Acting in Alignment
Participants surface and rank their core values through imagination and ordering tasks, then examine honestly where recent actions expressed or contradicted them, and commit to…
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Transition Makers Toolbox
openexplicit IDG relationpractice-based51 unique activities (54 pages; 3 published under two skills), 25 learning outcomes
Ready-to-use teaching activities for developing students' transformative ("inner development") skills in higher education, with learning outcomes and assessment suggestions. Reclassified onto the revised Inner Development Guide framework (Feb 2026).
transitionmakers.nl/ — IIS University of Amsterdam & EWUU alliance (TU/e, WUR, UU, UMC Utrecht)
License: Footer text says CC BY 4.0 but the badge links to CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — discrepancy flagged 2026-08-25; ask the IIS team which governs before republishing content.
From the collaboration doc
Proposed by Chris Wenna, Christine Wamsler.
“The target group here are University teachers. Similar to other toolboxes, it does not make the link to the separation to self, others, nature, unfortunately.” — Christine Wamsler
Tools from this source (51)
Adapting Response Patterns
Using Albert Ellis's ABC model (Activating event – Belief – Consequence), participants analyse their own automatic, self-sabotaging reactions under pressure, identify the unhelp…
Being Grateful
An introduction to gratitude practice: noticing and naming what is already present and good — in writing, jars, or rounds — shifting attention from scarcity to appreciation, wit…
Body Awareness
Across multiple sessions, participants train attention to their bodily and affective responses inside real learning and work situations — where concentration lives, how tension…
Brainstorming with Eureka
A structured brainstorm in explicit ideation and narrowing phases: teams break a complex problem down, generate freely on cards, then converge on a simple narrative, idea, or so…
Challenge your Beliefs
Participants surface limiting beliefs about change — "I have no influence anyway" — and actively transform them into empowering ones, working collectively and in pairs on how su…
Co-Designing Transition Experiments
With a printable card deck and practical guidelines, teams co-design transition experiments — innovation projects that start from a societal challenge and treat learning as the…
Conscious Consumption Quest
Participants investigate the global supply chains behind everyday products — tracing materials, labor, and impacts across the world — and confront what their own consumption pat…
Constructive Conversations
Practicing genuine dialogue with people who hold genuinely different views on complex problems: listening for the reasoning underneath, advocating one's own perspective without…
Creating New Metaphors
Groups examine the entrenched metaphors framing a complex issue (war on drugs, race to the top, footprint) and invent new metaphors that open different perspectives and options…
Cultivating Awe
A solo imagination-and-reflection journey designed to evoke awe — vastness, wonder, the sense of something larger than oneself — and then harvest what it shifts: meaning, apprec…
Deep Listening
Listening past the words: in pairs or small groups, the listener holds complete, non-judgmental attention — without inner censorship, rehearsing a reply, or steering — staying o…
Embracing Uncertainty
Through mapping, discussion, and metaphor drawing, groups engage both cognitively and emotionally with the dimensions of uncertainty — ambiguity, complexity, unpredictability —…
Enabling Co-Creation
Participants learn to facilitate co-creation sessions themselves: framing a real-life case, designing for inclusion and safety, hosting diverse stakeholders, and reflecting on w…
Enhancing Sensorial Connectedness
A day with a local ecosystem: participants engage it through their senses — observing, listening, touching, collecting in situ — and reflect on interdependence and appreciation…
Exchanging Perspectives
Structured rounds — inspired by Liberating Structures' Troika Consulting — in which participants voice and inhabit each other's perspectives on a complex or contested challenge,…
Experiencing Interdisciplinarity
Participants mind-map one real-world case from several disciplinary perspectives, then hunt for the connections — experiencing the difference between stacking disciplines side b…
Fostering Collaborative Creativity
Participants learn to lead brainstorming-centered co-creation themselves: hosting inclusive ideation, protecting wild ideas from early judgment, and steering groups toward break…
Fostering Resilience
Participants share real setback experiences and the strategies that got them through — first alone in writing, then in pairs, then harvested with the group — building both a per…
4D Mapping (Social Presencing Theater)
An embodied map of a whole social system: participants physically take the roles of its stakeholders — including marginal and non-human ones — arranging themselves as Sculpture…
Future Folktales
Over a multi-session arc, participants craft folktales told FROM a regenerative future — drawing on future visions to build narratives of being, not just technology — and tell t…
Imagining the Future
A guided exercise that first loosens the imagination into an expanded state and then invites a concrete envisioning of a desired future — held long enough to notice details, fee…
Inclusive Decision-Making
Group decision-making built on the Lewis Method of Deep Democracy: every voice is actively sought, the minority "no" is heard and its wisdom added to the proposal before decidin…
