BWOX

Experiential exercises that have actually been run.

A repository of classroom exercises with the facilitator guide, the student materials, the timing, and the debrief. Not an abstract, not a conference paper describing one. The thing itself, ready to teach on Tuesday.

Why this exists

The good exercises are locked in people's drawers.

Experiential teaching material moves by word of mouth. Someone runs a session at a conference, forty people watch it work, and then it goes home in a laptop bag. If you want to run it yourself you email the author and hope they still have the handouts. Most of the time what comes back is a description of the exercise rather than the exercise.

The published route is worse. A journal will take the paper about the activity, which is not the same artifact as the activity. You end up reconstructing timing, materials, and debrief questions from a methods section. BWOX exists to hold the artifact instead of the write-up, with enough operational detail that someone who was not in the room can run it cold.

The catalogue

Search it the way you actually plan a class.

By what you are teaching, how long you have, and whether the room is physical. Every listing below has been built and run in a real classroom.

Topic
Format
What a listing contains

Enough to run it without asking anyone.

01

The facilitator guide

Minute by minute timing, what to say to open, the failure modes, and what to do when a group finishes early or stalls. Written by whoever ran it, after they ran it.

02

The student materials

Role cards, handouts, slide decks, and where an exercise is software, the working application. Downloadable, editable, and licensed for classroom use.

03

The debrief

The part that gets skipped. Discussion questions, the concepts each one is meant to surface, and the literature the exercise is grounded in.

Roadmap

Management first, because that is what is finished.

The catalogue opens in management and organizational behavior. The structure is not specific to that field, and the disciplines below are next in line rather than aspirational.

Management Organizational behavior, leadership, strategy, and teaching methods. Open
Negotiation Bargaining simulations, integrative and distributive cases, multi party exercises. Next
Conflict and mediation Dispute resolution role plays, mediation practice tools, and process design exercises. Next
Economics Market and auction games, public goods and commons problems, behavioral experiments. Planned

Have an exercise that works?

The catalogue grows by people contributing the thing they already run. If you have an exercise with materials that survive contact with a real classroom, it belongs here.