Rethinking online workshops

The Educationalist. By Alexandra Mihai

Welcome to a new issue of “The Educationalist”! After attending countless online workshops, webinars and conference panels in the past months, I tought I’d give some more thought to what actually makes online interaction effective. Can we have active and fruitful engagement in the online space? My short answer is yes, but with some intentional planning and design efforts. You can read the long version of my thoughts on this topic below. This can obviously apply to different contexts, from the classroom, to professional development and even to conference sessions. I would like to hear your thoughts on it and of course please do share any tips and strategies for successful online workshops. Have a nice week!

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Ideas for designing effective engagement in online spaces

Workshops are meant to be an active, social, hands-on aproach to learning. It’s all about exchanging ideas, building something together or trying out new tools and methods. As our lives moved online, so did workshops. But have we found effective ways to run online workshops?

Because the online workshop is a new experience for many of us, both as organisers and as participants, we should resist the temptation to transpose face-to-face workshops one to one to the virtual space. Instead, let’s take time to rethink the objectives, timeframe and activities, as well as the communication channels we use. This can apply to various contexts that require active participation, including seminars and conference sessions.

The concept

An effective workshop starts with a clear concept and realistic objectives. While this stands true both in face-to-face and online envorinments, what makes the difference in the virtual space is the focus on clear and explicit communication. The objectives need to be achievable in the allocated timeframe and taking into consideration the remote aspect. Overall, it is fair to say that designing and organising an online workshop may require more planning that a face-to-face equivalent.

When working on the concept, it’s important to keep in mind the space in which the workshop will take place. What are some of the opportunities provided by the virtual environment? How about the main constraints? Two aspects stand out: (1) the online space can enable us to think beyond the limited timeframe of the workshop, towards building a community of practice and (2) in order to make this happen, we need to put extra effort into the socialisation aspect, which lacks the spontaneity of face-to-face spaces. If you are new to this, Gilly Salmon’s e-moderating five stage model offers some useful ideas to get you started with conceptualising your workshop.

Timeframe and modality

How many one-hour online workshops have you attended in the past months? Were they effective or were they often just a teaser, leaving you with more questions and the wish you could have explored to topic in more depth? When planning an online worlshop, if you have the luxury to choose your timeframe, do give it some thought.

With your concept in mind, start by evaluating the tools available and make some decisions regarding the modality you find most suitable in your context. What needs to happen live? Which parts of the workshop require synchronous interaction? Hint: resist the temptation to answer “all of it”. Are there any tasks in which participants can be more productive by working together and/or individually in their own time? Freed from the spacial and temporal restrictions of a face-to-face workshop, we can design synchronous and asynchronous learning spaces and ensure a smooth pathway to bind them. This can result in a week or even a multi-week workshop. But if each part is carefully designed and executed and the whole experience is well coreographed, this can be a better use of time than a three or five hour Zoom session.

Once the timeframe is set, remember to value everyone’s time by:

• Planning a remote-friendly schedule: remember who and where your participants are; planning across timezones can be particularly challenging, but asynchronous elements and recordings can help;

• Providing clear and realistic timing for break-out rooms in live sessions and clear deadlines for asynchronous work;

• Incorporating a degree of flexibility and making sure enough time is allocated to testing the various tools & platforms.

Facilitating engagement

The success of a workshop relies on effective facilitation. Participants should be encouraged to participate and supported in their knowledge or skill aquisition. While facilitation techniques can be adapted to the virtual setup, interaction in the online environment has to be intentional and purposefully designed. Yes, this can mean a trade-off between spontaneity and effectiveness.

To maximise engagement, it’s important to provide clear activity prompts, examples and, whenever possible, templates. All these help participants to stay focused and work on the tasks at hand, either individually or in groups. Moreover, they will have useful materials to take away from the workshop and annotate/ adjust as they go back to their practice.

Don’t forget about accessibility. You may not have to worry about elevators and toilets but you need to make sure any materials are readable and/or accessible in different formats. Keep synchronous sessions short and focused and offer various modes of participation. This may come with another challenge though: managing different conversation flows in different (asynchronous/ synchronous) environments. The amount of information exchange through various channels can easily become overwhelming. Consider co-facilitating. Having two or more workshop facilitators can make a real difference in the online environment. They can share the task of incentivising and monitoring interactions and ensure the consistency of information flows throughout the learning space.

Last but not least, choosing the right tools is extremely important. The only reason why I mention it last is because you need to have the concept, setup, timeframe and activities clear before you go on a hunt for tools. Only then will you know what specific functions your workshop requires and can meaningfully compile a list of suitable tools. Trying a few options out before taking a decision may be a good idea, and so is asking around in your community for recommendations. Top tip: avoid using complex tools/ platforms that do much more than you actually need and that would require a steep learning curve for participants and facilitators alike.

Communication and community-building

Communication, especially over the course of several days or weeks, is crucial in order to keep everyone on board. Here is a non-exhaustive checklist of things to consider:

• Share the agenda well ahead of the starting date. Make sure it’s clearly drafted, especially regarding synchronous and asynchronous activities. For the live sessions try to add joining links and be clear about what timezone is used as reference. Extra tip: if applicable, allow participants to personalise their workshop itinerary by choosing sessions, groups, etc.

• Make sure you send out information about technical requirements as early as possible, to get participants familiar with the tools they will be using. Allow time for testing. Test. And in the meantime design a plan B.

• Throughout the workshop you can sent out gentle reminders and include regular check-in moments where you encourage participants to voice their thoughts outside the formal workshop schedule. Try to set some ground rules and don’t forget to explicitely create contact and support points, ideally both synchronous and asynchronous.

• Leave ample time for debriefing and make it an intentional part of the learning path. Online it is even more important to provide space for reflection at the end of an intensive series of activities. Ask the right questions and be prepared to listen.

• Think beyond the workshop: try to create and curate a community space, a shared space where the conversation can continue long after the workshop has ended.

Online workshops sound more effort intensive than their face-to-face counterparts. That’s because they are. This is what happens every time we adopt a new modality we are not entirely familiar with. How about we let go of the idea of “workshop as we know it” and look at it more as a learning continuum? A flexible space of meaningful interaction? Regardless of the label, it’s back to the drawing board.