So a couple of days ago, I was actually looking for a method, not for a meeting but for the classroom, but the problem was general enough that I hoped to find something in the session labs library. I didn’t. I’m posting this not to complain but to discuss how to make it easier to (quickly) find some method that you can build upon.
Here is what I was looking for: It’s the first session of a new (university) course with 50-60 students who have been divided into project groups of 4-5 people using the Learning Management System (LMS) prior to this session. So everyone knows their group number but they don’t necessarily know the names of the other group members or if they do, they may not know who these people are. So I wanted to fin a fun way for them to identify their team members and work with them during this session.
I didn’t expect to find an exact solution since this situation with people already divided into groups is a bit unusual, but I thought I might be able to modify some similar method to fit my situation. But I was unable to find anything.
To start with, the filter for the number of participants didn’t seem to work. It did limit the results list but the displayed results had nothing to do with the numbers I had entered. But this is probably just a technical glitch that @rcserti can easily fix. So I ended up not using that filter.
As I said, I didn’t find anything, probably because there wasn’t anything there, but my point is that even the search itself wasn’t so easy because I couldn’t really fit my situation into any of the given categories (though I guessed it was closest to an “Energizer”). I think it’s not so unusual that people looking for a method are not thinking in terms of the categories provided but are more broadly looking for inspiration from existing methods. So I think what could make the library more attractive to use would be to find ways of exploring it in a less instrumental (clear problem => clear solution) way, for example by letting people search for all methods that are suitable for use among people who do not know each other. I guess what I’m suggesting is that the starting point for searching the library should not be a description of the problem you’re trying to solve or the type of solution you’re looking for, but a description of the situation in which you want to use a method.