Since the beginning of containment, almost all meetings and workshops have been held remotely. At the beginning, this may have required some time to adapt, but now the practice seems to be well established among organizations. So much so that many workshops will probably continue to be held virtually.
But what are the basic rules for a successful virtual workshop?
- To facilitate a virtual workshop, having a sidekick might be handy. The facilitator takes care of the presentation as such, while his sidekick monitors the chat to signal questions or to answer participants’ practical queries.
- Use the pedagogical principle of the flipped classroom: send the theory to the participants beforehand so that they are familiar with the concepts. This will allow you to focus on more practical aspects during the workshop or meeting, without getting lost in long explanations that may cause you to lose your audience. By sending them the theory in advance, you can, during the workshop or meeting, do a short reminder, move on to the questions already identified by the participants and organize an exercise or propose a discussion.
- When sending the invitation to the workshop, ask participants to be on time, turn on their video and turn off their microphone.
- As soon as the workshop starts, ask participants to use the chat to ask questions. Also ask them not to interrupt each other during the discussions. Listening and respect are also part of the virtual world.
- Before getting to the heart of the matter, ask participants to introduce themselves if they do not know each other yet, to express their expectations or to say how they feel (via an interactive platform such as Wooclap, for example). This exercise allows you to “visualize” and get to know the participants, to create a link within the group. Everyone will have expressed themselves once.
- Plan moments for discussion during the workshop: “Mic ON, now it’s your turn to talk!”
- Use an application like Wooclap to make the virtual workshop more interactive. Such applications allow to take pulse among the participants and make them interact in real time to feed the discussions. If you decide to use a third party application like Wooclap, keep the workshop presentation and the app open on your computer. This will make it easier for you, as master of ceremonies, to switch from one to the other without your sidekick having to ask for control of the screen.
- Don’t forget to record the meeting.
Not quite comfortable running a virtual workshop yet? Please feel free to contact our Virtual Helpdesk: we’ll be happy to give you some advice.
