Preparing for Synchronous Sessions

Designing learning is a big topic overall, but here are some key points that you'll want to consider as you think about designing your synchronous sessions.

Alignment with your Learning Outcomes

We said earlier that it is important for you to think about your purpose of why you think it's best to hold this particular session synchronously online and to get clear on the learning outcomes that you'd like your participants to be able to achieve by the end of the session. Once you are clear on these items, it's time to think about the content and activities that you'd like to incorporate into your session and how can help support your participants to achieve those outcomes.

Using a Lesson Plan

Instead of just going straight to designing your session in something like PowerPoint, think about creating a lesson plan (or you could call it an agenda) in which to design your session.

Create a plan - perhaps like the table below - that notes timings of all your content and activity sections, duration of those sections, facilitator activities, participant activities and any resources you need. "Chunk" out the sections into pieces so that you can keep things moving in your session and design for interactivity. Write in bullet point notes to help guide you along the way.

Here is how you can start such a plan:

And here's a similar yet slightly different Sample Session Planner Tool from Cindy Huggett which you may also find useful.

Building Community

Depending on who your participants are and how well everyone knows each other already, you may want to think about starting with activities that can help start to make everyone feel comfortable in the synchronous online space if you have time. Even something very quick in a short session could be beneficial to the overall goals of your session.

Some questions to think about as you design your opening activities to build community together include:

• How can you introduce yourself? If so, what should be shared in that introduction and how much time should it take?
• Should the participants introduce themselves? If so, what should be shared in those introductions and again, how much time should it take? (Think about how many people will be there and how it makes sense to design an introductions activity for the size of group you have.)
• How much time should you spend talking before you ask participants to do something active, such as introducing themselves? (Hint: not very long!)
• What will be comfortable for people to share if they don't know each other? What will be comfortable if they do?

Participatory, Active Learning

Keep your focus on how to design participatory, active learning experiences or meetings. Think about how to design a session that actively includes your participants and asks them to contribute to their own learning. 

Ask yourself these questions:

• How can I "share the air" with the participants in the session? How can I make sure that I (as the facilitator) am not the only one talking?
• How I can create situations where participants are able to share from their own experiences, to contribute to group learning?
• How can I ensure that the session includes time and space to allow for questions and discussion?
• Are there ways in which I can use the platform's tools (see above) to contribute to an active learning situation, that are appropriate to my intended outcomes for the participants?
• How can I balance content sharing from me with discussion or other participant activities? How can I "chunk" sections of the plan into short pieces, to keep the agenda moving and participants involved?
• How can I engage my participants visually and verbally during the session?

Nancy White, in her blog post entitled, What are your most useful synchronous online facilitation practices?, said "It is the masterful use of a shared whiteboard to move people from being consumers of a meeting to being active participants." (A whiteboard is just one example of a tool that could support active learning.) Overall, think about how your participants can be not just passive "consumers" of information that you dump into their heads, but actively involved in the process. You'll be happy to know that facilitating sessions that are active and participatory will often end up being less work for you than if you were just to present content the whole time! (And a lot more engaging.)

Assessing Participants

Depending on the nature and purpose of the session you are designing, you may need to evaluate your participants at the end of your session (or after it) to see if they can truly achieve your intended learning outcomes. While assessment and evaluation is also another topic for another whole course (!) let's just say this: your stated learning outcomes, content, activities and assessments all should be aligned. What does this mean? Here's an example:

If we think about our swimming example mentioned earlier, which of the following situations would be fully aligned, with learning outcomes, content/activities and the way you assess your participants all directly relating to each other? Which would be misaligned?

Situation #1

• Learning outcome: "Participants will be able to describe three strategies which would help them swim 50 metres in a competition pool."
• Content/activity: During the synchronous online session you and your participants discussed three strategies which would help them swim 50 metres in a competition pool.
• Assessment: After the session you took them to a competition pool and graded them on whether they could swim 50 metres.

Situation #2

• Learning outcome: "Participants will be able to describe three strategies which would help them swim 50 metres in a competition pool."
• Content/activity: During the synchronous online session you and your participants discussed three strategies which would help them swim 50 metres in a competition pool.
• Assessment: After the session you asked them to write a minute paper* describing three strategies which would help them swim 50 metres in a competition pool.

^{*See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7TYv1gZfes if you would like to know more about what this is.}