Keep your learners engaged

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Have you delivered virtual workshops? You’ll may be familiar with the feeling of dread that comes over you when you see cameras turned off and virtual tumble weed rolling through the group chat.

It doesn’t matter how amazing the content of your virtual learning workshop is when your learners aren’t engaged. If you’re a seasoned facilitator, keeping learners engaged will be second nature. But there are some differences for virtual learning workshops.

Your role as a virtual trainer/facilitator is to impart great content, minimise distractions and keep learners engaged.

Here are five things you can do to stop learners tuning out.

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1. Set Expectations Early

Communicate with your learners beforehand and let them know what to expect. This principle creates psychological safety and prepares learners for their role in the workshop:

• Encourage ‘cameras on’.
• Share how valuable learner input and discussions are to learning.
• Let learners know there will be interactive activities.
• Assure learners they will have a chance to apply their learning.

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2. Tell Learners How They Will Learn

Reinforce the participant expectations you’ve set in pre-workshop communications at the beginning of your workshop (before sharing the agenda):

1. Show it (slides)

2. Say it

3. Demonstrate it

This is good practice for any workshop, but essential practice in virtual workshops.

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‘Show It’ is about you visualising (i.e. icons, diagrams, etc.)  learning activities that will be used in the workshop.

You could include:

• Voting buttons.
• Breakout group activities.
• Ask questions (raise your virtual hand).
• Active chat (comment on the learning and share your own experience via chat).
• Videos.
• Cameras on.

‘Say It’ allows the group to hear the messages.

‘Demonstrate It’ shows the group how. Show learners how to vote and raise their virtual hand. Get the group comfortable with the chat. I like to ask participants to type in the chat where they’re joining from today or what they’d like to get out of the workshop. I make a point to acknowledge the chat contributions verbally.

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3. Make It Interactive

Interactive Chat

Encourage the group to regularly contribute through the chat function. Make a point to acknowledge the chat. If there is a lot happening in the chat, I ask the producer or a learner volunteer to summarise (verbally or via chat) the themes.

Hopefully (surely!) you have a producer managing the behind-the-scenes tasks for your virtual workshop. The producer should play an active role in the chat by liking others’ chat contributions and summarising key messages. If the producer is really on the ball, they can be sharing links to any references made (i.e., if the facilitator or a participant references a book, video or article, the producer can quickly look it up and drop the link in the chat).

Virtual Thumbs Up

I like to use this as an acknowledgement tool. If we’ve had a mini break, I ask the group to give me a virtual thumbs up if they’re back from the break. If a concept/example rings true, I encourage learners to show a virtual thumbs up.

Virtual Hand Up

The ‘mute unless you’re talking’ principle is widely known by those who use video conference platforms (but always worth stating for any potential newbies). Ask participants to raise their virtual hand if they have questions or have something to share.

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4. No Sage On Stage: The Three-Two-One Ratio

If you’re just going to speak at the group for most of the workshop, make it a video instead of a workshop.

Trainers/facilitators must use the valuable time they have live with learners to get interactive. I like to use the Three-Two-One Ratio:

For each minute I speak, I have two minutes of activity and three minutes of debrief time.

For example, if I spend five minutes talking about a concept, I have ten minutes of activity time and fifteen minutes of activity debrief time.

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5. Frequent Activities

It’s not unusual for me to fit in 6–8 activities in a one-hour workshop. You should not be talking at the group for too long in one stretch (I prefer to cap my speaking at 3–5 minutes before an activity or inviting the group to share). Here’s a list of suitable virtual activities, from simple to more involved:

• Virtual thumbs up if they agree.
• Use emoticons in the chat: clap for agree / thinking face for unsure / frown for disagree.
• Voting.
• Ask the group to comment/share examples in the chat.
• Find an image that represents your experience with the topic and drop it in the chat.
• Pair and share.
• Q&A.
• Panel of guest speakers.
• Group breakouts.
• Debates/

So, for those of you who’ve been avoiding delivering virtual workshops, give it a go. Virtual workshops aren’t going anywhere. Much like in-person workshops, the key is to be mindful in your design, purposeful in your activities, and vigilant in your delivery.