All of these opportunities to communicate in groups of varying sizes is conducive to a successful workshop, particularly if it is lengthy and the group will benefit from variation. Nothing more embarrassing than having your wireless mic run out of charge or needing to update your software mid-meeting. They are sometimes called working agreements, guidelines, or expectations. Successful workshops live or die on the level of participant engagement. All Rights Reserved. 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 … Advice for Setting Ground Rules. Many experts think remote facilitation and the running of online workshops is going to be increasingly common and important in the future. Notice that most of them are just as applicable in face-to-face discussions. 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 … Mural effectively emulates many real-life workshop process with an online whiteboard, sticky notes and the creation of lists, charts, diagrams and more. They do this by guiding groups through a process, helping to develop understanding, and improve participation and collaboration. You might consider employing a remote design sprint or open space style format. Establishing ground rules with your learners, whether in a group or a one to one basis will help underpin appropriate behaviour and respect throughout their time with you, and help the sessions run smoothly. 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. These constraints can sometimes mean that individuals or teams have less time to make their case or discuss concerns that would otherwise enable them to align. 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. 2. Furthermore, organizations with an undeveloped or non-existent online/video communication culture require special consideration. 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. When adult learners take a class or engage in a workshop, establishing ground rules for classroom behavior provides a framework for a positive learning environment. 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. We’d love to hear from you in the comments! If people need to prepare something before arriving, make this explicit. 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. 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. Just remember to keep the smiley faces away from academic papers. 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. 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. Stories behind workshop plans, post-its and markers. Be forgiving. Remember that choosing the right workshop methodology and process is as vital in an online space as in a live setting. Use workshop planning tools such as SessionLab to create a workshop agenda that is right for your purpose and participants. ... Set ground rules upfront When first meeting as a group, one important task to accomplish is to establish ground rules as a group. Be present, maintain awareness and keep your facilitator hat on, even if you’re working from home in your pajamas. Increase participation and the sharing of idea… Ground rules are very important when you teach, because they lay down the main rules for the lesson. 2. 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. It can be easy to fall into the trap of sitting in front of a computer and forgetting all of our facilitation techniques and expertise. Video conferencing software such as Zoom is likely to be the bare minimum of your needs, but there are many tools available to use when it comes to working collaboratively and communicating effectively in an online workshop. The reality of remote working and running an online workshop or virtual meeting is that sometimes, people will have connection issues or technical problems. The benefits of having a remote team – diversity of thought, high talent pool – are also benefits you can lean into when designing your outcomes. Ground rules should be established at the beginning of a course, and the instructor should explain the purpose they serve (for example, to ensure that discussions are spirited and passionate without descending into argumentation, to ensure that everyone is heard… Give people clear advice on what they need for the meeting and plenty of notice so they can work from somewhere with good internet and have their equipment in order. Think again about your goals and outcomes and choose your participants and number of workshops based on what you learn here. The education and business fields are going crazy over it, books are written about it, and service designers, creative agencies, career coaches, trainers and facilitators are using it.…, This guide will show you the behind the scenes design of a train the trainer course. Ground rules establish how meetings will be run, how team members are expected to interact, and what behaviors are acceptable & unacceptable. It’s likely that not everyone can make it to your remote workshop, particularly if your team is globally distributed and works across several time zones. This challenge is surmountable in remote workshops and online meetings. 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. If people need to learn a tool to contribute to the meeting or create a log-in to a new video conferencing app, make sure this is done ahead of the workshop. Consider setting the following ground rules for virtual training sessions: Communicate professionally with others Example Workshop Ground Rules (Principles: Guidelines for Participation) Reference Chapter 6 in Requirements by Collaboration by Ellen Gottesdiener, Addison-Wesley, 2002. 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. Form is being submitted, please wait a bit. Remote facilitation often requires the spinning of multiple plates and while this is doable, every extra task or window you add to the equation creates the possibility of stress or mistakes. The most common type of ground rule for meetings is a request for participants to … Running courses or training for your remote team likely includes lots of asynchronous learning and use of collaboration tools. Having a co-facilitator in the room during hybrid meetings can also be useful when it comes to managing the group and keeping everyone engaged. Ground rules, or group norms, are used to set an agreed-upon level of behavior that will guide how the participants will interact with one another. Cite your sources. Everyone talking at once is not an effective strategy so think about using text chat to filter questions and have a moderator pass the most prescient over for the group to discuss. Using polls with your participants can be an effective way of getting the feedback you need quickly and efficiently. Most online meeting tools allow the administrator to control the audio of individual recipients. It is also easy to get lots of people together without issue. 