How do you facilitate synchronous sessions? Please share your effective practices...

Karen Melhuish made the following post, with the following request to share your wisdome and your experiences:
"You may have seen a number of online workshops - (sometimes called web conferences or webinars) - offered by Enabling e-Learning, VPL-D and other groups over the last few months.
Online workshops offer another pathway for learners that can be efficient and flexible (meeting in your pyjamas, anyone?;-), but the distance and lack of face-to face can also present particular challenges to facilitators, as well as participants.
The big question is: how do you design and facilitate an online workshop in ways that support learners to achieve the goals?


Hazel Owen (VPL-D) and myself have decided to kick-start this work and offer this shared Google doc as a starting point for sharing ideas.

>>>>Running Online Workshops

Feel free to add in...

• advice
• facilitation strategies
• stories of effective practice
• readings and research

...and do please share your questions in this thread, too. Everyone welcome:-)"

In the clouds (John Pearce, workshop, day 2, ACEC 2010)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I think this will be my final session of the day. It's a hands-on workshop called In the Clouds. John Pearce has a PBWorks resource site that looks at various cloud solutions. We started by having a discussion around what cloud computing comprises and what the benefits are.

The terms and conditions around some of the applications were also considered by the group. If a school sets up something like Google Apps, the account is tied to the school, which means that the work is not going to be portable for students. Also, at the end of the year, usually servers are re-set so students lose their work - somewhat against the ethos of cloud computing!

The hands on part of the session encouraged participants to explore:

• Google Docs
• Zoho
• Etherpad
• Edmodo
• Evernote
• Social Bookmarking
• Concept Mapping

Zoho and Google Docs are very similar, but Zoho has more functionality. Google, however, is set up more for education.

Etherpad has now been taken over by Google. The source code from Etherpad is going to be shared however. It is a superb synchronous tool for brainstorming or writing policy etc together. Contributions are colour-coded and names are related to colours. It has a 'timeslider' function that enables the re-visiting of the whole experience. A lot of the functionality is similar to Mindmeister, but in document form as opposed to mindmaps. There is a paid option for a tool called Primary Pad which gives a 6 month free trial where you can set up your own pads.


Edmodo is microblogging for education. As a teacher you can set up groups, and a code is generated that students use to work together.

The interesting thing for me was watching how people interacted during the workshop (mainly one person, one laptop - lots of backchanneling). Some people were watching the slideshow and videos and some were answering questions / contributing. I think it may have been rather more engaging if we'd been given a few things to explore, and actually set up a couple of things - or just collaborated on a ready set up resource. I was able to write this blog... :-)

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• Cloud Computing Outside the US (cloudave.com)

Building communities in Te Hononga: Unitec Department of Architecture Maori Studio

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A sunny day and a pleasant stroll across campus set the scene for the Ning session Ed and I facilitated today with students and academic faculty from Te Hononga: Unitec Department of Architecture Maori Studio. Already keen Moodle users, students and faculty were looking for ways that students could be empowered to create their own space, add their own multimedia, try out ideas and designs in a safe space, receive feedback, work in groups on projects, and keep online journals. In response, Rau Hoskins and I set up a Ning site and today's session was to explore and discuss some of the potential uses of the site, and answer questions.

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Rather than have a 'how to...' session students have been encouraged to access Anthony Armstrong's great online resource...a step-by-step Ning tutorial (with accompanying .pdf should you wish to download key points).

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A decision was made to keep the Moodle site as the showcase for work and projects everyone is collaborating, and to use the Ning site a test and prototype area, as well as somewhere to get to know each other better. The Ning site is already buzzing with student activity, which is great. It will be fascinating to see the momentum build.

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Management, Marketing and Ning-ing

Today, on the auspicious day of 9th September 2009 (09.09.09) Vickel Narayan and I facilitated a workshop with the Department of Management and Marketing as a requested follow up session to a more generic Web 2.0 session, which Vickel had previously run with the group. Prior to the workshop we worked with the department to identify outcomes that they would require from two Ning sessions (number 2 in October) - this helped ensure that participants voices were 'heard' beforehand, and also that we didn't run the session that we thought they wanted, as opposed to the session that they actually wanted :-)

Session 1, today's, was a hands-on session that focussed on utilising a Ning space for their Department which could be used as a way to build more of a community, communicate and share. There was also conversation around negotiated guidelines, which they would later need to discuss. The agreed guidelines would be used to shape interactions they all felt comfortable with within the online forums, the 'identity' they shared with colleagues, and the content that was considered appropriate.

By the end of the session all participants had joined the Ning, added a profile and photo, posted to a forum, written and posted a blog reflection, and searched for, embedded and shared a video.

