Creative facilitation with breakout rooms

Have you already discovered the breakout rooms in your webconferencing tools? Breakout rooms (also known as brainstorming rooms) allow participants of an online session to work in smaller groups. We often use this face-to-face. In smaller groups people are more active and can go deeper than in a plenary online group. You can also work in subgroups online. Breaking up in subgroups is possible in many web conferencing tools, such as Webex Training, Adobe Connect, Zoom, BigBlueButton etc. Breakout rooms are not for the starting online facilitator. During the breakout you lack have a view on your participants, you can get lost yourself, or you see people falling out of the breakout room. Not for the faint-hearted. Are the rooms dusting away with you? In this blog tips for smart use of your breakout rooms.

Let's start with a horror scene

We were looking forward to our pop-up webinar. About 10 minutes before the start we were packed with 100 participants! We were super enthusiastic and everything went well. After a start a presentation of principles and examples, groups of 8-10 participants started working in breakout rooms. Each group received the same case and a chat space was available for each group.  We knew that not everyone had audio connected, so we encouraged them to use the chat. Soon we were called upon to help various groups. The chat was delayed in a group. People thought that the technology did not work. Another group thought it was scary to work with strangers without seeing them. Another group could understand each other, but no one took the lead. We decided to bring the groups back.

This example illustrates that breakout rooms are not the easiest feature for the online facilitator. It helps if you have already mastered the basics of your webconferencing tools and have tested the breakout rooms. I did not share this story to discourage you, but rather to show that you sometimes need the guts to try something new. There are so many possibilities for the breakouts. 

The breakout at its best

Last week I organized a brainstorm with a group of 20 persons about the content of an online conference. In an online brainstorming wall I put up 5 groups with different topics, such as start session, partner sessions, fun, etc. Before the coffee I invited people to sign up for 1 topic by adding their name on the wall. During the coffee break I put people into groups. During the breakout they used the same brainstorming wall to add ideas that allowed me to monitor progress without going to the groups myself. We achieved an important result in 30 minutes. This was because everyone could choose their own topic for which they had many ideas, people already knew each other and thus immediately started brainstorming. Last but not least the combination of the breakout and the brainstorm wall worked well.

Having people in a group exchange about a question is perhaps the most obvious application. Just like you would face-to-face. If you want to be more creative, you might consider one of the following learning activities and working methods:

• A short buzz in groups of 2 to get into the subject
• Let participants dive into a topic in subgroups before you explain, so you can activate prior knowledge
• Speed ​​dating to get to know each other. After 3 minutes you put people in the next group
• A brainstorm on a topic in combination with a whiteboard or a brainstorming wall
• Organize a debate in which they first come up with arguments in two groups (for and against)
• A translation of a presentation into practice 
• A role play in subgroups where the chat is used in different colors by the different roles
• Make a drawing or collage together on the whiteboard
• A case study
• Discussion of a variety of topics. Participants choose their own topic that they want to work on (with some tools, people can choose which breakout they want to participate in or if that is not possible, you can inventory this)
• Give them a puzzle, a challenge to crack
• Or let participants prepare a (short) presentation themselves ...

Some practical tips

Above all, the mother of all advice is: don't be afraid to experiment with the breakouts. If necessary, you can invite your participants to experiment and reflect. Think about the context and how much support you need to provide for your participants. It is easier to work with breakouts when people already know each other. Then they will take the lead faster and get to work easily. If you expect that they sometimes hesitate to take the lead, you can appoint someone, eg the top one from the list of participants.

Here are some more practical tips if you want to get started.

• People fall out of the breakout (at least in Adobe this often happens!). Therefore, provide one person who can put these people back in their breakout group.
• Make a slide with the instruction. Even if you explain the assignment orally it helps to be able to read it.
• Plan a breakout after a break, so that it gives you time to prepare something.
• With a number of tools, participants can see the time that is left. If this is not the case, as a facilitator you can, for example, send people a message 3 minutes in advance about the time remaining.
• In most tools you can go to groups in between to listen / watch. This gives you an impression of what is going on.

Breakout rooms are not for the starting online facilitator. However, it is a fantastic invention! What are your favorite uses of the breakouts? What would you like to try?

Technostress for a webinar

Flickr Photo via Cambodia4kidsorg

This week I engage in daily blogging on my Dutch blog. It was an idea which occurred during a blogchat twitterchat. I liked the idea because I think daily blogging may stimulate me to try out new styles. Unfortunately (or fortunately for you?) I can't cope with translating all my daily posts to English too. It would take me too much time. But let met translate today's one about technostress.

A webinar is an online meeting... I always tell trainers and facilitators that technology is peanuts.... Every trainer who can work with a beamer can facilitate a webinar too. However, yesterday I experienced technostress (and I must admit not for the first time.... )

The planning: in the morning we would prepare with the 3 facilitators and in the afternoon (from 2-3 hours) we would have our webinar about the 'new Africa'. The week before it all went completely according to our plan, so this the second time it was going to be more relaxed, right? Unfortunately, it was not right .. First our guest speaker was no longer available but fortunately another guest speaker was found. This speaker would only be available until 2:30, so we faced the choice of planning the webinar half an hour earlier (with the risk that some participants would be late to join) or use the second half hour for different activities. We chose the second option. (decision 1)

