How do you facilitate an online meeting or course? Our new tutorial can help

As travel and face-to-face meetings continue to be restricted, we introduce a new self-paced online tutorial designed to help with facilitation of online courses and events.

Since the early months of 2020, the worlds of education, research and knowledge engagement have been forced to transform to online ways of working. But conversations with our partners around the world have shown that this has often not been easy.

Putting materials online and having some video calls seems quite simple but how do you make sure that there is good engagement and that the time spent with these online experiences is useful? In a blog post earlier in the year we reflected on some of the key aspects of successful online approaches. We had some great discussions following that blog post, including with many of our partners. It became apparent that there was a need for some practical guidance on how to get started with online events and training activities and how to facilitate them.

As a result, over the past few months we have been drawing on the experiences of INASP and others in running and facilitating a range of online activities. These include our large-scale AuthorAID online research writing course, webinars and previously face-to-face workshops that we have pivoted to online. The result is a new self-paced tutorial: Facilitating Events and Courses in an Online World.

This tutorial is free to users around the world but has a particular focus on the needs of those who are new to online facilitation and who are facilitating online activities with participants in low- and middle-income countries.

The tutorial consists of four units. The first provides an introduction to online facilitation and discusses some of the benefits and challenges. The second focuses on moving events online, while the third looks at facilitating those online events, with some suggestions for activities. The final unit looks at facilitating online courses. This final unit is already part of INASP’s approaches for equipping guest facilitators on our own online courses and includes perspectives and experiences from some of the facilitators on AuthorAID online courses.

The tutorial is available here. We would love to hear about your thoughts and experiences with this tutorial and your own experiences with what works well or less well with online facilitation. Do comment below or tweet us at @INASPinfo.

INASP

One Response to “How do you facilitate an online meeting or course? Our new tutorial can help

  • Ramón Antonio Gutiérrez Palacios
    3 years ago

    Very useful. A cordial greeting