Obtaining Consent from Class Attendees

We started doing something in our classes to make sure we don’t put class attendees in an awkward situation when asking for their consent to show them something. We thought we should share it in case others find it helpful.

The situation we are trying to address happens when an attendee is practicing a hands-on skill after the instructors demo it on each other. The attendee calls an instructor over to help them or correct their technique.
In these situations, it is often helpful for the instructor to demonstrate something on the attendee or their practice partner. This may also involve the need for the instructor to touch one or more of the people involved. The instructor usually asks something like “Can I demo on you?”, “Can I touch you?”, etc. to obtain consent.

The problem that we felt is that this practice puts attendees on the spot to have to make the decision in front of us and potentially needing to tell us “no” to our faces. Sometimes the decision requires some discussion among the people involved. Having the instructor there makes it almost impossible to freely have that discussion. Because of class dynamics, all in all, it’s a well-meaning practice that may pressure people into consenting to something they don’t actually want.

What we started doing is, at the beginning of the class, we explain this problem to attendees, and we ask them (and give them time) to consider and discuss, in advance of calling us over, whether they are comfortable with the instructors demonstrating techniques on them or touching them.
We explain that if they call us over, we will ask them if they discussed and decided whether they would like us to demo on them. If they answer “yes”, we need them to also proactively tell us what we have their consent for. We explain that, if they then don’t tell us, we will assume they don’t want us to demo on them. In that case, the instructor could do their best to explain, demo on themself, call another instructor over to help demo, or whatever else they have available to them.
If the attendees somehow didn’t discuss it in the time we gave them to do so, we won’t demo on them unless they have that conversation without us, and then call us back to them.

That way, we never even have to ask them if we can demo on them, thereby saving them from having to tell us “no”. Instead, we only demo on them if they ask us to.

We found this practice to be well-received by the people we work with. We hope to see it improved by other educators.

If you have questions about this or would like to discuss it with us, please reach out.