Moderating Discussions over Video

This resource first appeared in issue #17 on 29 Mar 2020 and has tags Working With A Research Community: Other, Working With A Research Community: Hosting Conferences/Events, Becoming A Manager: Remote

Moderating Discussions over Video - Beth Andres-Beck

Working remotely and communicating online doesn’t really introduce new problems so much as it greatly amplifies exiting problems that can otherwise be papered over with in-person interactions.

Some meetings are pretty straightforward and translate well to online - standups, or team status updates. But it if you want to have a brainstorming meeting or a meeting to come up with a new solution to a problem - or even choose which problem to solve - rather than just a round table of updates, doing it virtually takes some extra thought. Moderating those discussions well takes some doing even in person - our team this week had an opportunity to see some online meetings where this was and wasn’t successfully achieved virtually. (Taking notes on what doesn’t go well is a good starting point to running your own meetings better…)

In this article, Andres-Beck takes some lessons from her experience in quite a different environment - from those of her small liberal arts school professors who did a very good job and moderating classroom discussions in the humanities (which are typically much more engaging than lectures in STEM fields).

The whole article is a bullet-point list of things you can straightforwardly do, so I can’t really summarize it; do read it. Some suggestions that stood out:

Have the other videos in gallery view, so you keep an eye on if people are engaged
For up to 10 people I don’t bother with raised hands. For more than that some video tools have a built-in mechanisms: for the rest you can use chat
Have one person, ideally not a participant, take collaborative notes so everyone else can pay attention
Establish your facilitation plan up-front and communicate it
Cover the goal of the specific discussion as well, and frame any expectations
As much as possible, prompt for specific kinds of comments, rather than using open-ended questions
People aren’t getting the usual signals to stop talking, so don’t be shy about interrupting