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Villages and communities are complex learning organizations. Since 1988, villagers in the south (third world) have been encouraged through participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques to take responsibility for analyzing their own issues and develop action plans. PRA represents an empowering approach whereby the villagers become the teachers, their ideas and data are collected visually by facilitators. Villagers analyze their own problems and chose the changes and change strategies they want. The developments in this field have taken place in Africa, Asia and Latin America and now consultants from these areas are visiting the so‐called “developed world” to teach us these participatory techniques, many of which are transferable to urban and organizational settings. Aims to describe observations of a “train the facilitator” course rub by Nepalese for Nepalese Government workers who will work with villagers.

Describes an experiential learning approach to teaching a first‐year organizational behaviour course, using an innovative “study buddy” system, and assessed by interactive workshop reports, case study and examination. Concludes that the approach is highly appropriate for organizational behaviour studies adding to the students′ array of learning strategies. It has also proved particularly valuable to foreign students.

Many innovations have taken place in the teaching‐learning strategies for organisational behaviour (OB), in the School of Management over the past 18 months. This paper describes the impetus for these changes (i.e. budget pressures) and the search for alternative teaching‐learning strategies suitable for organisational behaviour. It documents the journey of lecturers, part‐time staff and students who took part in this adventure. The change process involved a team of eight full‐time and ten part‐time staff members and over 800 students in a multicultural environment. During the first meeting, students had to negotiate their roles, desirable group norms and the gradations of penalties they would use if these ground rules were not adhered to. Each week the roles of facilitator, facilitator’s buddy, time‐keeper and scribe were rotated. Students learnt to work with “dominators”, “quiet members”, “social loafers”, “poor timekeepers”. Some learnt to confront conflict, others decided to ignore it. Student assignments included a creative learning log and a report describing in depth what they learnt themselves and working in groups and relating their experiences to models and theories of organisational behaviour.

Discusses the use of “now‐what” sessions to end workshops, using processes that are both empowering and ethical for facilitators and participants. It is necessary for the facilitator of these sessions to choose suitable activities with care and forethought, always taking into account the aims of the session and the needs of the participants.

Aims to describe a variety of journal‐writing processes and how they have been used with students in a graduate course in human resource development; describes possible causes of learning and writing blocks and how they can be overcome; evaluates the creative journal process by describing advantages, disadvantages and issues from both the students′ and the lecturers′ perspectives; and offers suggestions for people who use the journal process.