience, that we value what they have to say, and that we are interested in the progress of each individual’s learning and development. When people feel cared for, valued, and respected as individuals they will be better learners!
• • Encouraging self-expression – it is not always easy to talk about experiences. An imaginative and sensitive approach to reviewing can help people to find the medium, situation, symbol or question through which they can most readily express themselves. This is where the expressive and creative arts can be particularly helpful.
• • Using success – focusing on success may be a strange experience if it is usually problems that are the focus of attention in reviews. Reviewing can help people to enjoy success, to understand how it happened and to get accustomed to the idea that they can be successful.
• • Providing support – reviewing can be a valuable safety net. The reassurance that support will be available in the event of failure encourages people to take risks (of the kind that will be supported). Whether people experience failure or success, the causes can be analysed so that they learn how to avoid failure (or win from failure) and how to achieve success.
• • Empowerment – reviewing enhances people’s ability to learn from individual or group experiences. Improved learning ability, together with increased confidence, allows people to become more independent and more capable of self-development, and even of self-actualisation! (‘Self-and-others actualisation’ may be a more suitable aspiration for those who acknowledge the mutually supportive nature of reviewing).

Experience + Reviewing = Learning + Development

1. How to review? Thinking ahead obviously increases the chances of successful reviewing, but it is always better to have an unplanned or improvised review than to have no review at all.
2. Purpose: When and how are group aims and objectives decided? When and how are individual aims and objectives decided?
3. Timing: Immediately after the event? After a short break? Next week? A quick on-the-spot review, followed by a longer one later? After another activity, and review both together? Same duration as the activity? Or shorter? Or longer?
4. Place: Where the activity took place (while experiences are fresh and are the natural topic of conversation, and while it is easier to demonstrate a point or repeat parts of the activity)? While walking, travelling or eating (providing a chance for informal reviewing, especially with ‘loud’ or ‘quiet’ individuals who find it difficult to participate in a group setting)? The review room (ideal surroundings, comfortable air-conditioned, quiet, no interruption or distraction, plenty of space and resources)?
5. Climate: How structured? How informal? Easy-going? Business-like? Free-flowing discussion? Open forum? Challenging? Fun? Covering lots of ground quickly or one aspect in depth? Using several reviewing methods or just one?
6. Ground rules: No contract or agreement unless problems arise? Can rules be expressed positively? Agreeing principles rather than rules? What is negotiable? What is not negotiable?
7. Participation: How will you maintain high levels of involvement for each individual? How will you help those who cannot express themselves readily (especially as they may have the greatest need to do so)
8. Ending: How will you decide when to finish? Will this be agreed in advance? Will important points be summarised? How? How will you gauge and attend to emotional needs at the end? How will you help learners to work out realistic follow up action? How will learners be supported in carrying out follow-up action? There are often unplanned and unexpected outcomes and learning that derive from activities – space and time must be made to identify and celebrate these with a group.

It is critical to remember that a review is not just an evaluation of the activities and how well the group members could do them! The sleepiest and least productive reviews are those where the leader is exclusively concerned with evaluation. Starting a review by asking ‘What did you learn?’ is not likely to turn into a memorable review session, yet at the end of a good review, participants might be expected to respond more intelligently and enthusiastically to the question ‘What did you learn?’ At the very least, a good review will have stimulated reflective processes that might otherwise have been brushed aside by the next activity.

Holistic learning is about personal development, social development, team development, leadership development and decision-making, as well as social education, life skills, basic skills, lifelong learning and curriculum education. Much advice about reviewing (or debriefing) assumes that the main purpose is to facilitate learning and holistic learning is also about development rather than simply educative progression. So what should you, as a competent facilitative reviewer, do differently? One (partly right) answer is that development arises as a direct result of what is experienced during the ‘activity’ and that learning mostly happens after the activity when reviewing that experience. For example, the sense of achievement on completing a rock climb happens as the climber completes the final move; such achievements have an impact on development, whether or not much learning arises directly from the achievement. It is during reflection and review after the climb that the climber can learn more from the experience than was possible while engrossed in the climbing. The climber may learn through feedback during a review that their communication was poor or that their recklessness was endangering others or during a review they may learn how they can also control other fears in other situations. A review can take learning in many directions that were not fully apparent at the time of the developmental experience.

