Category: facilitation

Blog comments that make you say “wow!” | BlogHer

Read the comments on this post Blog comments that make you say “wow!” | BlogHer (which of course, I found because Denise linked to me otherwise I would not have seen it because there are not enough hours in the day.) How do you feel about comments?

People ask me if comments in blogs are important. If you want to connect to others, and hear what they think, then they are. There are also terrific blogs that either have comments turned off, or create an experience where we don’t feel compelled to comment. For instance, people who post things that are just so darned complete and full cause me to simply take it in. And shut up!

Comments, like linking to other people, is an act of reciprocity. Give and get. So if you want comments and links, go forth and comment on things that others post – things the inspire, move you, make you want to offer a different perspective or just thank them for something they wrote that matters to you. And link, link, link to the beautiful work of others. Even ones that haven’t fully emerged yet – keep them on your radar screen!

Photo Credit:

http://www.linkbacklove.org/

(And grr, now all my right aligned photos are not right-aligning!)

Tips for Chat/Talk Show hosts

No, I’m not offering advice to Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, nor to Connan O’Brien, nor Oprah. What I’m talking about is an alternative method to boring presentations. It is called the chat show or talk show format. It brings panel presentations a step closer to life. I’m still a strong advocate for more participatory forms, but if you are forced to put something “up front,” this is an option.

First, for a full description of the method, check out this page on the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit:kstoolkit » Chat Shows

Second, read a story of this method in action from Michael Riggs.

Finally, inspired by Michael’s post, I thought I’d share the tips I had for hosting one of these little gigs. I am often asked to be the host, so here are some of the things I try to do. (Yeah, sometimes I fail!)

Re Hosting skills — I agree that a good host is really crucial, so much that I like to run practice groups with potential hosts to give them experience, have the test group offer peer feedback and switch roles (host, panelist, audience) and offer those perspectives.

The key things we have identified around the host role are: (hm, I should blog this)

  • Study up on your panelists so you can give a brief introduction that focuses on th relevance of the guest to the topic at hand – not everything they have done.
  • Remember, you are there to help everyone learn something and to make the panelists as successful as possible.
  • Create a comfortable, welcoming context. I like to sit in chairs without a podium or table and instead have an informal coffee table (with coffee!) in front of the chairs which are arranged in a semi circle so each panelist can see each other and the host. I usually suggest the host sits in the middle to allow good eye contact.
  • Think in advance of good questions that aren’t yes/no questions, and are specific enough so that the panelists don’t have to give long preambles. Questions that go right to the heart of the matter being covered.
  • Use follow up questions to elicit details and specifics. Interrupt politely to do this if needed. Don’t let people ramble. It does no one any good.
  • Face the panelist who is speaking. Turn your body, REALLY face them, and listen very carefully. When you are clearly listening, speakers are more willing to let you interrupt and this can be the moment to help the speaker focus.
  • DO NOT promote your ideas or story. You are the INTERVIEWER, not the SUBJECT of the interview.
  • Make sure everyone gets fair airtime. This does not mean EQUAL airtime, but that each person’s idea or point has been clearly presented.
  • Summarize briefly during and more fully at the end.
  • Allow speakers one final SHORT comment that you frame by asking a specific “wrap up” question. Don’t say “is there anything else you’d like to say.” Uh uh.
  • Where culturally appropriate, use humor. I recently hosted a chat show with a “bigger than life” chat show personality and we had fun with it. It was a more informal gathering, so it was in the appropriate context.

On an unrelated note, why does the picture show up nicely right aligned in my WordPress composition page, but then show up at the top when I post? It used to work so nice until the last WP update. Sigh

Catch up strategies in online courses

Flickr photo by Simon Pais-ThomasMy friend Bronwyn Stuckey wrote a blog post this week that rang bells for me. She was essentially asking, how do we catch up when we are lost or left behind in an online learning course/class/workshop? This hit home because right now I’m facilitating a workshop and have totally fallen behind in two online courses I’m ostensibly “taking!” Ha!

Here is a snippet to get us started. Lost or left behind in online learning? « Bron’s Spot

Flickr photo by JagginLast week I was facing what many of our online learners must face – a guilt trip about not devoting enough time to a course and being overwhelmed by decisions. Do I try to catch it all up after being inattentive for a few weeks? Do I try and contact someone, perhaps a buddy, and try to get the abridged version of what has passed me by? If everyone else is keeping up why am I so inadequate? Do I just pick up from here and ignore or let slide what has passed me by? Or do I just give up because I feel too far behind?

I know in the Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop in which I am a leader and coach, we have have been acutely aware of this kind of problem. How do we allow people easy reentry into the hub of the learning when they have been absent (physically or mentally)? This is particularly important when courses like Foundations and the FOC08 and CCK08 have a frequent phase changes that make returning your attentions like picking up a movie plot part way through the screening. We have never really found a satisfactory answer. How do other online programs deal with this?

Flickr photo by Ric e etteFirst, for those not familiar with term “phase change” in the context of a course, my interpretation is a phase change is when the group shifts from a focus or topic, shifts from one form of interaction to another (going from online to offline, for example, or shifting to using a different tool or modality.) Sometimes the shift makes us feel that there is no going back to previous phases, or that if you missed the previous phase, you were out of luck. Bron, is that your interpretation?

OK, let’s start brainstorming strategies for facilitating catch up and reentry. I started to sort some initial into two lists – strategies for the workshop designer/instructor/facilitator and strategies for the learner/participant, but in a collaborative or community setting, some of these might be interchangable. So they are all in one and you can infer which are more design strategies for the facilitator and which are more ongoing learner coping strategies. I’ve included those suggested by Bronwyn!