Inside-Outside Presence
Training simultaneous attentiveness: staying in contact with one's own inner state while remaining fully attentive to the surroundings and other people — practiced in exercises…
Intervision on Inner Development
Recurring peer-coaching sessions where participants bring their own inner-development questions — a skill they're working on, a pattern they've noticed — and coach each other wi…
Inviting Non-Human Stakeholders
Role-play that adds the missing chairs: participants embody non-human stakeholders — animals, rivers, trees, future ecosystems — inside a real case or project discussion, speaki…
Making Courageous Decisions
Participants practice recognizing fear in the moment of decision and acting on values anyway — informed by Theory U's letting-go and letting-come: releasing the safe option, all…
Mapping the Maze
Using the Transition Model Canvas, groups map a socio-technical transition — zero-emission mobility, circular textiles — across actors, dynamics, and intervention points, learni…
Navigating Uncertainty
A structured critical-thinking approach for deciding under uncertainty, built on evidence-based practice: groups work a complex decision through explicit steps — what is known,…
Onboarding in Transdisciplinary Collaboration
A team-forming opening for transdisciplinary projects: students, teachers, and external partners build meaningful connection before building work plans — sharing backgrounds, mo…
Participate as a Pro
Teams leave the classroom to connect with local actors and co-initiate real participation: engaging professionals directly with the people affected by their work, learning to se…
Poetic Motivations
Each participant drafts an "I poem" — a structured poem about identity and values ("I am… I believe… I carry…") — revealing the intrinsic motivations behind their engagement wit…
Positive Gossip
Pairs "gossip" about colleagues — strictly positively: telling stories of what someone did well, as if the person weren't listening. Rounds rotate so everyone gossips and is gos…
Positive Reframing
Participants take real negative framings — of the crisis, the project, the team's chances — and rework them into honest positive ones, testing the difference in energy and optio…
Purposeful Storytelling
A longer arc from inner values to shared story: participants identify what drives them, find like-minded peers, formulate shared values together, and craft a story that communic…
Restorative Dialogue
A repair practice for after classroom or team "hot moments": once a discussion has run too intense, the group returns to it deliberately — reflecting on what happened, exchangin…
Self Guided Assessment
Learners co-create the assessment criteria for an unconventional assignment: negotiating what quality means, defending judgments, and owning the standards they will be measured…
Shared Problem Definition
Stakeholder role-play in which participants from different disciplines and organisations must integrate their perspectives into one shared problem definition before any solution…
Socially Inclusive Research
Using the Wheel of Power and embodied exercises, participants examine power, privilege, and intersectionality in community research — locating themselves on the wheel, feeling w…
Socio-Spatial Mapping
On location, groups map a place's functional, natural, and social qualities — layering direct observation with local knowledge gathered on site — and integrate what the maps dis…
Step Up Your Courage
A scale-walking coaching format in triads: each person places their current courage level for a real challenge on a physical 1–10 line, walks the scale, visualises the journey u…
Team Check-in
An NVC-grounded ritual for teams: unhurried rounds in which each person expresses honestly how they are and what they need, received with empathic listening and no fixing — reco…
The 4E Model
Individually and in groups, participants apply the 4E model to move from ego-system to eco-system awareness — examining how a challenge looks from progressively wider circles of…
The Humble Mindset
Epistemic Recontextualisation in practice: confronted with new or challenging information (a video, a text), participants slow down and notice the emotions, beliefs, and assumpt…
The Power of Storytelling
Teams craft and deliver a compelling 90-second video pitch for their project, learning story structure, audience, and delivery — then face a playful market test (Monopoly money…
The Repeating Question
In pairs, walking: one person asks the same question again and again — "What do I find enjoyable and important in life?" — receiving each answer in silence and asking once more.…
The Superhero in Me
Through a superhero framing, participants explore their capabilities and challenges by casting them: strengths as a superhero, compensated weaknesses as a sidekick, and challeng…
The Volcano of Change
Structured visual dialogue on a complex issue using the Volcano metaphor (from the Technology of Participation family): groups move from surface events down through drivers to c…
Travelling Concepts
Duos take one concept — resilience, energy, sustainability — and trace how it travels between their disciplines, watching its meaning shift en route. Interdisciplinary conversat…
Triggering Team Trust
A team examines its own trust explicitly: assessing the fundamental elements — per Zenger & Folkman (2019): positive relationships, expertise and good judgment, consistency — ag…
Visual Narratives
Groups build a collective narrative about stress and translate it into object-based art installations — working with creative constraints, a scent, found objects, and feedback f…