Here are the steps you should take to prepare for facilitating an online workshop or virtual meeting. On a related note, it’s also vital that you take into account the timezone your participants are located in and find the right time to hold the remote workshop. Improving audio quality and limiting external noise can help ensure the meeting continues without a hitch.It’s also worth communicating any additional needs – software, meeting links or requirements – clearly and well in advance of the workshop or meeting. Having to update mid-meeting can throw you off your groove as a facilitator and is something worth preparing for. 12 Ground Rules for Online Discussions: by Peter Roper 1. Ground rules hold students accountable for their behavior. It is easy for written text to be misread and misunderstood. It works really well on mobile devices with a streamlined user experience and the free version allows you to create two polls and five quiz questions per presentation. Carefully planning and designing an online workshop is only half the battle. I signed-up for their newsletter and online courses/webinars, and today I receive ten to fifteen emails from them with new webinars, secret strategies and so on. Our students completed the class with minimal assistance. Working from remote workplaces or from home is often touted as the future of work. The Core Rules of Netiquette — Excerpted from Netiquette by Virginia Shea — Albion.com. The key here is to facilitate contributions and collaborations from your team without getting bogged down. By factoring in the technical aspects into the design and planning stage, you can ensure you get this right and don’t run into issues later. However, any class can benefit from ground rules … Ensure everyone attending the workshop or meeting has the necessary tools installed and has been given time to get up to speed. benefits for companies moving to distributed workforces. Record the workshop so people who can’t attend can also benefit or so you and your team can review important points and improve your process later on. Demand for Online Learning Remains at All-Time High, Tips for Students on How to Adapt to Virtual Learning, Staying Motivated in the Winter Months: Tips for Students, Registration Now Open for Spring 2021 Online School, Lessons Schools and Educators Will Learn from the Pandemic, Spring 2021 Registration Opens in December, Online High School Indiana Districts Need in a Pandemic, Celebrating 10 Years of Online High School at Achieve Virtual, NCAA Initial Eligibility Center Approved Courses, Dual Credits Offered Through Vincennes University. - Team ethnicity: Consider the ethnicity of … Once you’ve recovered, there are some actions you will want to take to ensure the good work of the session is capitalized on and can continue outside of the workshop space. Increase participation and the sharing of idea… Mural effectively emulates many real-life workshop process with an online whiteboard, sticky notes and the creation of lists, charts, diagrams and more. You can use Stormz to ask your participants to give their input on questions you generate in the app, generate ideas and make collective decisions directly from their laptop, tablet or mobile phone. Though finding the right exercises for remote workshops can be tricky, they can still be vital for a successful workshop – they just need to be carefully chosen and adjusted for remote teamsRemember that tasks often take longer in an online workshop so plan accordingly. Some aspects of the online workshop will be exactly the same as the one you run in the flesh, whereas others simply take too long or require rethinking to be effective in an online setting. Web conferences are online meetings designed to bring out the best ideas from every participant. Let’s take a look at some of the tools that can help when running a remote workshop!Mural is a digital workspace that enables real-time visual collaboration for remote teams. However, any class can benefit from ground rules that set expectations for … Have you been wondering about: Why create a train the trainer program at your organisation?How to design a train the trainer course?What are the essential ingredients of a train the trainer course? Share time so that all can participate. Our post on the essential skills a facilitator needs to be effective can be helpful as a refresher or learning tool.Arguably, the restrictions and challenges of an online meeting or workshops ask that a remote facilitator pay even more attention and be proactive in handling issues before and when they arise than in a live setting. They can prevent issues of incivility. Tip: Read everything out loud before you send it. The great thing is that you can instantly visualize everyone’s opinion and display the results in real-time to the group. A virtual meeting or remote workshop is not only more accessible than in-person meetings, they are often cheaper for all involved too. Are there any techniques or tools you’d like to share? This means that they can contribute to the chat channel and ask questions, see necessary slides or material clearly and can mute themselves when necessary. You know the needs of your team the best, so tailor this to their needs, though be sure to give your participants some idea of what the workshop will involve so they can prepare accordingly. Even when running a workshop online or virtual meeting, everyone will be logging in from somewhere. Display the ground rules so that they’re visible to everyone. Stormz is an application designed for professional facilitators and enables you to design and facilitate collective intelligence sessions to generate innovative ideas, choose the most promising ones, turn them into tangible solutions and make informed decisions. It’s worth noting that knowing your audience and their set-up is imperative when beginning to design a session. If you’re working with an external group, having a co-facilitator from that team can ensure those people have a voice they trust helping to guide them through the process. Here are some of the main benefits of running an online workshop or virtual meeting. The key in those circumstances is having rules which allow everyone to contribute, maintain focus and mean you can manage recipients effectively. Recognise the various steps of the Setting Ground Rules