Facilitator guide: What Does the Tool Need?

Suggested session: 25–35 minutes: 4-minute task framing, 8-minute packet sorting, 7-minute minimum-necessary brief, 6-minute prompt review, and 5-minute debrief.

Preparation

Provide the fictional case packet. Do not ask learners to supply their own sensitive work, customer, family, or account records. If a live tool is used, use an approved account and keep the packet fictional. The learning objective is the decision before a prompt, not the polish of the generated message.

Facilitation priorities

• Keep the activity task-first: the question is what a useful draft requires, not how much information exists.
• Make generalize, exclude, and handle elsewhere separate choices. They solve different problems.
• Treat an unknown approval policy as an unresolved question, not an invitation to assume a consumer account is acceptable.
• Let learners keep a fact when it is truly required, but ask for the least identifying form that still serves the task.
• Remind learners that a redacted packet can still contain confidential context. Fictional examples are preferable for a group exercise.
• If learners use a tool, require a restatement check and review the output for invented payment terms, policy claims, or escalation language.

Common difficulties

• Everything feels relevant because it is in the packet: return to the one-sentence task statement. Would the draft fail without this detail?
• Learners remove all facts: ask which facts make the reminder accurate, courteous, and actionable without identifying the customer.
• A learner treats a broad category as automatically safe: ask whether the category is still identifying in a small community or organization.
• A learner assumes the tool is approved: record that as a policy question for the responsible organization.
• The conversation shifts into debt collection advice: keep this activity about drafting a neutral reminder; do not make legal, financial, or policy decisions in the lab.

Evidence of learning

Look for a clear task statement, defensible sorting, a prompt that retains useful context without unnecessary identifying detail, and explicit human verification or routing for unresolved information.

Accessibility and inclusion

Offer the packet as selectable text and read it aloud on request. Permit learners to annotate with words or symbols rather than color alone. Make the live-tool portion optional, and provide a written peer-review route. Avoid asking anyone to disclose an experience with debt, payment, employment, or a private record.

Provisional timing for facilitator planning

These inherited estimates are starting points for facilitation, not completion targets for learners. Refine them after observing setup, access needs, discussion, and actual participation.

• Lab: 25–35 minutes (short: 15; extended: 45)

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Source: labs/what-does-the-tool-need/facilitator-guide.md