Saturday, April 01, 2006

Building a Resource on Group Faciltiation on the Telephone

On the Onlinefacilitation list, a question came up about good resources for telephone facilitation. A number of articles were found, but nothing really complete. So we thought, why not build a wiki book? I have put up a draft outline today for our first attempt on a wiki. If you would like to join it, let me know. (We are working on Writely , which is currently not accepting new users, but I can add up to 20 people to work on a document. So leave me an email or comment.)

What would we want to write about facilitating groups on the telephone? Let's brainstorm some general categories first. We can decide later. Here's what I've got so far. (This is the text from the wiki. For those of you reading this here on my blog, you can leave comments if you prefer not to join the wiki .)

Uses of Telephone Calls for Groups
  • meetings
  • teamwork
  • building relationships
  • problem solving/conflict resolution
  • brainstorming
  • project management
  • learning/teaching/skill building
  • fun/play

Practices
  • Building sociability and relationship on group telephone calls
  • Norms and agreements
  • Turn taking practices
  • Scheduling calls
    • Time zones - how to pick a time that works for people around the globe
    • Time zone tools
  • Joining/leaving call practices
  • Recording calls
  • What to do with distracting noises, on-hold music and other PITAs
  • Issues around size of group
  • Ways to help visualize people and ideas in an aural environment
  • Privacy issues
  • Intercultural and language issues

Resources
  • Cheap and useful telephone services and tools
  • http://www.freeconferencecall.com
  • http://www.skype.com

Other useful articles on the net about telephone facilitation


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3 Comments:

Blogger Allison Hewlitt said...

Great initiative, Nancy. Would love to join in but am getting involved in too many things and as a result, not really being able to contribute meaningfully to any of them.

I suppose that something like this could also be done for group facilitation via instant messaging (I am writing this while taking part in a chat meeting)? There is probably a lot of overlap. It will be interesting to see what your group comes up with.

5:02 AM  
Blogger Nancy White said...

Someone suggested to me earlier this week that we make a whole wiki. I guess it is time to install one and act on it. It is a great idea!

6:59 AM  
Blogger Nancy White said...

FYI the whole wiki is here: http://onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com/

5:58 PM  

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