24. DIFFERENT EXERCISE LEVELS *
The most important aspect of exercises is to allow the participants to improve their newly acquired skills by working on a topic on their own. To improve their skills, the exercise must be located at the upper edge of the participant's current skill level. Because this is usually not the case, there are some participants who consider the exercises overly simple (and do not learn anything) and some, that consider the exercises too difficult (and are frustrated, because they do not get them done; they do not learn anything, either).
Therefore, provide exercises of different difficulty levels, different approaches, different topics et cetera. Allow every participant to choose from these exercises, and solve those that he thinks are important for him to improve his skills. Doing this, everybody is successful and the motivation is kept on a high level.
Although we generally expect participants to be willing to learn, it has to be mentioned that this pattern only works if the participants really want to improve their skill, and not just try to survive the seminar with a few efforts as possible.
A problem with this pattern arises, if people overrate themselves and try too difficult exercises. Especially in a group, a participant might be tempted to try a too difficult exercise because the neighbor/friend also tries the more complicated one. A participant will sometimes have to admit that he has to step back.
The pattern can be implemented by giving participants a collection of exercises to choose from marked with a "skill level", or you could put a collection of exercise sheets on a table, and everybody can choose whatever exercise he wants to work on.