With the right design and facilitation of Virtual Workshops, participants will be more engaged with the coach and the material. Even more so in the virtual world, individuals must feel comfortable and confident enough to begin a conversation.
As a result, don’t ignore the value of check-ins in your virtual workshop. It’s simple: ask a personal question and see how many responses you get back from people who know the answer. This is a great way to get to know the coach and the other participants a little better.
Put your cameras to good use, too. Seeing each other’s faces makes us feel closer and more trusting with each other, which in turn makes us feel more at ease.
What are some Virtual Workshop platform tools?
Make sure you are in total control of all of the tools used in your Virtual Workshop as a facilitator.
Because of the variety of capabilities and the convenience of use we typically choose virtual workshop platforms like Klaxoon, Microsoft Teams, or Cisco WebEx.
Get comfortable with the virtual workshop platform you’ve selected, play around with the various tools, and locate the ones that perform best for you to ensure a smooth training session.
Here are a few features to keep an eye on:
Useful tools for annotating documents
Options for screen-sharing
Files are transferred between computers.
Chatting features
Choices for voting
In a Virtual Workshop, how do you keep participants’ attention?
Virtual Workshops, as we have already shown, are small and convenient. A half-day workshop is more appropriate since participants’ attention spans are better able to handle shorter sessions.
When it comes to working in a digital environment, individuals tend to have shorter attention spans since there are so many possible distractions. However, there are a plethora of strategies to engender good participation and keep your attendees engaged.
Inexperienced Virtual Trainers may find it difficult to run or facilitate a Virtual Workshop training session. Even seasoned facilitators who are used to face-to-face meetings may be daunted by the quantity of information needed to manage a virtual session. In the end, there is a lot to remember in terms of content, technology, and making sure participants are completely engaged.
When it comes to doing online training, here are some of our best practices.
1) Preparation is essential if you want to be successful.
In developing a Virtual Workshop training session, preparation is essential. Before you begin a coaching session, it’s important to ask yourself, “Why?” Do you have a certain end goal in mind?
Consider the duration of your workshop, as well as whether or not you need to take breaks. Do you think so, and if so, how long? What is the ideal place to place them so that they don’t interrupt your content?
The most essential thing to remember is to GET PRACTICAL!! Practicing, on the other hand, is distinct from rehearsing. Don’t rehearse what you’re going to say; instead, let your words flow naturally and spontaneously. Prepare your speech and practice delivering it while also keeping an eye on the technical aspects. As long as you’re comfortable with who you are, the world will see it.
2) Things to keep in mind while selecting a tool:
The key to achieving your objective is to choose the appropriate platform. In order to encourage participation, you need a platform that is both easy to use and effective enough to encourage people to become involved and work together.
Several excellent conferencing tools are now accessible. As a result, participants may see one another through a video camera and converse with each other via sound. In addition, they frequently have the ability to split participants into smaller groups for more focused conversations.
3) Create a schedule of events for the attendees
In order for a workshop to be effective and engaging, participants must be able to connect with the facilitator and feel like they are learning something new at the same time.
This may be accomplished by facilitating a series of activities that encourage participants to interact with one another and, as a result, strengthen their bonds and facilitate the transfer of knowledge.
Activities that may be done in groups, including as
Inquiry into issues
Assisting each other in the past
Ideation for solving the problem
Scenarios to be analyzed
4) Initiate a dialogue with all participants.
If you’re asking a question, make sure it’s open-ended so that everyone may answer it. Participants may voice their thoughts and ideas by entering their responses into a conversation or voting in a poll.
Answers might be lost in the din of conversation if everyone is talking at once. As a facilitator, it’s critical that you do all you can to avoid this. The goal is to offer everyone an opportunity to be heard and to do so fairly.
Before going on, summarize everything you’ve learned thus far.
Reiterating what you’ve just learned may be quite valuable to your students. Using this method, you may quickly and easily review the most essential points, reiterate the session’s objectives, and show your audience where they are in relation to where they want to go.
In order to help participants see their progress, it’s a good idea to provide this summary graphically on a slide. Everyone enjoys seeing how far they’ve come.
