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LfN Virtual Engagement Guide
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Created on March 21, 2020
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How to maximize engagement during virtual conferences, online courses, and meetings.
Virtual Engagement Guide:Tips and Best Practices
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We developed this guide to share our experience in conducting online courses and meetings. It contains information about what has and hasn't worked for us, and the guiding principles we follow in our work. We hope you will find this guide useful if you are looking to transition from in-person to digital interactions.
Learning for Nature is the United Nations Development Programme's premier e-learning platform. Our mission is to seek synergies, build linkages, and engage the community on their journey towards sustainable development solutions for people, nature, and resilient communities.
Purpose of this Guide
Participant looking to expand myvirtual networks
Speaker looking to engage a virtual audience
Event organizer looking to host virtual events
I consider myself a(n)...
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Whether you are a manager looking to host virtual conferences or a team leader aiming to plan a webinar series with partners, following these guidelines can make your digital event efficient and productive for all parties involved.
Event Organizer's Guide
Maintain contact with your audience after the event
Engage your audience during the event
Attract your audience before the event
Select a digital platform
Organize the planning team before the event
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Event Organizer's Guide
Event Organizer's Guide
Consider using online work management tools to organize your team. Examples may include Monday.com or Asana. This will allow all the team members to easily update each other on their progress in real time. If you envision the need to adjust to changes quickly in the planning process, avoid sending static workplans as email attachments. If online work management tools are not an option for your team, consider using online documents instead and sharing them as live links (e.g. Google docs). Make each person's role very clear to all the team members. Have a back-up plan for each role in case someone is not able to support last-minute due to their internet connection or other circumstances.
Organize the planning team before the event
Event Organizer's Guide
Organize the planning team before the event
Prioritize the things that need to be done before your event, and make the priorities clear to all team members. Online work management tools can come in handy for this task. Stay on top of the planning process. Account for the fact the all team members are multi-tasking, and multiple reminders might be needed. For major deliverables, plan to send reminders to the team 2-3 days in advance. Keep the lines of communication with the planning team open. In case you do to get a quick response over email, figure out an alternative communications channel that you can use to contact your team urgently. Assign roles to each team member, such as note-taker, time-keeper, moderator, facilitator, speaker, etc. Define each role excessively, assuming the team members might have never served in a particular role before. There is no such thing as over-explaining in this case.
Event Organizer's Guide
Organize the planning team before the event
Determine what channels of communication you will use for communication among team members during your online event to avoid urgent requests/questions from team members coming in from multiple channels at the same time (email, WhatsApp, Skype, Slack, or a chat in your online platform). Stick to only one platform for quick coordination. Prepare a go-to document for the planning team with the issues that have come up in the past during similar events you hosted and how you resolved them. Disseminate this document to all team members far in advance and check in with them at least 2-3 days before to make sure everyone read it. Go over this document with everyone during your online planning session before the event. Have a separate document ready with the participant-related inquiries and how they need to be addressed. For the most frequent inquiries and/or issues (ie Internet connection problems), have answers ready to copy-paste directly into chat.
Event Organizer's Guide
Structure your online event like an in-person event. Choose a platform that allows for keynote presentations, breakout sessions, and opportunities for networking to align with learner expectations.Explore the possibility of pre-recording sessions to avoid technical issues if some of the presenters might have a weak Internet connection. Consider sharing the pre-recorded sessions with participants in advance if this can help streamline interaction during your online event.Train all the members of the planning team on how to use the online platform you have selected for your online event. It might seem unnecessary to have everyone trained on the ins and outs of the platform’s functionality, but it is good practice and might be worth the time investment.