Design and Practice Strategies for Catching Up in Online Courses

  • Offer synchronous meetings to reestablish engagement through a focused moment in time.
  • Design “phase changes” (as Bron calls them in her blog post) that are also reentry points, rather than “left behind” points. (I should write a whole blog post on this one alone.)
  • Create or encourage the creation of summaries for both content and process where appropriate.
  • Design “Forgiveness” points in time where you tell the learner to ignore everything that came before and just dive in.
  • Encourage learning buddies to help each other – “personal bonds to keep us on track” (Bron).
  • Don’t go overboard in a designing “self directed learning” recognizing that learners are busy and may need/appreciate more scaffolding than “do your own thing, baby!”
  • Contact another learner and ask them to give you a quick update.
  • Offer to do a summary – you will learn more than anyone else and catch up at the same time.
  • Forgive yourself and let go of what was not done and focus on what can still be done.
  • Mark time in your calendar for the course and treat it like a “real appointment.”

What else?

P.S Edited on Friday, Sept 12 – Sue Waters’ comment reminded me it would have been helpful if I referenced the workshops I was referring to:

Photo Credits – creative commons on Flickr

view photostream Uploaded on November 20, 2006
by Simon Pais-Thomas
view photostream Uploaded on January 5, 2007
by jaqian
view photostream Uploaded on December 8, 2006
by Ric e Ette

Engagement and motivation in collaborative action

Flickr photo by Philippe Boukobza
Tony Burgess, one of the founders of the CommpanyCommand community (and author) made a great post on Com-Prac this week around engagement in communities of practice. It was so terrific, I want to point to it and share a snippet from his post.

com-prac : Message: Re: [cp] CoPs and unpaid volunteers
The question I have asked myself is, “What is the experience of becoming an
especially active member of a community of practice?” In the process of
searching out this question, what emerged for me was a sense for what makes
members’ experience meaningful. It is the depth of meaning that they make from
the experience of being an active member that seems to propel them forward in
their journey. In a nutshell, here are three factors that stood out to me:

The experience is meaningful to me (an active member) along three dimensions:

(1) Connection: As a result of this experience I am becoming connected to
like-hearted leaders who I value. This is about relationship.

(2) Contribution: I am able to give back and make a difference–to contribute
my unique experience and talent to something greater than self. I am making a
positive difference for people and a collective that I value.

(3) Personal Development: As a result of this experience, I am personally
developing and becoming more effective as a leader and a person than I would
otherwise be. I am being exposed to people and experiences that change me. I’m
learning.

Given this understanding, a follow-up question follows:? “What can we as a
community of practice do to be a catalyst for the meaningful experience of
members?”

These three dimensions are terrific. They are also pretty general. A good starting place, but I think in practice, we need to go deeper. How do we understand these motivations? Both in CoPs and in other collaborative settings.

In yesterday’s telecons in our Knowledge Sharing Workshop, we asked what people thought motivated others to share knowledge. We talked about “gaining visibility for work” and “getting useful information.” They were all “true” answers, but very general. Easy to say yes to on first blush, but often prioritized at the bottom of giant to-do lists and thus engagement rarely happens.

Then we asked them personally, what motivated them to share their knowledge in the workshop and the answers were much more specific and actionable. People had a task they needed to do involving knowledge sharing. They wanted to expand their network of colleagues working in KS because they didn’t have enough of those people in their daily work life. And yes, some of them wanted to share because they believed in sharing. Those seem to be the people we can count on, but make up a fairly small percentage of any group we are working with.

When we are trying to design, support, create conditions for collaboration, how do we best suss out motivation to increase the chance of actual engagement? What are your “sussing” strategies?

Photo Credit:

view photos Uploaded in Flickr on February 4, 2008
by Philippe Boukobza

More on replacing business travel from Jessica Lipnack

Flickr CC from linh_nganLast week I wrote about Obliterate or strategically use business travel?

Then I saw this post on Facebook by NetTeams wizardess, Jessica Lipnack. Her emphasis on the social processes resonates. It is worth a link here…

Facebook | Jessica Lipnack’s Notes

…Many reporters, for example, The New York Times’s fine one, Steve Lohr, whose article, “As travel costs rise, more meetings go virtual,” took the headline earlier this week. Nothing wrong with Lohr’s article, good, solid reporting with news for the newbies to the area: Cisco’s telepresence offering, high price tag aside, makes participants feel like they’re “there;” “companies of all sizes are beginning to shift to Web-based meetings for training and sales;” and this, worth the pull quote:

A report last month by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, a group of technology companies, and the Climate Group, an environmental organization, estimated that up to 20 percent of business travel worldwide could be replaced by Web-based and conventional videoconferencing technology.

Twenty percent? Me thinks a lot higher. But, numbers aside, where Lohr’s article is like all the rest – and where it misses the point – is in this: Technology alone does not solve the problem. I’ve harped on about this before. Our old motto, “90% people, 10% technology,” is being drowned out by the reflexive action whereby companies/organizations throw technology into the hands that once held airline tickets.

Here are a couple of more related articles if you are interested in this topic of when and how to replace F2F meetings with virtual meetings.

July 31 Addition: As an added afterthought (I keep adding links) this is also a technology stewardship issue. Who is building the capacity to use these tools well? What does their community of practice look like!)

Photo Credit:
Uploaded on July 7, 2008
by linh.ngân