How to Design an Activity Session in an Education Camp
Have you had the experience of holding camps? Have you ever struggled hard to figure out what to do for participants? It is common for Taiwanese college students to hold camps during vacations, and the types of camps range from orientation for freshmen held by every department to specific theme camps held by student clubs. Among various camps, I once joined a communication camp and an education camp held by college students when I was still a high school student, and the communication camp left me a negative memory while the other one inspired me a lot. An outstanding camp must feature some inspiring concepts and impressive activities, and the quality of a camp is normally evaluated according to those sessions included in it. Therefore, it is important for organizers to come up with some creative and distinguishing activities; but, how to do that? Let’s take the inspiring education camp I have once joined for instance and follow a few steps below to design an unforgettable session!
Firstly, you have to firstly make sure what the key message of the session is. After confirming the key message, you can think out a captivating title for your session. For example, if I want to introduce MBTI, the abbreviation of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, an introspective self-report questionnaire with the purpose of indicating different psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions, then MBTI will be my key message. And my session title may be The Minds of Billy Milligan, the name of the well-known novel written by Daniel Keyes. Here I use the popular story to associate the concept of MBTI; hence, my session sounds more attractive.
Once setting down the basic information of the session, you then start targeting who your audience is. What abilities they may have possessed? What are their educational backgrounds? Are they high school students or adults who have entered the workplace for years? These will decide the depth of your content as well as how you carry your activity out.
Another important consideration which can’t also be neglected is the atmosphere since it will also greatly influence the way you deliver your message. Take MBTI mentioned above for example. If my audience are teenagers ranging from twelve to eighteen years old, and meanwhile I want to build a comfortable, easy, and unrestrained atmosphere, I can introduce MBTI through simple and interesting personality tests or group discussions instead of serious one-way lectures because the latter may be too tough for them to understand the concept and probably will make them bored.
Next, practical factors, such as the duration and the place, also play significant roles in building the atmosphere. Practical factors can have huge positive effects on your activity if you utilize them well, or they can otherwise be your restriction. For instance, if you only have a small group of audience, a small place is much more ideal than a spacious one since the former makes them feel closer and warmer with each other. From this case, we can see how the place helps optimize the atmosphere, so don’t forget to take them into account when designing the activity.
The next concerning factor is the feeling of the participants. Being a professional organizer, you must always put yourself in their shoes and try to ask yourself that what you would want to learn from this activity. In the example of MBTI, if I were the audience, I may want to get more understandings about myself after taking the personality test and learn to possess multiple aspects to the world. Thus, when I am designing this session, I can add a part to briefly summarize or share the results of the personality tests at the end rather than just curtly close the activity. Always predict how your audience may think or how they may respond to your activity in order to create the most ideal approach for them.
After having the whole picture of the plan, you then need to prepare for materials that will be used in the activity. For example, you have to collect videos and photos, buy rewards like candy or souvenirs, and so on.
Finally, don’t forget to invite your friends to pre-play and give some feedback afterward so you can revise the activity session until it reaches its perfection. Though nobody can guarantee the session’s succeed or predict if there will be any emergent situation influencing the performance when conducting the session formally, we still can idealize our session by thinking out an attractive title, considering carefully the audience, content, atmosphere, practical factors and delivering approach and preparing the materials. The whole process of designing an session is surly grueling, tiring, and even frustrating; nevertheless, once you see those satisfied smiling faces of the participants, you will attain the sense of accomplishment and think the time spent is worthwhile.
