Tips for designing effective virtual workshops

Ever since the pandemic, virtual workshops have become essential for collaboration, training, and problem-solving. Even before COVID, many companies took advantage of emerging virtual collaboration tools. While they offer flexibility and accessibility, designing and facilitating effective virtual workshops requires meticulous planning, preparation and skillful execution. At Purpose and Means, we've honed our knowledge and experience through years of running Rapid Analysis Workshops, successfully adapting them to diverse business contexts. These experiences have yielded invaluable insights that highlight the importance of a structured, yet simple, timed approach: Planning, Preparation, On the Day, and Post-Workshop.

I. Planning: Laying the foundation for success

The planning phase is the foundation upon which a successful virtual workshop is built. It requires careful consideration of objectives, audience, and overall structure.

• Define Clear Objectives: Define specific, measurable objectives. What are you hoping to achieve? What should participants know or be able to do by the end of the workshop? Define how success will be measured and when relevant, ensure alignment with overall organisational goals. Design your workshop with a clear end goal in mind and establish the desired achievements and the outputs necessary to reach these objectives.

• Select the Right Platform: Choose a platform that meets your needs. Consider essential features like screen sharing, breakout rooms, polling, whiteboarding capabilities, and intuitive collaboration functionality. Sometimes, less is more. Many platforms now have fancy features that will confuse colleagues who've never used the platform before. Ensure the platform is user-friendly for both facilitators and participants, compatible with various operating systems and devices, and offers security in line with your internal policies.

• Design Engaging Activities: Select activities that promote active participation and achieve your learning objectives. Consider template-driven journeys on interactive whiteboards, breakout rooms, polls and quizzes, gamification, and collaborative document editing.

• Develop a Digital Canvas: Create a navigable digital canvas reflecting the workshop's agenda. This provides clear orientation for participants throughout the session.

• Strategic Workgroup Formation: Outline potential workgroups and consider the skills and experience of potential participants to maximize collaboration.

II. Preparation: Setting the stage for a productive experience

The preparation phase ensures a smooth and engaging experience for all participants.

• Technical Preparation: Proactively address technical issues by granting access to the platform 1-2 weeks prior to the workshop, allowing participants ample time to familiarise themselves with the environment and address any potential technical challenges.

• Create an Introductory Video: Enhance participant preparedness and comfort by creating a concise introductory video that welcomes participants, clearly explains the workshop's objectives, demonstrates how to effectively use the platform's features, and includes a brief introductory exercise.

• Establish Communication Protocols: Precisely define and communicate clear expectations regarding how participants should communicate, including the designated use of the chat function for questions and the protocol for raising their virtual hand to speak. Determine if any participants may have issues where English is not their mother tongue so that you're aware of this on the day.

• Prepare Visual Aids: Make all your visuals, such as compelling slides, clear diagrams, and informative videos, to enhance clarity, simplify complex information, and maintain a high level of participant engagement. Images ahead of text. If documents need to be studied before the workshop, circulate it as pre-read, but do everything you can to boil things down, or point to specific parts of documents to read.

• Strategic Workgroup Assignment: Once participants are selected, identify workgroups, assigning individuals to specific tasks that align with their expertise and experience. This ensures optimal use of skills and promotes focused, productive collaboration. If the workshop involves in-person sessions, be mindful of practicalities such as meeting rooms, equipment and tools, dietary requirements for catering, etc.

• Secure Support: Enlist the support of skilled assistants who are thoroughly familiar with their assigned tasks. The number of assistants needed will depend on the size and complexity of the workshop.

III. On the Day: Facilitation and keeping people motivated

The "On the Day" phase is where your upfront planning and preparation pay dividends. You can see from the graphic that much of the effort takes place before the workshop commences!

• Begin with an Icebreaker: Initiate the workshop with short, and culturally-appropriate, icebreaker activities to help participants get acquainted, establish rapport, and feel comfortable contributing openly.

• Encourage Active Participation: Proactively solicit input from all participants by posing questions, presenting challenges, and explicitly inviting them to share their unique perspectives and experiences.

• Pay Attention to Engagement: Observe verbal cues and engagement levels to gauge participant understanding and tailor your approach accordingly. Pay attention to those participants who may be struggling with language, e.g. where English may not be their first or second language.

• Facilitate Actively: Visit virtual workgroups frequently, demonstrating genuine interest in their progress, providing constructive feedback, and offering guidance as needed.

• Ensure Regular Breaks: Schedule regular breaks to prevent fatigue and maintain participant focus. If conducting in-person workshops, ensure catering arrangements are considered to meet specific dietary requirements.

• Tool Coaching: Invest time in coaching participants on effective tool usage, especially during the initial stages of the workshop.

• Flexibility: While planning is crucial, allow participants some autonomy in organising themselves for certain tasks. This leads to a sense of ownership and encourages a more collaborative atmosphere.

• Content Management: Implement a sensible content management strategy by regularly creating backup copies of the digital canvases throughout the sessions, which will be useful in the event of accidental deletions or data loss.

• Controlled Content Copying: When content must be copied for subsequent analysis, e.g. copying clusters of virtual post-its so you maintain an audit trail, temporarily pause the session, personally conduct the copying process in a controlled way, and then resume the session to maintain focus.

• Remember to Have Fun!

IV. Post-Workshop: Measuring impact and refining future sessions

The post-workshop phase is important for assessing the effectiveness of your workshop and identifying areas for improvement in future sessions.

• Gather Feedback: Collect feedback from participants via structured surveys, interactive polls, and open-ended questions. This provides useful insights into their experiences and perceptions.

• Track Participation: Monitor participation rates in all interactive activities, including polls, breakout rooms, and chat discussions. This provides a quantitative measure of engagement levels.

• Assess Learning Outcomes: Evaluate learning outcomes through quizzes, practical assignments, or tasks to verify that participants have successfully grasped and retained the key concepts and skills.

• Analyse Results: Analyse the data collected to identify specific areas where the workshop excelled and areas where improvement is needed.

• Reflect and Iterate: Based on the data collected, make necessary adjustments to your workshop design and facilitation techniques to enhance future sessions.

By using this approach, you can design and deliver engaging, virtual workshops that have impact, and achieve your defined objectives. To further streamline your processes and maximise results across a range of business needs, explore our Rapid Analysis Workshop service page. Also, take a look at our client cases page where you can read about a couple of relevant cases.

Does this resonate? feel free to get in touch to arrange a no obligation call to discuss your current situation and challenges with a view to identifying how facilitated workshops can help.