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Creators/Authors contains: "O’Brien, Caleb"

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  1. Communities facing complex social and environmental challenges may benefit from opportunities for collaborative learning. Place-based climate adaptation workshops, which help stakeholders to incorporate climate projections into site-specific adaptation strategies, are one space where learning can occur. We studied learning in eight facilitated climate adaptation workshops held in-person (n ¼ 2) and online(n ¼ 6) in the United States between 2021 and 2023. Workshops averaged 24participants and included state and local government employees, representatives from non-governmental organizations, interested citizens, academics, and others. We examined declarative, procedural, and relational learning and the processes through which knowledge was created and shared. We found evidence for learning across domains. Participants linked learning to a range of workshop elements, including collaborative workbooks, plenary presentations, and handouts. We found no meaningful differences between online and in-person workshops, suggesting that a range of workshop formats support meaningful learning. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications for understanding and fostering learning, 
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  2. Community efforts to consider climate change within local planning processes are increasingly common. Place-based climate adaptation workshops are commonly employed tools within these larger processes. The research, to date, on these phenomena has yielded mixed results, and the empirical evidence regarding what makes these workshops more or less effective has been mostly based on small samples in disparate contexts. In an effort to seek consensus regarding what factors lead to effective workshop outcomes, including participant learning and the motivation to take action; improved adaptation planning processes and implementation; and the development or strengthening of positive relationships between the participants, twenty-two experienced climate adaptation workshop facilitators participated in a Delphi study involving iterative surveys followed by focus groups. In this short report, we present a synthesis of consensus-based recommendations resulting from the Delphi study for enhancing place-based climate adaptation workshop outcomes. These recommendations address recruitment; fitting the local context; adequately preparing the participants; clarifying the objectives; facilitation strategies; promoting local leadership, efficacy and accountability; and providing post-workshop support. We discuss the role of these strategies in developing feelings of collective efficacy, local leadership and accountability through social learning. 
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