process; Develop a set of ground rules for your team/organisation; Please note – This is a full set of 1 Hour Training Bubble materials provided free to showcase the product range. It helps your participants to feel engaged, which is especially important for larger remote teams. Don’t let a simple issue derail your workshop – test everything! Design your workshop with your purpose, team and the restraints and benefits of remote working in mind for the best results. Remember that any tool should be used in service of the group and the requirements of the process you have designed – if the tool helps that process and the group achieve success, use it. SessionLab is designed for planning and designing workshops and meetings, and by using our tool to craft a great remote workshop with ease can really help make them a success. This is true for any facilitation scenario but is especially true in remote settings where personal cues and body language are more difficult to receive and the technological tools can present some boundaries in communication. Here are some best practices on the how to’s of preparing and implementing ground rules into your next training … Think again about your goals and outcomes and choose your participants and number of workshops based on what you learn here. As much as possible, ensure that every participant has their own device. If you’re working in-house or with your own team, take some time to help your team communicate better online. Poor audio or video equipment, internet quality or loud workspaces can all contribute to lowering the quality of your digital workshop.This is a challenge that cannot ever be 100% mitigated, though you can take steps to prevent or limit the impact of technical issues on your remote workshop. Remember that remote workshops do not allow for the same level of non-verbal communication as live meetings: reading body language, for example, is difficult to impossible to achieve online. In these scenarios, online sessions are not only a bonus, but they’re a necessity for teams that wish to be productive while also being distributed. The challenge here is how to create space in the agenda for those kinds of breakout sessions or small group discussions and how to implement them in practice. It is almost a given that throughout the remote workshop, your participants will speak up and share things with the group, but think about how you would like them to do that. • Software training classes. Perfect for remote working! As more organizations and teams become remotely distributed and have staff spread out all over the world, the need for facilitators to help facilitate workshops or meetings in a remote setting is growing. 1. Use ground rules and ideation rules to manage individual and group behavior during meetings and workshops. Ask each team member to propose 1-2 ground rules — Ground rules are most effective when they come from the team, not from the leader. Deliver good audio quality. Some online courses can be delivered entirely on demand, with pre-recorded materials and training software. The cost of flying large teams out for live meetings or bringing together people across time zones can be high, and using online tools to hold meetings or workshops can make this process easier and cost-effective. Ensuring these are effective and well facilitated is imperative to helping remote teams feel connected, be productive and contribute to the success of the organization. Set-up might simply involve sharing a screen and asking participants to do tasks using their own materials at home. Consider setting the following ground rules for virtual training sessions: Communicate professionally with others Working remotely on any project or task comes with its own challenges. Your written communication should be professional and reflect proper writing style. James, I totally agree with you. Don’t be in a position where you invite those in-person participants to contribute questions or share files and do not have the equipment or space to facilitate that process effectively. Your exercises and methods must be tailored to whether you are working with entirely remote participants or a co-located team with a couple of virtual members calling in. Working in traditional settings has its own ruleset and etiquette and making the transition to working from home and dialing into online meetings can be difficult to adjust. Please follow the link to view other 1 Hour Training … Staying on time in a meeting is always a consideration, though discussions and activities often take longer in an online setting. Sign up for free. Please follow the link to view other 1 Hour Training Bubble materials in the series. Using whiteboards and flipcharts to illustrate key concepts and conclusions, using tons of post-it notes and helping a group create their own resources or prototypes on paper are all essential tools in live workshops. Remote workshops where staff can collaborate and connect, regardless of physical location, helps build connections and a company culture that persists outside of the workshop. 1. Be respectful. Be present, maintain awareness and keep your facilitator hat on, even if you’re working from home in your pajamas. Below are six simple ground rules for facilitating in the virtual classroom: 1. If it gets in the way, reconsider.Want some specifics? Just as organizations are recognizing the value of remote teams and a distributed workforce, so too are they waking up to the benefits of online workshops and remote meetings. The facilitator is there to guide the process of deriving and checking the group’s ground rules. Sign up for our monthly Achieve Newsletter >>>. Certainly you shouldn’t avoid being funny. Design your agenda to feature breaks and do not be tempted to remove them. “Netiquette” refers to rules of etiquette that apply to online communication. With this comprehensive post, we'd like to…, ©2018 TrainedOn OÜ It is also easy to get lots of people together without issue. Your participants will thank you for it!Have any thoughts on remote facilitation? Establishing ground rules for classroom interactions and discussions can help to promote an inclusive learning environment for all participants. Example Workshop Ground Rules (Principles: Guidelines for Participation) Reference Chapter 6 in Requirements by Collaboration by Ellen