Keep Learners Engaged in Virtual Times
Exhausted from Facilitating Virtual Sessions? Here are three ways to lighten your load
So many of us are self-identified planners. We like to have a plan for our trainings, meetings and sessions with youth. Planning is good. It’s important! But, as we’ve transitioned to the virtual space, we may have over-planned or over-scripted our roles a bit.
Of course, when first learning a new skill, it’s normal to try to master it before releasing some of your own control.
In my first year classroom, I worked double time to create amazing lessons that would keep my students engaged and learning. Suffice it to say, I was overwhelmed. But, I declined assistance from other educators because I didn’t know what jobs to give them or even how to pass tasks to another person.
As a brand new teacher, I was embarrassed that I hadn’t mastered my job yet. So I just plowed ahead doing everything. By myself. And by the end of that year, my voice was hoarse; I was drained; and, worse--I’m not so sure my students learned anything.
This memory has surfaced for me this year as we’ve heard countless stories of school day educators, youth professionals, trainers and leaders who have been tasked with rapidly teaching themselves how to do their work in a completely different context. It’s been stressful, exhausting and, who knows how beneficial all these efforts have been for our learners?
If you have been facilitating virtual sessions and are feeling exhausted or burnt out, here are a few questions to help frame some new ways of thinking about your work:
Which activity seems more productive?
A. Telling the grass how to grow
B. Planting a garden
Which job sounds cooler?
A. Instructor
B. Learning Experience Designer
Which conversational role is more fun for you?
A. Talking
B. Asking questions
If you mostly answered “B”, you’ve already mentally teed up the three strategies offered here that can help you become less exhausted and more empowered in your virtual facilitations:
Give yourself a new role.
Let the learners do the learning.
Stay curious.
Give Yourself a New Role
You are not another virtual guru. You are not a YouTuber. You’re a designer, an architect, a gardener. And your mission is to cultivate a space where your learners feel connected, feel a sense of belonging and are invited, encouraged and expected to engage in their own learning.
That space includes but is not bound by the building walls where you offer(ed) your in-person programming. That space includes in-person, virtual, synchronous and asynchronous experiences where you and the learners you serve are present.
In that space, you provide the fuel, the energy, the impetus to sprout their learning.
Then, you nurture their desire, their will to grow.
I talked with a colleague recently who is facilitating online classes with elementary students. She shared that she is consistently getting full class attendance and participation where other classes are not.
How? She keeps her attention on building, supporting and maintaining a positive environment for learning. Specifically, she supports learners in developing and revisiting their community agreements... but, more on that another day.
Let the Learners Do the Learning
How much time do you spend developing your slide deck in preparation for a virtual session? While having information and instructions presented visually is important, beware to not go overboard on the lecture. We have known for ages that the “Sage on the Stage” model is not effective for learners. In a typical classroom, teachers talk 70-80% of the time and that is way way too much. We want the learners to learn--so we need to stop talking. In fact, facilitators should aim to talk about 20-30% of the time.
What does that look like? For example, a one-hour engagement could look like this:
10 min. Welcome and Icebreaker Presentation (Facilitator begins and then participants each talk)
5 min. Presentation (Facilitator led)
15 min. Small group discussions (Participant led)
15 min. Whole group discussion/report out (Facilitator led with participants talking)
10 min. Reflection/summarizing key points (Facilitator and/or participant led)
5 min. Wrap up
What does that mean for you? It means you need to design your session so your learners are doing the heavy lifting. As you design your session, ask yourself: What could I do differently so the work moves to the learner?
Here are some examples:
You could research, create and present a slide deck of BIPOC women in history and their roles in civil rights OR
You could create a blank Google slide presentation, move your learners to small breakout groups and ask each group to develop a slide about one influential BIPOC woman in history and then report back to the rest of the group.
You could spend time developing and pulling together a music playlist to share during your live sessions OR
You could ask each learner to share a link to their favorite song to a shared playlist folder.
You could write a guide and develop a presentation to tell your learners everything they need to know about writing grant proposals OR
You could introduce the key messages for each grant writing skill and host multiple working sessions where learners are writing proposals that they need to write, receive peer feedback as well as your expert guidance.
Our learners learn by doing the work. And we can design and facilitate learning experiences that shift the “doing” to the learners.
Stay Curious
It’s winter and we have endured an intense and persistent storm of illness, racism, fear mongering and lies over the past year. Yes, staying curious is difficult. But when it comes to how we support our learners--whether youth or adults--it’s critical.
And, when we stay curious, we can release some of the burden we may have been carrying therefore, making us lighter. (That’s what this post is about after all).
In the facilitator role, we often carry the weight of thinking we need to know how to do things like manage a group of six-year olds on Google Meets. We put pressure on ourselves to “be an expert” when offering professional development for adult learners. In our roles, we often absorb second-hand trauma from our learners’ life experiences in addition to wielding our own personal traumas.
Rather than placing judgment on ourselves for not having mastered the virtual environment yet or beating ourselves up for not spending enough time learning the content so we can teach it or not giving our full attention to listen deeply to a learner’s reflection, take a second to pause.
The best thing you can do is to notice the self-judgment, frustration, or lack of energy. Notice it.
That sounds like: “Huh. I am really down on myself for not writing a clear enough follow up email.”
Then ask yourself, with curiosity:
“Why am I feeling this way? What is coming up for me? What has triggered this feeling?”
Notice that. Write it down if you need to. Take that second to learn a little tiny thing about yourself.
Allow yourself the latitude to make mistakes, be transparent about your learning process with others and release the pressure to do everything yourself. Let go of being the expert. Get comfortable with being a beginner.
In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s, there are few. -Shunryu Suzuki
Virtual learning and facilitation is not going away. Now is a good time to reset and recalibrate your efforts to take the long view. By making a few shifts, you’ll be able to lighten your load, better care for yourself and facilitate better learning for your participants.