Tools

“Breakouts” or small group activities are a standard and versatile tool for in-person facilitation - and they’re part of our online facilitation toolkit, too! This video offers tips for setting up and running technically smooth online breakouts to help your group connect and do great work together.

In online spaces, our bodies often get left out or left behind, but they don’t have to! This video introduces theory, examples, and practical tips for bringing body-based activities into your online spaces.

“Brainstorming” goes beyond just making a list! This video helps facilitators lead online brainstorming activities that are effective, engaging, accessible, and secure. Tips include how to leverage online tools in ways that aren’t possible when brainstorming in-person.

Training large groups online requires facilitators to ‘shift gears’ compared to leading smaller groups. What’s different when you go from a small group - picture a dozen or so participants in a room with markers and post-it notes on the wall…to training a large group - imagine hundreds of people in rows of seats all looking at you on a stage?

Have you ever noticed that large online trainings are often less engaging than smaller online groups? Two key principles of engaging an online group are to engage frequently and in a variety of ways. These principles are even more important when you are working with a large group online. Where multitasking and distractions are a challenge in all online spaces, theyʼre actually even more of a challenge in large online spaces, where people may (rightly) feel that it will not be noticed if they are disengaged.

Today’s online tools make it easy to connect live with people across the world. However, without thoughtful facilitation, we can reinforce power imbalances instead of truly connecting and collaborating. Whether you’re facilitating a group using one language that’s not everyone’s first language, using interpretation, or some combination, here are tech tools and approaches to increase equity and engagement.

How to set up many simultaneous one-on-one interactions in your online training group; great for skill-building, for applying a principle you've just taught, for community-building, or for raising individual awareness.

One of the challenges of online training is that it can feel extra difficult to assess how people are feeling, what they are learning, and generally what impact your training has had. At the same time, training online offers some options to easily generate data you can use to help you analyze your impact, including chat transcripts, polling data, participant data, etc. Using the data online training tools offer you becomes especially helpful when you want to measure the impact of large online trainings.

In intense political moments, it’s common to feel the pressure to gather as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Large trainings are sometimes strategic for our goals, but larger isn’t always better. Our objectives, our capacity, and our understanding of our target participants help us decide what format will best help us reach our goals.

Facilitators often tell us that in online spaces it feels harder to adapt when the unexpected happens or challenging dynamics emerge. While the tools and strategies may look a bit different than in person, responding to what’s happening in the moment is absolutely possible online.

Online meetings and trainings connect people across geographical distances and engage people who might otherwise be excluded. However, access to reliable, high-speed internet varies widely. To lead inclusive and powerful online spaces, we must treat technology as an equity issue. As facilitators, we can’t control participants’ internet access, but we can use strategies to support connection and learning regardless of bandwidth. 

COVID-19 has created new challenges for facilitators and educators. Across the globe, people are being asked to lead groups online: teachers, trainers, professors, event managers, organizers, activists. Jeanne Rewa and Daniel Hunter swiftly wrote this booklet for this moment. Download free ebook or purchase print copies.

If you are used to training or facilitating people in person and are asked to train or facilitate online or over the phone, you might understandably feel a bit nervous. The good news is that most of what you already know and do as a facilitator in person also applies online and over the phone. With an understanding of the challenges and opportunities of this different medium, you can adjust the tools and approaches you already use, resulting in engaging and effective trainings and meetings online and over the phone.

Just like in in-person gatherings, people may try to “crash” your online gatherings. Online tech tools also allow people to mess with your spaces in different ways.  This handout names some of the ways that people might crash your online gatherings and ways to avoid and address them.

Modify these slides to use for your own meetings or use them as inspiration to create your own! See the speaker notes on each slide for how to use them.

Hybrid online groups include some people connecting to an online meeting as individuals and some people connecting as a group (or groups) together in person. Hybrid spaces offer the benefits of in-person connection for those together and incorporate some advantages of online, like increasing access across geography, class, health, ability, caretaker status, incarceration, etc. Check out key considerations and tips for facilitating hybrid spaces for your movement work.

There are many different tech options available for your remote team meetings, and all have different pros and cons. Here are just a few of the options available, with some of their pros and cons.

Follow these guidelines to make your online meeting/training content as accessible as possible to people with a range of eyesight abilities and vision challenges.

Some quick tips and guides for using Zoom breakout room features.

Some quick tips and guides for using Zoom breakout room features.

Spectograms can be used in online meetings and trainings! This video explains what a spectogram is, reasons why you might use one with a group, how to set one up, and ten different variations on a spectogram for online.

A favorite tool! Maximize/Minimize Learning is a powerful tool to help participants take responsibility for their own learning and identify personal strategies for them to make the most of the training. Given that people have been taught not to take ownership of their own learning, this tool helps people take that ownership back.

By creating a buddy system, facilitators can create an intentional support structure for participants, increasing the speed and depth of learning in the workshop.

Here's an alternative to lecturing about a topic when you want important information to be transmitted: have people find their own successful experience! This tool uses individual work, small groups and then large group to help the group access its own wisdom about a particular topic (you decide the topic based on the elicitive questions you use: fundraising, carrying out a successful protest, leading a group, overcoming a challenge).

What's a workshop without some games? Well.... anyways, here are some of our favorites gathered from training around the world. (also known as ice breakers, light and livelies)

Looking for fresh ideas for your closing circles? Here are some of our favorites that we have used with different groups! E-mail us with new closing circle favorites.

"Without a vision the people perish" | This tool increases unity in a group, opens its creativity, and assists protest groups to say what they're for as well as what they're against.

Now a kinesthetic way of getting into the concept of comfort zones: step in and step out. This tool can be placed early in a workshop as a way of concretizing the concept of comfort zones -- as a bonus, this tool is a way to both talk about comfort zones and simultaneously builds the container as people actually step outside of their comfort zones through personal self-disclosure.

The intention of the diversity welcome is inclusion. It can be long or short. The more parts or aspects of what is present are named, the more the participants are likely to feel welcome in their diversity. It is a ritual, so don't be bothered by the repetitive phrasing. Take your time with it!

Whenever a new group forms people are always curious: Who else is in the room? This kinesthetic exercise allows peoples curiousity to show up and to learn about who is in the room. And, does it in a way that gets people working together.

Groups can love sharing stories of their worst meetings! Here participants get to act out the worst meeting ever, and then what a good meeting looks like. It's light and playful, and a great way to get into a discussion about how to make group meetings work well.