Teaching good online workshops? (hint: I couldn't figure out how to do it well)
(Note: Since the Q&A posts don’t naturally appear in the homefeed, I’m going to start cross-posting some of them to the main spaces.)
Anyway, to answer Jose’s question, I never really figured out how to run engaging/impactful online workshops. But I did teach enough mediocre sessions to have a few thoughts on the challenges, tools, and opportunities. 6m vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFV6ps9qCmA
The video touches on why I struggled with all the “common” answers (e.g., flipped classroom, new software, zoom breakouts, etc.) and some of the minor edge cases that throw a wrench in otherwise appealing solutions (e.g., handling late attendees, corporate IT restrictions, diverse audiences with different technology comfort-levels, etc.).
Comments (6)
holy shit, that was an amazing answer. Thanks for doing it, took a lot of notes. I've tried inverted classroom remote with a corporate and they seem to be happy. But you are right there seem to be a lot of edge cases and trial and error doesn't cut it for B2B!
(Wow how cool that your home page is a community I love that!)
I wonder have you heard of Butter.us and what you think of it?
I think running great online workshops would be a fun puzzle to solve. ✨
(also no affiliation with butter, just found and signed up with them recently)
Re: butter, I gave them a try ages ago, when they were brand new (and even spoke with the founders to share my needs/requests) but they had limited browser support at the time -- I probably need to give them another try now that they've continued building it out, since I agree that it does look like a wonderful tool.
And re: the community site, happy you like it ;). Overall, the switch has been fun. If you're curious about the original thinking behind the move, I made this little video about it:
Flipping the classroom works really well when teaching people a skill that needs feedback and practice. Like writing (which can be done right on the computer). That other students can also watch speeds up progress.
Which is how I use it for my writing students. In other types of meetings or training I wonder how it would be useful.
Are you having them do a practice task first (and then live feedback/workshopping/review), or a learning task first (and then live practice)? Sounds like the former, which actually makes a lot of sense. (I was always trying to do the latter, which falls apart when enough folks haven't done the advance work.)
Damn, I sort fo forgot this is a public site. I felt like I was in a closed forum. So I deleted all that I wrote. The answer is neither ;-)