What qualities of the maker workshop or staged event distinctively contribute to inquiry outcomes? How should workshops be sequenced? What kinds of activities and prompts best support collaborative inquiry? What sorts of settings and environments (both spatial and technical) best support collaboration and inclusion? What toolkits, materials, tools, and project recipes best support inquiry in these events? How should events be followed up to maximize their impacts? How can positive outcomes of inquiry in such environments be recognized and articulated?

How to answer to this questions in a Workshopology event:

1. Choose a nice ice-breaking for get people to know each other.

2. Ask participants to propose topics and select the ones they consider more interesting to them. Every topics can entail a different set of problems to solve (i.e. teaching biology, cultural differences, communication, family, etc.).

3. Create groups by balancing competences and interests. Mix academics and makers, involve people with different points of view and background, but at least with a bit of experience on hands-on teaching and learning activities.

4. Ask the groups’ members to share their knowledge or experiences in relation to the selected topics: state of the art, relevant people, best practices, libraries and resources.

5. Ideate and sketch workshops’ formats that are instructables of potential hands-on workshops that address the selected topic.

6. Describe the workshop format. Ask people to provide as many details as possible (i.e. the interior design of the learning space).

7. Documentation is the key. Ask people to take notes of their discussions, to share the knowledge and the workshop format through online documents that are publicly accessible (alternative to google docs are: hackpad, etherpad, etc.).

8. Share the event documentation online.

Look at the schedule of Making Laboratories to get more information or inspirations on how to lead a Workshopology event. We tried to keep our comments in the schedule to explain the intentions behind every planned activity.