7. Designing Learning Activities

🎯 Learning Outcomes

📍 Guiding Questions

Design activities where learners actively work toward the intended outcomes
Structure activities with clear instructions, materials, timing, and outputs
Design for inclusive participation so all learners are actively involved
Enable co-creation by drawing on learners' knowledge, experience, and context
Support learners through challenging parts of an activity using appropriate scaffolding
Adapt activities to fit your specific context (time, resources, group)

What will learners actually do in this activity?
What do I need to prepare or provide so they can do it?
How will I make sure everyone participates, not just a few people?
How can learners contribute their own knowledge, experience, or ideas?
Where might learners get stuck, and how will I support them?
Will this work in my context (time, resources, group)?

You have defined your learning outcomes, mapped your constraints, and planned if and how participants will shape the training. Now comes the question at the heart of any training: what will learners actually do?

Activities are where learning happens. Not in your slides, not in your explanations — in the moments where learners discuss, analyse, build, practise, and apply. A well-designed activity turns an intended outcome into visible, practised learning. A poorly designed one wastes everyone's time, no matter how good the content behind it is.

Why this matters¶

Training often breaks down at the activity level. Instructions are vague. The task does not match the outcome. Only a few people participate while the rest watch. The activity assumes resources or time that are not available. These are design problems, not facilitation problems — and they are solvable at the design stage.

This lesson focuses on one question: How do you design a well-structured, participatory activity?

The shift

From "What content should I include?" to "What should learners do to achieve the outcomes — in this context?"

Designing activities from outcomes¶

Every activity should start from a learning outcome, not from a topic. The difference matters. Starting from a topic leads to activities like "discuss climate change" — open-ended and hard to assess. Starting from an outcome leads to activities like "given a local dataset, identify three trends and explain what they mean for agricultural planning" — specific, actionable, and producing something you can see.

The method is straightforward. Take one learning outcome. Ask: what would a learner need to do to demonstrate this? That action becomes the core of your activity. Everything else — instructions, materials, grouping, timing — exists to support that action.

Alignment check

If you removed the activity from your training, would learners still have a way to practise and demonstrate the outcome? If not, the activity is essential. If so, reconsider whether it belongs. Apply the constructive alignment principles from Lesson 5 — outcomes, activities, and evidence of learning should form a coherent chain.

Structuring activities clearly¶

A well-structured activity has six components:

Objective — what learners will achieve by completing the activity, stated plainly
Instructions — step-by-step guidance for what to do, written so that another facilitator could run the activity without additional explanation
Materials — everything learners need (datasets, handouts, tools, templates), listed explicitly
Time — how long the activity takes, including time for setup and debrief
Output — what learners produce (a diagram, a plan, a written analysis, a presentation) — something concrete and visible
Feedback — how learners will know whether they are on track, whether through peer review, facilitator input, a checklist, or comparison with a model

Missing any of these creates friction. Unclear instructions mean learners spend their time figuring out what to do rather than doing it. No defined output means there is nothing to discuss, assess, or build on. No feedback mechanism means learners may practise the wrong thing without realising it.

Before and after

Vague activity: "In groups, discuss how you would design a training session for your colleagues. Report back to the group."

Structured activity: "In pairs, select one learning outcome from your Activity 5 work. Design a 20-minute activity that helps learners practise that outcome. Write down: the objective, instructions a learner would follow, what materials are needed, and what the learner will produce. You have 25 minutes. Each pair will swap plans with another pair for feedback using the checklist provided."

The second version tells learners exactly what to do, how long they have, what to produce, and how they will get feedback. It also generates a concrete artefact that can be refined later.

Designing for inclusive participation¶

Left to default dynamics, group activities tend to be dominated by a few confident voices while others observe. Designing for inclusive participation means building structures that make it easier for everyone to contribute.

Think of participation design as answering three questions: Who speaks? When? How?

Who speaks is about grouping. Pair work is the simplest equaliser — in a pair, both people must engage. Small groups of three or four work well for tasks that benefit from multiple perspectives. Larger groups make it easier for individuals to disengage.

When is about timing. Build in think time before discussion — even 60 seconds of silent reflection before a group conversation changes who contributes. Letting people write before they speak gives quieter participants a way in.