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! For people with young families, disabilities or who live in remote parts of the world, remote workshops enable access to things they might otherwise be excluded from,In online workshops or remote meetings, people who would otherwise not be able to attend a physical event can get involved. Will you want to include breakout sessions, record the session, or have robust text chat features? The facilitation process often asks for the inclusion of several exercises or activities in order to lead teams through a process effectively and to get them thinking in innovative or creative ways. As a result of the session, the group should agree on follow-up actions and there will be some key takeaways from the session that should be reiterated. It’s very easy for someone to get mixed up on time and miss the start of the workshop. As more and more classes include online discussion components, it becomes more and more important for instructors to understand the rules of etiquette that, when followed, help make the individual postings easy to follow, keep the conversation thread … 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. If everyone in an organization should go through the workshop process, perhaps you need to run several separate workshops. One of the main purposes of any workshop is to align the participants around a common goal or purpose. We love to see your personality shine through in online classes. Some tools such as Zoom have the option for private chats in parallel with the main session. Here are just a few things you may have to facilitate online for your team as they work from home, co-working spaces or elsewhere. Zoom, for example, supports breakout sessions, or an alternative would be to told multiple small meeting rooms on your video conferencing software. Creating and running a large scale workshop in-person can be challenging, particularly when it comes to logistics for distributed teams or large organizations. It features the uploading of images, creating notes and drawing in different colors and sizes in freehand mode and has everything you need to support a well-designed process in a virtual space. Thank you so very much for making this experience great! So long as you take the time to intelligently plan and design your online workshop or virtual meeting, there’s no reason you can’t be creative and use fun exercises to keep your participants engaged! While it’s worth asking your participants to self regulate, to mute their mics when not speaking, to be respectful and limit cross-talking, it’s also a good idea to have the tools to mute all and control the audio of the room. In-person workshops often have breaks every two to three hours. 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. Exercises that require large group discussions can be unwieldy in an online setting and breakout sessions can be difficult to facilitate and move between as a facilitator. Remote participants could be distracted by what’s going on in their other screen or by their physical environment, so it is important to agree on ground rules to keep participants focused, just like in a live meeting scenario. Tallinn, Estonia All workshops or meetings benefit from careful planning and design. • Free software upgrades and enhancements. Carefully planning and designing an online workshop is only half the battle. You will also want to share the outcomes of the workshop not only with those people who couldn’t attend but will find the information useful. In virtual meetings or remote workshops, engagement can be a challenge. 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. Advice for Setting Ground Rules. Technical issues are likely to arise and though you shouldn’t allow your session to be dictated by these, it’s worth planning ahead for the occurrence of such issues.Send the technical requirements of the workshop or meeting to your participants well in advance. The key here is to facilitate contributions and collaborations from your team without getting bogged down. Ground rules are monitored by the whole group, for the group. Asking yourself these questions will help you hone in on and select the most appropriate ground rules … Remote facilitation isn’t just the future: it’s happening right now. The effectiveness of any meeting or workshop is often predicated on the skill of the person facilitating and the process they have designed. Knowing the answer to these questions goes back to the design and planning stage of your workshop. If so, then you’ve experienced this firsthand. 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. 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. Global teams might require multiple workshops in order to reach everyone that needs to be reached without making someone log-in at midnight. Considerations for Establishing Ground Rules. This ensures that the message you intend to convey is received correctly. Display the ground rules so that they’re visible to everyone. 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. Establishing ground rules is a proven … Go outside, meditate or grab a snack – whatever it is, giving the brain a moment to rest is imperative for successful workshops and keeping everyone at the top of their game. Good facilitation is all about managing the group through a process and facilitating effective communication – being able to do so quickly and efficiently can help ensure the workshop is a success. As much as possible, ensure that every participant has their own device. Remember that getting people to the meeting or workshop is part of the preparation process. Remember that in order to facilitate this, you will want to let the participants know this is expected of them and to prepare accordingly so they can feel comfortable doing so.What this doesn’t mean is reprimanding people working from home for their kids or pets walking in, but advising them to take steps to help the workshop be productive. There’s nothing more frustrating than hearing that … These might include daily-stand-ups, all-hands meetings, discussions and more. b) Drinks need lids (you'd think it was a given, but after enough spills on my training … Ideally, ground rules should … By keeping your notes, materials, links, and agenda all in one place, you can help ensure the smooth running of any online workshop or meeting. Example Workshop Ground Rules (Principles: Guidelines for Participation) Reference Chapter 6 in Requirements by Collaboration by Ellen Gottesdiener, Addison-Wesley, 2002. Were full group discussions as effective as more focused breakout groups? All of the skills you need to be an effective facilitator in a live setting still apply in a remote workshop. In virtual meetings or remote workshops, they can be completely derailing. but because almost all have ended with product sales, I realized that their main purpose is to sell the products … We had such a great experience this summer with your online courses. Consider setting the following ground rules for virtual training … Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools to make your life easier when…, Have you heard of Design Thinking? The facilitator is the person in the room that makes alignment happen and depending on the purpose of the workshop, team alignment can be the major takeaway from the process.The alignment process is more difficult in remote or virtual environments Open communication is more difficult to facilitate, with cross-talking or an unwillingness to speak up in a remote meeting often cropping up. 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