- You are in:
- What is Thinkit?
- What are the benefits?
What are the benefits?
Thinkit has several advantages over more common forms of gathering input from meetings (such as having a scribe writing up ideas, or using flip charts and adhesive notes). These advantages include:
- Highly-visual toolkit improves communication and understanding - you can see a discussion taking shape
- Encourages creativity – moveable pieces help people develop new ideas and see connections
- Encourages learning and helps participants’ see each others’ points of view
- Helps meetings and workshops run efficiently, as everyone can be involved at the same time
- Highly flexible design that can be adapted to many different uses
- Solid intellectual grounding, based on cutting-edge research at the University of Manchester
In addition, there are particular benefits:
- For facilitators
- For clients of workshops
- For participants
- For trainers and teachers
- For students and learners
For facilitators:
- Enables you to deliver an effective workshop quickly and easily (it can provide a ‘workshop to go’)
- Enables interaction and discussion even with large groups of people
- Harnesses the power of visual communication for everyone (even without drawing skills)
- Helps manage communication for productive dialogue (eg. the person who speaks the loudest doesn’t dominate the discussion)
- There is something to take home at the end of the workshop; it is easy to carry away without losing people’s ideas
For clients of workshops:
- Hands-on process leads to more effective engagement - that is to say, people enjoy the workshop, so their contributions are more creative and meaningful
- Helps engage people socially – leads to greater inclusion
- It is ageless and all inclusive (people from different backgrounds can work together; everyone feels they have had a say)
- Encourages innovation and new ideas
- Results of the workshop are more structured and easy to use than traditional forms of note taking
For participants:
- Enables better use of time, as all participants are involved in writing and organising ideas
- Everyone can be involved
- It ‘puts the pen in the hands of the people’, so that participants feel they have had a say and got their ideas across
- Workshops are more enjoyable
- Enables participants to learn from each other
For trainers and teachers:
- Provides a way to animate lessons or training sessions
- Encourages active discussion amongst learners
- Enables learners to see different perspectives and points of view
- Can be tailored to different topics, subject areas and lesson plans
For students and learners:
- Encourages deeper learning
- Lessons and training sessions are more enjoyable
- Helps develop skills of communication and creativity
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