Gottesdiener, Addison-Wesley, 2002. Knowing the answer to these questions goes back to the design and planning stage of your workshop. In a remote setting, having pre-recorded videos of walkthroughs, tutorials or product demonstrations can not only save time but reduce pressure in the session. This can be cumbersome and there is the obvious issue of teams transitioning into small groups and then reconvening. In the days leading up to running the remote workshop or virtual meeting, there are a few things you want to do to prepare. Whether you’re running an online workshop for the first time or have delivered heaps of virtual meetings, we’ve put together a guide to help you improve your design and planning work. Advice for Setting Ground Rules. Workshop or meeting etiquette can be vital to its success, and facilitators often ensure that the expectations for behavior and etiquette are outlined before or at the beginning of a session.Enforcing this in the remote workshop if people get this wrong can be problematic and take up precious time, so be sure to make this very clear to all participants. Everything your participants have to say about the workshop, your remote facilitation skills and their experience of the process is helpful when it comes to improving and delivering more effective remote workshops in the future. Will you want to include breakout sessions, record the session, or have robust text chat features? 3. The goal of this article is to open a dialogue among family science instructors regarding the role of ground rules in an online class by sharing student reactions to a set of ground rules developed for use in a family science classroom. A little bit of structure will get you DONE, fast ... Next Up: Our LIVE ONLINE facilitation training beginning August 17th, and more On-site facilitation training coming up in Nashville, Seattle, DC and more... Facilitation Training … In virtual meetings or remote workshops, they can be completely derailing. A combination of stationary and virtual teams would require additional ground rules. If your exercise requires drawing or the use of pens and paper, be sure to communicate this ahead of the workshop. Depending on the design and purpose of your workshop, you may want to have a smaller, focused group in order to achieve your goals. Running a remote workshop from a loud coffee shop isn’t a great idea, and so take the time to find the right location that has the environment, tools, and space you need to be effective when facilitating online. Be kind, be considerate and be patient. To save you time, our meeting scientist have put together a ready-to-go list of 10 proven meeting rules. Remember that the best workshops are bespoke in nature and really take into account the needs and makeup of the group being facilitated. The Ground Rules Contractor Support Plan will help you learn to use our Earthwork Estimating Software to its fullest capacity, allowing you to work effectively and efficiently. Learn how to be a better remote facilitator and take advantage of the opportunities and inclusivity that the online workshop space enables. Asynchronous communication and collaboration tools are key factors of any remote team, but there is enormous value in real-time workshops that are expertly facilitated. Online courses or virtual training sessions benefit from the use of facilitation techniques and can help you add value to your offering in the online course marketplace. The size of the group, format of the workshop and the technical stability of everyone involved can really dictate which approach is the best when it comes to solving this issue.At the design stage, try including methods which require less live chat and more individual brainstorming and small-group work, or use practical activities such as dot-voting to effectively timebox and minimize unrelated discussions. Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools to make your life easier when…, Have you heard of Design Thinking? ... Set ground rules … Effective communication is not just about words – body language, facial cues, and vocal reassurance all factor into making productive discussions.Getting everyone on webcam so that you can all see each other is a great way to increase engagement in a remote workshop and help people feel connected. Solo work with short presentations and group feedback can be very effective. Participate: This is a shared learning environment. A Ground Rule by any other name may possibly smell less. Consider setting the following ground rules for virtual training … Are you facilitating workshops, meetings, or training sessions regularly? Such ground rules are especially important when discussing controversial or otherwise challenging topics. Cite your sources. Most of what you would do in a traditional workshop becomes a little more difficult in a remote setting. Yes, grammar and spelling matter. Online courses or virtual training sessions benefit from the use of facilitation techniques and can help you add value to your offering in the online course marketplace. These resources are often kept up for the duration of the session, to be referred to again in later exercises or to be reflected upon.The only limits on creating and displaying these in a live setting is wall space or resources – being able to walk around and move between grouped content is a massive bonus to the live meeting setting.In an online setting, remote facilitators need to be much more conscious of how to utilize the available space and the number of artifacts or printouts they choose to supply. Our library of 700+ facilitation techniques can help you find the right exercises for your purpose and timeframe, and by using our planning tool, you can easily adjust the schedule and deliver a remote workshop that works for all of your participants. Will your participants need access to shared files and materials, and how will those be distributed? It has been wonderful working with you, Claudia, and your summer school program. Copyright 2020. Asking yourself these questions will help you hone in on and select the most appropriate ground rules … You may find that your workshop chooses to remote breakout sessions altogether and instead find other ways to create your desired outcomes. Set ground rules about live discussions that means everyone can stay focused. This kind