​Six Groups of Four (or five) participants

Working with 20 - 30 participants willing to learn from each other?
Here is a way of blending the learning experience in a respectful way, maximising the learning for all concerned.

Preparation
Make sure you have self-study materials comprising 6 different examples of: ‘challenging situations’, or ‘puzzles’ or ‘problems’ labelled A, B, C, D, E and F.

On the day
Divide the participants into six groups by issuing one 'random' playing card to each participant as they enter the room and inviting them to sit at specific tables. Make sure you have five each of 1 (A), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (use multiple packs of cards)

To ensure that each group has a unique task AND they have good reason to listen to each other, issue the materials as follows, giving some overlap of materials between the groups:

• Group 1, A and B
• Group 2, B and C
• Group 3, C and D
• Group 4, D and E
• Group 5, E and F
• Group 6, F and A

Study, Solve, Come to an Agreement…
Some groups will work twice as quickly as the average, some groups will work half as quickly as the average. Let the groups work until they have finished with at least one piece of material. Stop when at most two groups have worked with all their material. In emergencies you can issue one more piece of material to ‘early completers’. 

Share
In order to involve as many groups as soon as possible during the share session, invite the groups to share their answers, solutions and responses with the whole group following this pattern:

• Group 1 shares their responses to A
• Group 6 can add their comments on A
  
  
• Group 4 shares their responses to D
• Group 3 can add their comments on D
  
  
• Group 1 shares their response to B
• Group 2 can add their comments on B
  
  
• Group 4 shares their response to E
• Group 5 can add their comments on E
  
  
• Group 2 shares their responses to C
• Group 3 can add their comments on C
  
  
• Group 5 shares their responses to F
• Group 6 can add their comments on F

Reflect
Invite the groups to reconvene and discuss the ‘best solution’ to their material based on the additional input from the group.

Learning
Invite each participant to write down what they need to remember for later.