Become a Pro in Online Workshop Facilitation

STUDIO.WHY  partnered with Miro for the June 23rd virtual workshop, “Become a Pro in Online Workshop Facilitation”.

The event workshop board:

The first section explains a little about the facilitator and STUDIO.WHY, what services we offer and where our clients come from. Then the impact of COVID-19 forced us to change the way we deliver our training and experiences, so we explored and experimented a lot, and Miro became one of our most important tools.

The second part is about the preparations of an online session:

• We divide the roles into 4 categories and have set the numbers we usually need and the focus of each role. With this setup one facilitator can support 4 teams in the same project.

• You need a process (we use the Dutch Design Deltas

• You need time, 8-40 hours for the participants and 3x for the facilitator

• You need tools (miro and a VC-tool, for longer projects we also use Howspace to make it run smoothly and use its AI capabilities on Miro)

• You need to prepare the boards. We recommend 1 board for all participants during a short workshop and separate boards per team for longer sessions. Build up you board in layers, so the board doesn't take too long to load and it is easier to lock certain elements

• Take care of the layout (we use our own style) and make sure you mention the amount of time teams need for a certain step, what they have to do and put a shape on the board they can change into red if they need support

• Concerning ability, we do an onboarding for participants so they can become familiar with miro. We have set up a short version on this board too.

The third part is to go through these simplification of an obstacle run

The fourth part is about the balance in the online workshops:

• balance in time between online and offline work

• balance in time between individual tasks and teamwork (share, discuss, choose)

• balance in time between synchronous and asynchronous work

• balance in time between focussed on the deliverables and time for social design (chat, have fun, build relationships, breaks)  

The fifth part is teamwork

• split up the group into smaller teams and let them first individually have a brain dump about the (dis-)advantages of remote work. After 5 mins they read the other notes in their team and pick a top 3 per category and drag those sticky notes to the designated area.

• address some of the topics in the general channel

The sixth part is about hybrid work

• Share some of the experiences we had with hybrid work. People sit around tables with their own teams and work on miro, while the vc is replaced by face to face conversations. We have a large screen in the room so everyone can see what all teams are doing. 

• Participants can continue their work even when they work remotely.

the last part is the check out, participants place sticky notes about:

• what they liked

• what they learned

• what they will apply in other sessions

• questions they still have

The boards were designed by Miro Expert, HUED.