Facilitating Engaging Virtual Workshops

Sandra MacGillivray
March 17, 2020
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As we work through adjusting to the new normal, the Valency team is looking forward to sharing some great tips and lessons learned for those tasked with organizing and facilitating engaging virtual workshops.

You’ve probably been participating in virtual meetings for years, but for most of us, our experiences are all over the map.

To give you a little context, in 2017, Valency led a Construction Industry Institute fast-track research team to develop the Project Definition Rating Index for the Manufacturing and Life Sciences sector.  Leveraging structured virtual workshops was the only option that would allow the team to complete our research on schedule.  This was a great success, and we took what we learned and transitioned all our public training to a virtual classroom environment.  We also helped support our clients in facilitating PDRI sessions with blended virtual and in-person elements.

Don’t get me wrong, this was a learning curve for everyone, but results have been a game changer to reach a global community of capital project professionals.

So do we know this really works?  I’m proud to share that our instructors receive equally high course evaluation results for in-person and virtual courses.

Over the next few blog posts, we’d like to share some lessons learned that we hope will help you achieve the same results.

We’ll share:

  1. Tips for managing logistics for virtual workshops
  2. How our instructors and facilitators had to level-up on skills for virtual facilitation
  3. We’ll help you think through how to set expectations on how to be a good virtual workshop participant
  4. We’ll share the engagement techniques that we’ve found most successful in virtual workshops
  5. And we’ll talk about the technologies and techniques that are working well to support a high level of team engagement

Be sure to check back in the days ahead as we publish more of our lessons learned on facilitating engaging virtual workshops.

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