Then 2 of our 3-some couldn't enter the webconference room (Bigmarker) because there had been an upgrade. I could work from another laptop at home, but we were scared that more participants would experience the same problem. So we decided to abandon our webinar software and choose new tools (decision 2). Very unfortunate because this was the second in our series of 4 and we had hoped to get the participants used to a fixed toolset.. Fortunately we already used a phoneline for audio, so our basics still worked. Listening half to the discussions about the content - working with statements - I started looking for alternative tools. We decided to divide tasks. Two would look for an alternative tool, one would talk to the guest speaker and the statements.  (decision 3)

With Sibrenne I went out to look for a tool to show the presentation and to chat, our basic communication line for audio was already a teleconference from audioconferentie.nl). My first thought went to ZIPcast van slideshare, because I have used it several times with success. The presentation is key and people can watch and chat via a link. So  I went quickly to slideshare and logged in ... mmm where is now the ZIPCAST ​​button?? Quick googling showed me that, yes, I should be able to start a zipcast but it seems like it is suddenly called online meeting instead of zipcast?! Clicking faster and faster... and getting back to the same page with payment plans. It seems it is currently only for Pro accounts available? So quickly I pulled my credit card and paid $ 19, a bargain to solve our technostress ... Unfortunately, I did not see a chat capability when I opened my zipcast. Shit! Then we increased our tempo and while on skype tested the following tools sharing links in the Skype chat and shouting things like 'try this out even if you managed to':

• Spiderscribe (no chat option)
• Backnoise (not in existence)
• Todaysmeet (small chat screen)
• Google hangout (max 10 participants)
• Edistorm (whiteboard with chat)
• Meetingwords (not attractive)
• Simplemeet.me (not looking professional)
• Campfire voor business (everybody needs an account)
• Anymeeting of meetingburner (time short to test it thoroughly)

Clicking revealed our criteria: it has to be simple enough for our participants, without log in, with a professional image. Our shortlist was Edistorm and Todaysmeet. (decision 4). Finally we opted for  Todaysmeet to have a clear interface and good chat function. We send the presentation before the webinar so that people can print it or watch in on their computers. .. (decision 5).

Pfff. What a relieve we have finally made our choices. We are anxious to see how participants will receive this shift in tools. We have 18 participants in total. The chat tool works well and helps us to see who is already present in the teleconference line. People give answers to our questions and share their own questions via the chat. The speaker has an interesting story fortunately he does not forget to mention the numbers of the slides so I can click on the slides for our recording, and participants can follow the flow. Everyone notes the sound seems better! We get compliments about the sound. What a gift because the last time we had indeed suffered from some echos because some participants appeared to be logged in twice.... I wonder how the experience was for the participants... Would they think we have chosen this solution to get better sound? :)

Interactive and engaging webinars- between who and who?

I'm currently using Webex for webinars, unfortunately we discovered (quite late!) that there is a maximum of 7 active microphones, and the first time we had serious problems. Now we found out that we can share the microphones, after people raise their (virtual) hands. Sounds stupid and I feel stupid. You probably think that we should have done a test, but we did a test (with less than 7 people). Apparently nobody realised this maximum of 7. Nevertheless, I don't feel it completely failed because we asked people to use the chat, nevertheless it does feel like a failure for participants. The first webinar probably needs to be technically perfect, might be because of the mistrust they already have for technology? Ironically we had a face-to-face where two people couldn't reach the venue, one stuck in a huge traffic jam, the other in a train which took the wrong track. But that's somehow accepted... Are we more lenient for these obstacles like taffic jam, because we've known them?

Because of the technical obstacles we've not tried out the polling and whiteboard features. So when I saw a free webinar by Gotomeeting on the topic of: 'making your webinar more engaging and interactive' I subscribed immediately. That's what I need to take the next step. The presentor of the webinar was Ken Molay. If you like you can still listen to it here.

A funny discovery was that for me interaction is about interaction between the participants. But in this case interaction was apparently between the presentor and indivividual participants. I had no clue about the number of fellow participants and could not read their replies in the chat. It sounded so smooth that I even thought I was listening to a tape and did not have any fellow participants :). But when I typed this question I got an immediate reply! So it was not a tape.

The webinar started with the observation that webinar participants are prone to start multitasking: check mails, water the plants etc. According to Ken Molay this is hard to avoid. You rather focus on winning their attention back. A few tips to win attention:

• Talk to participants, use names (get names from the chat)
  
• Start immediately with the topic of your webinar and action, that's why people are joining the webinar
  
• Don't use introduction slides about your company- too boring!
• Use pictures and images
  
• Tell a story instead of a lot of facts and figures
• Challenge participants: what did you hear? What did you see?
  
• Go 'over the top' with your voice - it may not sound normal in a face-to-face conversations (this probably made me think it was a recorded tape I was listening to!)
  
• Use short polls to ask people's opinions
  
• Use an invisible behind the scenes team that helps you scanning the chat for questions etc.
  
• Make sure participants have to use their keyboard and become pro-active
  

Though many tips seems kind of obvious, I thought the talk 'over the top' was very original and I would like to try this. Polls are also a good tip and should be part of your design, especially with large-scale groups.

I asked a question about use of webcams in webinars. I have different experiences, showing myself, seeing everybody, without webcam. It is usually quite distracting. Ken Molay felt it depends. When you use your webcam you have to make sure the lighting is good, that you are not looking at your notes constantly etc. So these are important extra things to pay attention to when you use a webcam as presentor during a webinar.

Tip from me, maybe they should investigate: "How to facilitate interaction between participants in a webinar" I'm convinced it is powerful to create an exchange between participants and use their ideas and experiences too.