Select a digital platform
Select a digital platform
Event Organizer's Guide
Handles low bandwidth
Polling, Q&A
Meeting link
Assign roles
Upload docs
White-board
Dial-in by phone
Recording
GoogleHangout
WebEx
MicrosoftTeams
Skype
GoToMeeting
Choose the most appropriate platform for your online event. Some popular platforms for online events are listed below:
Do not need contacts
Break-outs
Screensharing
Chat
Zoom
Platform
Select a digital platform
Event Organizer's Guide
Google Hangouts
WebEx
Microsoft Teams
Skype
GoToMeeting
Zoom
Once you have selected a platform for your online event, it might be a good idea to share a tutorial for the platform with your speakers and participants. Click the images below for helpful resources for each digital platform.
Event Organizer's Guide
Make the registration process for your event just one click or one short online form away. Remove all obstacles to accessing the event link and avoid asking prospective participants to email a particular person with a registration request. In addition to adding workload to your team, this might be discouraging for your busy audience. In the event agenda, remember to include information about the hosts, speakers and experts involved. This will be an important consideration for potential registrants. Make the most up-to-date agenda for the event easily accessible online. Consider not disseminating static documents via email as this would lock you into a particular version of the agenda. Keep in mind that your agenda will likely change by the time of the event (especially if you launch registration early), so it is good practice to have a live view-only document on your website that you can easily update. The link to that document will remain the same, so you do not risk sharing outdated information.
Attract your audience before the event
Attract your audience before the event
Event Organizer's Guide
Disseminate the agenda for your meeting far in advance (at least a month in advance, if possible) to allow people to register and ask questions before the event. Indicate who the audience can direct questions to before the event, and make this process of inquiries as easy as possible (for example, clicking one button on your website instead of emailing a particular person).Make it clear when the audience should expect to hear from you next. Avoid ambiguity about the next steps, which might cause registrants to drop out. Give your participants a feeling of security by outlining and constantly reminding them of the next steps.
Attract your audience before the event
Event Organizer's Guide
Predict your audience’s questions and go over them proactively before the event. Depending on the format of your meeting, it might be a good idea to share a live Q&A document on your website or via email that registrants can refer to.Avoid relying on your audience saving the date for the event themselves. Send out a calendar invitation containing all the essential information for joining the event. Give your audience a small task or mission that they should complete before your event to keep them excited about it.
Event Organizer's Guide
Establish a connection with your audience right away. At the very start of the event, make it clear to your audience who they are communicating to. Introduce everyone involved in the organization of the event. If the participants know who they are talking to and know the team’s faces, they may be more likely to be active and more inclined to reach out with questions and/or suggestions.Use webcameras, if possible, and ask your participants in advance to use theirs. This should give your online event a feeling of an in-person meeting. Ask your participants to introduce themselves in a format that fits your event best: for example, in the chat or via a short live video introduction. Ask them to share 1-2 sentences about why they joined.Think of relevant ice-breakers for the short introductions, and ask both the event team and the participants to participate.
Engage your audience during the event
Event Organizer's Guide
Engage your audience during the event
Clarify how you would like the attendees to communicate during the event (for example, using the chat or opening their mic), and repeat this information several times to keep participants engaged. If your online conference contains several events, regularly go over the event agenda with your audience. Depending on the format of your event, this can be done via regular email reminders, short announcements during your Zoom event, etc. Always keep participants excited about what’s coming so that they are inclined to remain online. Get your audience interested in interacting with and learning about each other through guiding questions. When they answer your guiding questions, ask them to review the answers of others. Offer a meaningful excuse for them to interact with each other around the guiding questions.
Event Organizer's Guide
Engage your audience during the event
Do not hesitate to ask participants to share their experience related to the subject of the discussion. For a truly interactive event, do not rely exclusively on facilitators to drive the conversation. Count in participants' contributions and reflect this in the event agenda. Schedule breaks and remind participants to come back to their computers after these breaks. Give participants an opportunity to share their feedback with you after and/or during the event. Incorporate their feedback as soon as possible. If possible, make sure your event agenda is flexible enough to allow for such adaptations.