of visual approach to facilitation can be very effective and helps engage participants in the process and can provide a single space for you to work in with your remote participants. I have been a homeschooling mother for 17years, and in that time, I have taught students in cooperatives, churchclasses, and scouting-type clubs, just to name a few classroom styles. Whenever you hope to facilitate conversations on social justice concerns, whether preparing for a one-hour workshop or weaving such discussions into a year-long class, a vital first step is the development of guidelines for participation. If you are co-facilitating with another facilitator or with a client or manager, it can also be difficult to have a side conversation midway through the workshop. Workshops are, by design, highly collaboratively and require the deployment of varied techniques and processes to make them effective. Retrieved 26 August 2015, from http://madisoncollege.edu/online-etiquette-guide, Rinaldi, A. Furthermore, all facilitators know that a process often needs to be adjusted on the fly and in remote workshops, choosing when and how to do so requires some consideration.Here are our tips on running an online workshop or meeting: Staring at a screen often takes more mental energy that a face-to-face meeting. Include a section on etiquette, technological requirements and any other expectations you have. Many experts think remote facilitation and the running of online workshops is going to be increasingly common and important in the future. Remember that choosing the right workshop methodology and process is as vital in an online space as in a live setting. All collaborative processes generate lots of data, insight, and outcomes, particularly if those sessions take a whole day or longer. Just as all communication skills need to be developed and polished, so too does online or virtual communication. Studies show that remote workers are happier and more productive than their office working counterparts and the benefits for companies moving to distributed workforces are great too! As companies become more and more distributed, teams and organizations will spend more time in online workshops and remote meetings. Use the experience and wisdom of your team – just give them some advance warning if possible! Well designed and expertly facilitated workshops can be one of your best organizational tools to solve complex problems, create innovation or drive growth. It is not enough to login and read the discussion thread … SAMPLE GROUND RULES FOR TRAINING 1. Before posting your question to a discussion board, check if … The nature of virtual workshops asks that facilitators use online tools as a matter of course. First, take a deep breath and congratulate yourself! Share all relevant information – If members of the … Call them what you will – meeting norms, team agreements, rules of engagement, or conditions for success – when it comes to effective meetings, it’s necessary to set up a few ground rules before you get started. Asking yourself these questions will help you hone in on and select the most appropriate ground rules … It’s very easy for someone to get mixed up on time and miss the start of the workshop. While texting, textspeak can b gr8 4 ur friends. And join 70,000+ professionals already using SessionLab. I work with my remote team and I must say these techniques really work! My daughter is very interested in taking online classes with your academy. Like all meetings, virtual meetings should have a clear reason for being run and a specific goal in mind. Simply put: can you afford to miss out on the benefits of workshops just because your team or organisation is remotely distributed? If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it online either. For globally distributed organizations, the cost of bringing an entire team together for a workshop can become extremely expensive. Use online tools such as online polling to make the process more efficient and consider allowing anonymous voting if you’re having trouble getting people to speak up. Tes Global Ltd is registered in England (Company No 02017289) with its registered office at 26 Red Lion Square London WC1R 4HQ. 5. One of the strengths of online workshops is that you can invite people regardless of geographic location or other limiting factors. In the opinions of many facilitators, online workshops should be shorter than live workshops by design, and as such, you may want to run a sequence of workshops or remote meetings in order to achieve your goals without mentally exhausting your participants.Remember that if you’re running a workshop for a global team, timezones should be considered. ... (Moreover, selected training courses include a month's free subscription to this course, anyway, so there's no risk for you to try one instead of the other.) Achieve Virtual Academy. Remember that good facilitation is always conducted in the service of the group and the underlying purpose. That said, not every workshop or meeting needs everyone to be present and in fact, limiting the participants for certain workshops can increase their efficacy. In this post, we’ll explain what remote facilitation is, why it’s useful, and guide you through the process of designing and running great online workshops and remote meetings. Design a schedule with plenty of breaks and a mix of tasks that keep people fresh.Try to include opportunities to step away from the computer and move around. While it is easier to say hurtful or disrespectful things without standing face-to-face … We especially do not have the time, as we did in the past, to come up with an original set of ground rules or an ‘event etiquette’ for each separate training course. In fact, Microsoft Teams set a one-day record for their platform and hosted 2.7 BILLION … Once you have nailed down what you need to make your workshop a success, you can then find the right tools, locations and processes to do so. Some tools such as Zoom have the option for private chats in parallel with the main session. Not only a single workshop, you can use in your organization a moment to recharge can help ensure efficacy. Chat features requirements and any other name may possibly smell less, Claudia, ground rules for online training even a couple 50. 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