Session 2 will focus on using Ning with learners.

After a start where there was some trepidation, the room was filled with laughter and talking. One participant commented in their blog at the end that they were really happy that everyone was involved and having a bit of fun! A further participant came up and said she had been really anxious before attending the session as she felt she would not be able to do or accomplish anything. In fact, she had achieved a lot and was really over the moon.

Watch this space for the next installment.

Participation in Sports....

Yesterday, Monday 31st August, Diana Ayling, Ed Flagg, Trisha Hanifin and I made our way over to the Sports' Department building and having located important things (like the kitchen to make tea) we set about re-arranging the furniture so that everyone would be able to sit around the table and share laptops between them. We promptly fired up the laptops, opened the browser and the Ning that had been set up specifically for Sports. Several people had already added their profiles and a sense of community was being built by the addition of photographs from.


Diana artfully facilitated the session as I typed notes like a mad woman and fielded the occasional request for technical assistance. The session started with introductions and each person chose a category off the board which they had to describe (around assessment, evaluation, and design etc). The activity encouraged a lot of engagement, with a healthy mix of competition, encouragement and humour.

After an overview of some of Fink's ideas, Diana encouraged everyone to login to Mindmeister and start putting together the key aspects of a Level 5 course. There were some of the 'so what do we do? ' questions, but then everyone got up to speed. Someone commented that they were chuffed that we were using the same software that was used to create some of the earlier graphics that Diana had used. There was a continual buzz and exchange of ideas, with everyone on task and engaged - in fact everyone was so involved that Diana had to work hard to get everyone back into focus.



Diana wrapped up by giving everyone a quick tour of some of the key resources in the Ning and encouraged people to go and have a look at some of these resources, thereby modelling some of the uses of the Ning. She in particular introduced reflective evaluation, introducing the blogs and targeted feedback, and described what the participants were going to do as 'homework' before the next session.

All in all there was a great mixture of fun, inquisitiveness, and professionalism, which Diana worked to encourage. Roll on the next session which is on 22nd September.

Podcasting for LLN - a taster session

Vickel Narayan and I ran a 1 hour workshop (with Yong Liu as invaluable support) at the LLN symposium at Unitec NZ on 15th July 2009. The abstract for the session was: "Ongoing results from the field indicate that using multimedia with learners can be highly effective, especially where LLN challenges are being faced. Have you considered using audio tools? Would you like to try podcasting? In this 1 hour session you will find out how to adapt existing resources to audio, record in a digital format, and make the resulting files easily available to students as podcasts. You will need to bring print material (about 1-2 pages of text) which you have found students have found challenging in the past."

It was a little frantic during the setting up as we arrived 1/2 an hour early to get all of the laptops set up (with headphones that we'd begged, stolen and borrowed - mainly Vickel). A compromise was reached and the 26 participants rolled up. We had set up a Ning (http://podcastunitec.ning.com/) for the session with resources participants could access after the 'taster' workshop. We had also set up a Podomatic site so that podcasts could easily be uploaded (http://unitecnzpodcasts.podOmatic.com). After introducing the session and showing a great short video that explained what podcasts are (http://podcastunitec.ning.com/video/whats-a-podcast), we asked everyone to work in pairs at a computer. We used a 'how to...' video that went over the basics of recording an audio file in Audacity, exporting it, and then uploading it to Podomatic.

There were some glitches, but on the whole everything went smoothly and everyone enthusiastically figured out what to do. Toward the end of the session we played a successful podcast that had been made and uploaded during the session. It seemed to go really well and people seemed to be pretty inspired.

The feedback for the session was mainly positive. People were excited by the possibilities and potential for LLN, and others had a real sense of achievement, mastering skills that they did not previously have. The hands on nature of the session was appreciated, although the very large number of participants who had been signed up meant that even with Vickel, Yong and myself, it was tricky to keep up with requests for assistance. The ideal size of sessions like this is around 10 participants maximum. Some people were frustrated by technical glitches (for instance the Podomatic site ground almost to a halt once 15 sets of people started to upload podcasts...to the same account. This meant that some people were not able to listen to their podcast during the session, but had a link and login details in the Ning so that they could have a listen later - not quite the same though). All in all, though, an invigorating and exhausting session! :-)

What is Web 2.0?

Click to Play

A brief comparison of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. The comparison was given as part of a workshop around using ICT Enhanced Learning and Teaching in general, and Web 2.0 in partcular. As such this is an excerpt from the workshop, which was facilitated by Hazel Owen and Vickel Narayan (The Centre of Teaching & Learning: Te Puna Ako, Unitec NZ).