Event Organizer's Guide
Think about the long-term impact of your event both for you and your participants. What have you achieved and what have the participants learned? Depending on the format of your event, consider offering:
- A feedback survey under 3 minutes
- An opportunity to share impact stories about participants' experience in your event on your site
- Collect testimonials
- Other engagement opportunities
Maintain contact with your audience after the event
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Maintain contact with your audience after the event
- LinkedIn connections
- Facebook pages/messenger
- WhatsApp groups
- Twitter accounts
- Instagram accounts (if photo-based)
- Your platform's private messaging system
Event Organizer's Guide
Share the event presentations with the participants on a community webpage and keep them accessible for a long time. Allow participants to interact with each other bilaterally during and after your event. This will ensure that the connections they will make during your event will last after it is over, providing an additional value add for the invested time. Depending on the format of your meeting and where your target audience is most active/where you’d like them to be most active long-term, you may want to encourage interaction through:
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Whether you are a facilitator for an event series or a teacher transitioning to online courses, following these guidelines can make your presentations more engaging and your lectures more effective for your audience.
Speaker's Guide
Presentation
Logistics
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Speaker's Guide
Speaker's Guide
Attend a technology training and dry run before your online event:If the event hosts do not offer a technology test themselves, it is a good idea to request one. Use the same computer, same Internet connection, same location and even the same time of day. if possible.Be sure to be fully briefed on how to fulfill your role as a speaker - how to attend to participants’ issues, whether you are expected to monitor participants’ questions, start and end online sessions.Figure out how to mute yourself when other people are talking and how to turn your video on and off.
Logistics
Logistics
Speaker's Guide
Plan to join your online event at least 30 minutes beforehand in case you have trouble connecting and need to troubleshoot the issue. Figure out the fastest way to contact the event organizers (email, Skype, WhatsApp) in case you need to contact them urgently. Share your presentation with event organizers before the event, even if they do not explicitly ask you to do so. Ask them to confirm receipt. In case you are not able to join the event due to some unforeseen circumstances, your event hosts will have an option to share your slides with the participants. If you have talking points, share them with event organizers. If you are not able to join the event, event hosts could go over your talking points during the event.
Logistics
Speaker's Guide
Be ready for delays when you are sharing your screen. As you go over your slides, participants with a slower Internet connection might experience delays in viewing your screen. Do not rush to apologize for the "technical difficulties" that participants might report in the chat. Instead, prepare a couple of transitions that you can use in these situations, and use them as fillers. Be ready to use your webcamera, even if the event does not explicitly ask for it. There is always a chance that the need will come up, especially if all the other presenters will unexpectedly prefer to use their webcameras. There is also always a chance that your webcamera might turn on by accident. Set yourself up in a quiet area for your presentation.
Presentation
Speaker's Guide
Create an engaging virtual presentation:The goal is to compensate for the engagement lost in an in-person conference, so focusing on images, visual aids, clear graphs to display data, and engaging graphics is much better than presenting text and full sentences on a powerpoint slide.If the conference is audio-only, ask your host if you could use your video while you are presenting to better engage the audience.Design for a level playing field. Do not forget who is in the session because you cannot see their face. Make an agenda to give room for each participant to talk or make a list of each participant to open the floor for them to speak.
Presentation
Speaker's Guide
Make attendees your collaborators through the use of social tools:Remind people to share their questions and comments in chat during your session.Use real time polls of participants, mini-games, bias-tests, real time whiteboarding and writing/typing on screens to check in with the virtual participants.Do not hesitate to use two platforms at once, such as collaborating in a Google doc during a Zoom session.Reach out to attendees to volunteer as case studies for some of the sessions, if applicable.If someone asks a meaningful question in chat, offer to open their microphone for live interaction in case they might be interested in following up on your answer to their questions.
Presentation
Use online collaborative tools depending on your desired outcomes:Google Drive - use Google docs for content creation, Google sheets for organizing an agenda or data, and Google slides for team presentations.Padlet - for creating collaborative boards, documents, and web pages that are easy to read and fun to contribute to. Trello - for organizing information on a board with different cards and pictures. Asana - for assigning tasks to team members.Slack - for creating multiple group chats or “channels” within one large group dependent on discussion topics.
