Creating an Agenda

Think for a moment about your study group or weekly meeting:

What do you hope to accomplish? What are you planning to have happen? (Hint: Probably a great discussion and lots of participation, right?)

As Preceptors and Senior Preceptors, it's your responsibility to create an environment where you and your peers can be successful. To do that, you need to have a plan. You will need to think ahead of time about what ideas should be covered and what kinds of activities help attendees understand or practice those ideas.

A great meeting is one that inspires confidence. You want everyone in the room to be sure that the time spent together will be productive, efficient, interesting, and maybe even fun! Once you have thoughtfully planned your meeting, you'll need to communicate parts of your plan with the group through an agenda. This reassures the group that someone indeed knows what is going on and that it won't be a waste of their time. In this way, agendas can be a very powerful tool in communicating the group's goals, structure, participation expectations, etc.

When creating an agenda, be sure to include very specific descriptions of objective, setting, structure, etc. so that you shape your ideal environment. For example, you can specify the number of participants appropriate for each activity (e.g. small groups of three, pairs, taking turns in the large group, etc). You can also communicate a time next to each activity to set expectations for pacing. Specific descriptions like this help to indicate that the leader has a realistic idea of how long things should take and has planned the agenda accordingly.

So now you're probably thinking, "Okay, then how do I make an agenda that communicates exactly what I want it to?"

Now we are ready to start making agendas!

Remember:

-- We are here to practice the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in this course.

-- The purpose of each agenda is to create the ideal environment for this practice to occur & to drive the progress of the group in this direction.

In PLUS, we will focus specifically on creating Verb-Based Agendas (VBAs) that help us accomplish the above goals. Strong, effective agendas will have the following things in common.

Fundamentally, they will provide the following:

Clearly defined goals and/or outcomes, both long-term and for each individual study session (i.e. - "learning objectives")
Opportunities for knowledge sharing (aka - Collaborative study; i.e., taking turns explaining, telling, or answering)
Opportunities for direct and guided practice (swimming; not watching someone else swim)
Opportunities for feedback from yourself and others (ie- trading/comparing solutions, looking up answers as a group, taking turns being "the judge," etc.)
*accountability = motivation and improvement of skills, better to start practiing this accounability now than on Test Day

Technically, they must also always contain the following: (see AGENDA REVIEW CHECKLIST)

The date of the study group using the agenda
The course and Professor the agenda was designed for
The name of the SP or Preceptor who created the Agenda
Specific and clear instructions for each activity (ie - Verb-Based Agendas)
Room for preceptors to comment on how each activity went during the group
Time allocated for questions at the beginning or end of the study group
Relevant information for preceptors (ie- test reminders, questions for feedback, tips and reminders, etc)

See an example Agenda here.

Notice how it incorporates a simple, clear structure and specific explanations for each task. There are also relevant notes to preceptors specific to that week.

What are some other strengths of this sample Agenda? What are some areas for improvement?

For more advanced users, notice also that there are notes written with hidden text about how to prepare preceptors for certain activities or what to talk about during the weekly meeting. If this is too much to focus on all at once, don't worry. After you get a solid VBA structure down, hidden text can be a great tool to improve agendas from one semester to the next, or even one SP to the next. More to come on this soon.

After making your first Agenda, be sure to welcome feedback from your Professor and preceptors and adapt accordingly each week. Have someone critique your agenda by asking the questions from above. (After you see this agenda, what do you think will occur in the group? Are you encouraged or discouraged? In what ways do you think you'll be required to participate?) Preceptors can also report back to you about difficulties they had or different facilitation techniques they tried. You may also want to try leaving some space specifically for them to jot down their thoughts and feedback after the study group and bring it with them to discuss at your next weekly meeting.

Agenda best practices

identify similarities and differences

Summarize concepts

generating and testing hypothesis

hint towards where to find more resources on topics

consider a game/something tactile that could be constructed to make this more alive–talk with Leta to make something happen!

explain the reasoning why outcomes happen, not just identifying the outcome