Lesson 24 · Expert · 20 min
Training your colleagues: a one-hour workshop ready to run
A one-hour workshop on Copilot Chat, ready to run: cold attempt, demonstration, exercise in pairs, teaching a colleague, proof to take away.
- Goal
- You will be able to run a one-hour workshop on Copilot Chat that has people practise before explaining, has participants teach each other, and ends with a proof that is kept.
- Skills
- Steer
Your first attempt, unaided
Ask Copilot Chat to prepare a ten-minute exercise to introduce a colleague to the tool. Read what it suggests, then ask yourself what a real beginner would do with it, alone, in a room.
Training your colleagues does not consist of showing Copilot Chat for an hour. The workshop that works has people try before explaining, has them produce in pairs on a fictional document, has one pair teach another, then ends with a task redone unaided and kept as proof. The plan below is timed and ready to run with six to ten people.
1Three facilitation rules and a timed run sheet
Three facilitation rules carry the whole workshop. Have people try before you explain: someone who has got stuck on the task listens to the explanation differently. Useful feedback says what to correct, not well done: "a stated length is missing" moves things on, "that is good" does nothing. And whoever explains remembers: having a pair present their prompt to another pair beats a reminder from the facilitator.
You are not a substitute trainer. You are the person on the team who makes the others autonomous, on a task they really do. Here is the plan.
Minutes Sequence Instruction Visible deliverable 0 to 5 Hook A real task of the department, announced; everyone checks the green shield Goal on the board 5 to 12 Cold attempt "Have this fictional report summarised as you would on your own" Prompt saved, never graded 12 to 20 Micro-lesson The four ingredients, a weak prompt and a strong prompt projected A one-page memo 20 to 33 Exercise in pairs Rewrite the cold attempt prompt, run it, compare Prompt and output 33 to 43 Teach Each pair explains its prompt to another pair, which scores it with the grid Grid filled in 43 to 50 Error hunt A projected output contains two inventions; find them and say how to check Errors marked 50 to 57 Unaided proof Redo the task on a variant, alone, and compare with the cold attempt Final prompt and output kept 57 to 60 Transfer "Where will you use this this week?" One sentence per person 
Diagram "A one-hour workshop in eight sequences"Diagram generated by AI and reviewed 2Building the doctored minutes for the exercise
The workshop material is prepared with Copilot Chat. The facilitator needs a fictional report containing difficulties to spot.
Weak prompt.
Create an exercise on Copilot for my team.Copilot proposes a generic quiz on "artificial intelligence at work", with no document, no link to the job, unusable in the room.
Strong prompt.
Write a fictional 400-word meeting report for a training workshop of a purchasing department. Context: monthly supplier review committee, six participants with invented names, no real company. The text must contain: two decisions taken, three actions including one without an owner, an unresolved disagreement between two participants, and a date inconsistent with the rest. Do not flag these elements in the text. Then provide, separately, the list of planted elements with their position. Format: report in prose, then list.Copilot delivers a credible report and, separately, the list of the five elements to spot. The facilitator has their exercise document and their answer key.
What changes. The prompt describes the audience and the job, so the document looks like the participants' daily work. The planted elements turn an ordinary summary into an exercise in judgement. The separate answer key gives the facilitator what they need to run the error hunt without improvising.
3Write the run sheet of your own workshop
Prepare your own workshop. Here is the starting prompt, to be improved:
"Prepare a one-hour workshop on Copilot for my colleagues."
Add the audience (job, number, level), the department's recurring task that will serve as the common thread, the eight sequences of the plan with their durations, the fictional document to produce with its planted elements, and the three-criterion grid the pairs will use to score each other. Ask for all of it in a table then a list of materials. Then run the workshop, and collect one sentence of feedback per participant.
Self-assessment grid: (a) every sequence has a duration, an instruction and a deliverable; (b) one sequence has a participant teach another; (c) participants leave with a kept final prompt and output.
4The attendee who lets Copilot do the exercise
During the "your turn" sequence, one participant pastes the whole exercise brief into Copilot Chat: "Here is a training exercise, do it for me." Thirty seconds later he has a tidy prompt, a plausible output and the best score in the room on the pairs' grid. What should have been seen: he framed nothing, judged nothing, steered nothing. The workshop measured Copilot, not the participant, and he will leave unable to do it again on his own on Monday morning. The real risk is the illusion of mastery, for him and for the facilitator alike. Correction: design the exercise so that it cannot be delegated. Ask for the starting prompt and the final prompt side by side, with one sentence per added block saying why. Have each pair present its output to another pair, which asks two questions about the choices made. Add a criterion to the grid: "the author explains, without reading notes, why each block is there". Rule to remember: assess the trace of the reasoning, never the output alone.
5Quiz
Three questions, instant feedback. Each option comes with an explanation.
6Proof of mastery
Submit your timed workshop plan (sequences, durations, instructions, fictional document used), then, after running it, one sentence of feedback from two participants and what you will change next time. If you are learning alone, replace that feedback with your own run sheet played again after 24 hours and the list of sequences you shortened.
Criteria
What you wrote at the start of the lesson
Going further
The workshop's micro-lesson takes up the four ingredients; the error hunt relies on the failure modes, and the human resources card provides job prompts for an HR audience. The next lesson, on the usage policy, gives the document to hand to participants. The Copilot prompts for managers sheet provides the prompts to hand to the team leaders who leave the workshop.
Frequently asked questions
Must every participant have Copilot Chat?
Yes, with their work account and the green shield shown. Copilot Chat is included in Microsoft 365 business and education plans without an additional licence. Have access checked the day before; in pairs, one computer is enough.
How many participants?
Six to ten, in pairs. Beyond that, the peer-teaching sequences become impossible for a single facilitator to follow, and individual feedback, which does most of the learning, disappears.
Can I put screenshots of Copilot Chat in my slides?
Yes, for teaching purposes, citing the source and the date, and after anonymising any real name or document. Microsoft brands are written in nominative use, without a logo, without implying any affiliation.
What if Copilot Chat is slowed down during the workshop?
Microsoft states that standard access, without a paid licence, can be temporarily restricted at times of high demand. Prepare outputs saved in advance for the demonstration and the error hunt, so that the workshop does not depend on the service.