I said that the answer is ‘partly right’ because it is by no means always true that development happens during ‘the experience’ and learning happens during ‘the review’. Many exceptions spring to mind. However, more important than recognising exceptions, is to recognise the flaw in the original proposition.

What flaw? The flaw is thinking of a review as a period during which experiencing is switched off. The experience of a review is at least as important as the experience of the event being reviewed. (How can you advocate learning through experience without paying attention to the experience of learning?) It is easy to see how this flaw has come about. When reviews are designed for learning from an experience that has just happened, the experience of the reviewing process is given little (if any) attention. However, if you want to use both the activity and the review for development, it is important to consider the quality of experience throughout the whole process.

A second flaw is that generally reviewing is considered as something that takes place at the end of the activity only, as a kind of ‘round up’ to the session as a whole, but this is not only wrong, it can also reduce the overall level and impact of learning. At any point during the execution of the activity, there can be some form of review to assess what the group has achieved and help them to refocus on what to do next.

Does that mean putting learning objectives on one side while you attend to developmental aims? Probably not. Many reviewing techniques can work well at both levels simultaneously, especially if your own mind is working at both of these levels and is in touch with what people are experiencing during the review as well as with what they are learning during the review.

Reviewing a learning process is important and needs to be as carefully planned as the learning activity itself. There are a number of ways in which the facilitator unintentionally puts up barriers to the learning potential with subliminal messages to the group members that suggest the review process is nothing more than a ‘wind down’ after the core activity:

• • Never apologise for a review session taking place or promise that it won’t take very long. This implies the review is an inconvenience that must be endured for as short a period as possible. It is important to be as positive and enthusiastic about the review session and to raise all the positive achievements of the group members, before looking at what could have been done better. Focus on success, not failure, even with the most ineffective group performance, a good facilitator can find something positive to say!
• • Never start the review session by asking ‘What did you learn?’ This suggests that the review is pointless as the learning has already taken place and the group will gain nothing from the review session. You can start the review with other questions, such as who took what role or who did what; some pictures or re-enacting may help things along or you can focus on particular aspects that support the learning message. Remember to explore emotional development and how the activity may have been affected by feelings, motives and intentions, as well as exploring the physical and practical elements.
• • Never expect the responses to be immediate; the first thing that comes into a participant’s head or out of their mouths is not necessarily the most accurate reflection on their experience. People need to be brought to their learning and so need time to think through what they really felt or how to express themselves; it may be that vocalisation is not the best method, so a range of review tools may be better than just one (visualisation, demonstration, writing, drawing, activities). Just as people learn in different ways through different platforms, so too do they express themselves differently.
• • Never make the session appear simple by asking for ‘one picture/one word to sum up the day/what you learned/how you feel today went’. The learning process is a significant aspect to a participant’s life and should not be trivialised; a participant will experience a range of emotions, thoughts, realisations, interactions and achievements and there should be the capacity for them to express all of these as fully as possible.
• • Never appear as if only you are in control the review; if you have planned the session appropriately, you have spent a good deal of time and effort encouraging the group members to think and act independently, so it is essential not to undermine that work by implying the group members have no responsibility for themselves when it comes to the review. Certain things will have to be in the control of the facilitator, such as the time allotted to the review or ensuring that everyone is involved, but the content and direction of the review must be a joint process. However, never allow one or two voices to dominate a review (including your own!), every member of the group must feel included.
• • Never assume that everyone has had the same experience or will have achieved the same level (or type) of learning. This takes away individuality and undermines anyone with an experience or outcome that varies from the mainstream. Allow everyone to express themselves before drawing conclusions, acknowledging that diversity is positive and to be embraced. There may be a range of learning from an experience, that may or may not all be recognised by every member of the group; this is not a problem!

Review may be undertaken in a number of ways, including:

• • Visualisation: imagining the steps undertaken that led to certain actions or consequences.
• • Demonstration: providing a clear guide or benchmark of a standard or type of achievement.
• • Pantomime: a dramatic and exaggerated representation of an action to emphasise a behaviour or performance.
• • Coaching: building on success for enhanced future performance, providing the stimulus, environment and objective steps.
• • Verbalisation: a running commentary to highlight particular aspects of behaviour or performance, communicating the thought processes.

These can be used singly or in combination, or specific review activities can be deployed.