What is "facilitation"

Facilitation \Fa*cil`i*ta"tion\, n. The act of facilitating or making easy.

1610s, noun of action from facilitate.

n. The act of facilitating or making easy.

1. n. the condition of being made easy (or easier); "social facilitation is an adaptive condition"

2. (neurophysiology) phenomenon that occurs when two or more neural impulses that alone are not enough to trigger a response in a neuron combine to trigger an action potential

3. act of assisting or making easier the progress or improvement of something

Facilitation in business, organizational development (OD), and in consensus decision-making refers to the process of designing and running a successful meeting.

Facilitation concerns itself with all the tasks needed to run a productive and impartial meeting. Facilitation serves the needs of any group who are meeting with a common purpose, whether it be making a decision, solving a problem, or simply exchanging ideas and information. It does not lead the group, nor does it try to distract or to entertain. A slightly different interpretation focuses more specifically on a group that is engaged in experiential learning. In particular this is associated with active learning and concepts of tutelary authority. This is covered in-depth in the research work of John Heron at the University of Surrey and the International Centre for Co-operative Inquiry.

Facilitation is any activity that makes tasks for others easy, or tasks that are assisted. For example:

• Facilitation is used in business and organizational settings to ensure the designing and running of successful meetings and workshops.
• Neural facilitation in neuroscience, is the increase in postsynaptic potential evoked by a 2nd impulse.
• Ecological facilitation describes how an organism profits from the presence of another. Examples are nurse plants, which provide shade for new seedlings or saplings (e.g. using an orange tree to provide shade for a newly planted coffee plant), or plants providing shelter from wind chill in arctic environments.