Speaker's Guide
Presentation
Speaker's Guide
Avoid the following “don’ts” of engaging presentations:Do not speak too fast, or too slow. Pause, breathe, and let the audience digest your information, and make sure to speak at a moderate pace based on your comfort level.Do not put full sentences on your presentation slides. Be simple. Less is more. Sometimes, the best presentations have no text at all, unless you have a visual aid with a few words. Do not ask “Are there any questions?” Rather, ask pointed questions to avoid too many people answering at once, such as “Who has a question about the solution I provided?” or “What are your questions about this?” Do not make your presentation too long. Respect the time limit that your host gave you. This is usually easier when you have run through your presentation multiple times, timed yourself, and are really confident in your point of view.Remember: “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”
Presentation
Avoid sitting in front of a busy background
Tip 4
Blur your background if the platform allows it
Do not sit in front of a window
Tip 3
Place the light source in front of you
Do not look down when speaking
Tip 2
Make eye contact with the camera
Make sure your camera is not angled upwards
Tip 1
Eye level should be at 2/3rds height
Review these 4 tips to look presentable and professional during your presentation:
Speaker's Guide
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Presentation
Speaker's Guide
Make meaningful transitions. Connect what you just said to what is coming next when you move from point to point. Transitions between topics and slides are good opportunities to get people reengaged to your talk.Imagine your audience even though you can’t see them (if this is an audio only event). Make eye contact with your camera as if you are making eye contact with your audience.
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Whether you are a participant of an online course or a virtual conference, following these guidelines can improve your user experience and increase your chances of finding powerful networking opportunies.
Participant's Guide
Networking
Staying engaged
Being prepared
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Participant's Guide
Being prepared
Participant's Guide
Read the agenda prior to the session to be mentally prepared with what to expect and what topics to hear for, depending on your interest.Connect to a reliable wifi sourse, set yourself up right next to your wifi router or plug in an ethernet cable to ensure a stable connection during your call, if possible.Familiarize yourself with the platform functions and technology prior to the session. If you have any questions, ask event organizers at least several days before the event. Sending event organizers urgent requests for support when the event has started might not elicit a timely response. If event organizers asked you to review any additional materials or complete a survey prior to the event, do so. This will give you an advantage when the event starts.
Staying engaged
Participant's Guide
Challenge yourself by asking questions about the content to the speaker in a chat and have patience if there are technical difficulties. If a platform for your online event allows you to raise your hand and ask your question "in person" by using your microphone, choose this option. This will allow you to establish a connection with the speakers and elaborate on your question, as well as follow up on the speaker's response, if needed. Avoid checking email and other notifications during the session, or simply turn off notifications and make sure your cell phone is on silent.Take notes. This will allow you to ask meaningful questions during the Q&A. If the online session involves breakout sessions, take a leadership role in your group (for example, to summarize the outcomes of your discussion). This will help you stand out.
Networking
Participant's Guide
Understand the audience of the event, and whether there are any participants you would like to connect with. Use virtual coffee breaks, breakout sessions or other networking opportunities identified in the event agenda to connect with these individuals. When you e-meet individuals who you would like to connect with, make it clear to them why this could be an interesting connection (given your common interests, carreer paths etc). Avoid sending connection request to event participants without e-meeting them or clarifying the reasons. Prepare and practice your 30-second "pitch" in case you get an opportunity to introduce yourself.
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Networking
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Participant's Guide
Make it easy for participants to find you on the event platform and connect with you. If the event platform allows you to create a personal profile page, do so, and make your profile page look presentable. Join the social media page or group prior to the session to connect with the speakers and other participants. Use the chat function before and during the sessions to introduce yourself. Think long-term about the connections you make during the online event. If the event does not allow for long-term engagement with other participants (for example, in the event platform will not be available shotly after), consider adding your new contacts on LinkedIn.
If you would like to make a suggestion or addition to this guide, please contact us at info@learningfornature.org
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