How is about contribution modes. Not everyone communicates best by speaking in front of a group. Offer alternatives: written responses, visual diagrams, small-group discussion before plenary, anonymous submissions. The goal is not to force participation but to remove barriers to it.

Key takeaway

If your activity only works when participants voluntarily speak up in a large group, it is designed for extroverts. Build in structures that make participation the path of least resistance, not the path of most courage.

Co-creation within activities¶

In Lesson 6, you planned how participants shape the training design itself. Co-creation is the companion idea: within activities, learners contribute their own knowledge, experience, and context to the learning process.

This matters because your learners are not blank slates. They bring professional experience, local knowledge, cultural context, and real problems they are trying to solve. Activities that draw on this are more engaging, more relevant, and more likely to produce learning that transfers beyond the training room.

Co-creation in practice means designing activities where learner contributions are part of the material, not just responses to your material. Some approaches:

Learner-generated examples — instead of providing all the case studies, ask learners to bring problems from their own work. The activity then uses real cases rather than hypothetical ones.
Collaborative outputs — design activities where the output is built collectively. A shared resource map, a group-authored guide, a collection of solutions to a common problem. The result is something no individual — including the facilitator — could have produced alone.
Experience as evidence — when teaching a concept, ask learners where they have seen it (or its absence) in their own practice. Their examples become teaching material for the rest of the group.
Participant-driven adaptation — build decision points into activities where learners choose which direction to take based on what is most relevant to them.

Co-creation needs structure

Asking learners to "share their experience" without scaffolding often produces awkward silence or unfocused storytelling. Give specific prompts, define what kind of contribution you are looking for, and show how their input will be used. The more structured the invitation, the richer the contributions.

Scaffolding and sequencing¶

Not every learner will be ready for every activity at the same level. Scaffolding means providing support early and reducing it as learners gain confidence. Sequencing means ordering activities so each one builds on what came before.

A practical method for scaffolding: start with a guided version of the activity. Walk through the first step together, or provide a worked example that learners can follow. Then remove the supports — take away the worked example, reduce the step-by-step guidance, increase the complexity of the task, ask the learners to practice a skill in a new context or situation. The goal is that by the end, learners can do independently what they initially needed help with.

Apply the cognitive load and retrieval principles from Lesson 4 when structuring your activities. Focus learner attention on the key ideas rather than on navigating confusing instructions or unnecessary complexity. Build in moments where learners must recall and apply what they have already learned, rather than simply recognising it when presented again.

For sequencing, think about dependencies. Which activities require knowledge or skills from earlier ones? Which can stand alone? A common pattern is: guided practice → independent practice → application to own context. But this is not the only pattern. Sometimes it makes sense to start with the learner's own context and work backward to the underlying concept.

Adapting activities to context¶

The constraints you mapped in Lesson 6 directly affect what activities are possible. An activity that requires reliable internet will not work in a setting where connectivity is intermittent. An activity designed for groups of four will not work with three participants. An activity that takes 45 minutes will not work in a 30-minute slot.

Rather than designing for ideal conditions and then cutting, design for your actual conditions from the start. Ask:

What technology can I rely on? Design for the minimum, with enhancements for when more is available.
How much time do I actually have? Build in buffer — activities nearly always take longer than planned.
What is the group size and composition? Choose grouping strategies that work for your numbers.
What materials can I realistically prepare and distribute? If printing is unreliable, design activities that do not depend on handouts.

Adapting a data analysis activity

A team designing training for researchers in a region with intermittent internet originally planned a live data analysis exercise using an online tool. After mapping their constraints, they redesigned: participants download the dataset in advance during a reliable connection window, work offline using spreadsheet software, and share results via a messaging group after the session. The learning outcome — analysing and interpreting a dataset — stays the same. The activity design changes to fit the reality.

In practice¶

👉 Activity 8: Learning Activity Design — Design at least one complete learning activity, structured with all six components, aligned to a specific learning outcome, and adapted to your context.

Before you move on¶

You have now designed what learners will do in your training. In the next lesson, you will focus on how learners practise, receive feedback, and improve through iteration.

You should now have:

at least one clearly structured learning activity with objective, instructions, materials, timing, output, and feedback
a plan for inclusive participation that goes beyond "discuss in groups"
activities that draw on learner knowledge and experience through co-creation
activities adapted to your actual constraints, not ideal conditions