Virtual Facilitation Guidelines

Purpose of this Guide

This Facilitation Guide offers a solution to issues encountered upon the shift from mainly face-toface workshops to virtual workshops. It takes into account the impact of online mediums on facilitator and participant roles, content delivery strategies, and technical and logistical considerations. The purpose of this guide is to offer practical support for facilitators shifting from inperson to virtual interaction with the BTS toolkit content, with the creators’ understanding that not all facilitators and participants have a working knowledge of how to effectively interact in online spaces. Based on initial observations of the physical to remote shift of workshop facilitation, it has been noted that many do not, proving the necessity of this guide to support professional development in the skills and techniques of facilitating the BTS Toolkit workshops.

Before the session

1. Engage participants before the virtual session

Participants should be engaged in the time leading up to the start of the virtual session. All matters of registration, technical requirements to access training, and related logistics should be addressed at this time. During the training sessions, facilitators must be able to focus on topics and training delivery. All messages should be delivered before meeting online because of the time limit of the virtual sessions. The live discussions will then be more focussed. Virtual sessions require higher levels of interaction among participants and between participants and facilitators. Suggestions for pre-workshop preparation and logistics: • Share a pre-read with participants (the pre-read should not be too long) • Conduct an assessment of participants’ prior knowledge of the subject matter to gather them around a shared starting point • Where possible, assign participants pre-work and collect the outcome to share with participants before or during the session. • Photo request forms etc., should be shared and returned before the frst session.