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Scaling up: working with large groups online

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 16:01:52 +0000

Can we scale up online to reach a large numbers of participants in an learning experience? When and when not? That's the topic of this blogpost and I hope to convince you into scaling up :).

Sibrenne and I work with many organizations that have started training online via Teams or Zoom because of COVID. When I ask what the training looks like, I often get the answer: “I organize online training with a maximum of 12 participants”. When I ask for the reason, the answer is often: "with more participants I can't give a good session because I can't give everyone attention". The assumption is that nobody learns without the teacher being present and without a synchronous session.

Unfortunately! Because there is so much possible online, with large numbers of participants. You have to be bold and creative with your design. Even with large groups, participants can still learn deeply.

So where does the idea of working with 12 originate? The assumption is that real learning cannot be achieved online with large groups, over 12- 15 participants. The idea has its basis in our class- and trainingsrooms, often fit for 12-20 people. But not only that: the trainer has the idea that all 12 need attention and feedback and everyone needs to practice under the trainers eye. We also want to provide a safe environment. Incidentally, this principle is not applied at all at the university: we always have lectures there with 200-250 students. And certainly not at conferences....

We sometimes have certain assumptions in our head that have worked fine for a long time, but we need to revisit them regularly. I myself thought for a long time that I was not a podcast listener, because I am easily distracted when I have to listen alone and ears tickle in my ear. Until I once went for a walk with a podcast.. Now I regularly listen to podcasts and collect entire lists. Let's take a closer look at some examples of larger scale online learning.

Some examples

The Food systems e-course

A 4-week online course with one week to catch up for 500 participants from many different countries. The platform (headstream LXP) is attractive and uses gamification. There are weekly themes, attractive short resources and there is an expert meeting every week. The course has a focus on collaborative learning. People sign up for group challenges. This results in 20 groups of 10 people working towards the ultimate assignment to write a blog. The best blogs are judged by an expert jury and published. This collaborative assignment was an important factor in keeping people active and has been highly valued. Some 60-70% of participants remained involved throughout. because it is a social course, with a focus on a lot of exchange of experiences. Want to read more about this online course? click here.

MOOC on social learning

About 500 Dutch learning professionals took part in a social MOOC on Social Learning. I chose this MOOC because it is described so well in this article by Petra Peeters and Marlo Kengen.

A number of important principles they mention are care for clear goals and structure. But it is also very important to welcome people and appreciates contributions. This online MOOC was concluded with a live meetup.

The science of beer

There are large-scale MOOCs with up to 150,000 participants. People often think that large-scale MOOCs are superficial. Take a look at the science of beer on Edx. Ulrike Wild "Massive means scaling up. You minimize the dependence on a teacher. It is important that there is interaction, it is not e-learning that you walk through alone. also include collaborative learning. Think the line carefully because every mistake is avenged." This MOOC the science of beer was developed by the students themselves!

The writeshop by Perspectivity

The 'writeshop' is a two-day writing workshop. Because of corona is taking place online. There was a lot of variation between working in plenary, individually and in pairs. Few lectures, but a lot of writing, reading to each other and giving feedback. The online return session, in which the participants read their stories by the crackling fire, was magical. This set-up created an intimacy online in no time between people who had never met each other before, from the Netherlands, the Middle East and Asia. There is more information here.

Design exercise: think big
A fun exercise: imagine what your design for 12 would look like with 50/500 participants. Is there a session you can do with a larger group? In our own course we have a maximum of 16 participants. But we do organize a webinar series in which other participants can also participate. There are 10 in the course, but 30 in the webinar. This way you can think of small steps in open up to a larger group.

Tips for scaling up

A few tips if you want to work with large numbers of participants and with a focus on deep learning, learning which is meaningful and applied in practice. What is needed for this is space for feedback and practice.

Work in smaller groups

Split the large group into smaller learning groups and name someone in the lead (or let them choose someone themselves). You can keep in touch with the lead persons yourself. Make sure that the groups can run freely independently, through clear assignments, and perhaps also online tools that are already ready.

Make use of mentors

If you work with large groups and you still want to provide sufficient feedback, you can make use of learning coaches or mentors. Be clear about their role, is their support logistical or mainly substantive? How much time does it take? I myself have experienced that the role was conceived in terms of content, but the coaches still received many practical questions. You can prevent this by having a helpdesk that is visible.

Use peer review

In addition to using mentors, you can also use peer review for feedback. Well-known tools for this are Feedbackfruits or Eduflow. What works well with peer review is sharing assessment questions, by means of a checklist or rubric.

Pay attention to self-direction

A danger of large groups is that you do not see who is falling and you do not reach your potential dropouts. To prevent dropping out, you can support self-management, think of a clear program, tips to monitor your time such as discussing it with your manager, etc. Incidentally, many platforms also have ways to send specific groups a message, for example the group who hasn't logged in after a week.

Reduce the transactional distance

Transactional distance is the distance that an online participant feels because he/she participates from his own environment. A great distance makes a person feel less involved. Online can feel aloof but that depends on your design. You can use social learning and collaborative learning, or make it personal.

The science of expertise: how to help professionals peak with your blended learning design

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 11:25:35 +0000

I am hooked by the Wordblitz game app - making words. I play it 2-3 times per day. I can see if I'm getting better by the scores I gain on the daily challenge. When I started playing I was simply making words. Then I suddenly discovered the 2x and 3x values and tried to make words with the higher valued letters first. This improved my score enormously. Later I discovered that you can see the complete list of possible words. Going through the list made me aware of what is possible and I shifted to larger words. Can anybody get better at Wordblitz? I think so!

How do you make people experts and ensure they will peak? How can you make a good blended design so that people become top of the bill in their area of expertise? I read Peak by Anders Ericsson en Robert Pool.

It is a fantastic book which gave me many new ideas and insights. I knew the word 'deliberate practice' but now I understand it much better. The authors have done a lot of research on top athletes, people who play the violin and experts who have reached the top of their field. They call it "the science of expertise". How does one become an expert? This provides a lot of insight into the elements of a strongly blended trajectory when the goal is to let your participants excel. When you want to bring their craftsmanship to a high level.

A few of my eye-openers

Not talent but practice will take you far

Talent is over-rated. Research among violin players shows this very clearly. We think the top violinists are all naturals. Born with a violin in their hand. However, a survey of musicians shows something completely different! Intermediate level violin players under the age of 18 have practiced for 3420 hours. But the more interesting finding: the better violin players 5301 hours and the best 7410 hours! This shows that practice is much more important than innate talent. I should have continued with mandolin lessons :). However, just doing doesn't make you better at your profession.

Purposeful practice: consciously doing more difficult things

I like to learn in practise - the reason why I never sign up for training or courses. I was convinced that practice makes perfect. An experienced driver is better than a starter and a doctor who has been practising for 20 years is better than a youngster. But that's not true. By practising, you do reach the level of 'average performance' and develop routines. However, after this level you don't automatically get better by doing. A doctor who has been in the profession for 20 years can perform worse than a doctor with 5 years of experience. If you do want to get better, you need deliberate practice and purposeful practice: conscious and purposeful practice.

In one of the studies, a student had to remember more and more numbers. If it goes well, he gets longer strings of numbers to remember. If he makes a mistake, he gets fewer numbers. The core of this is that you gradually stretch what someone is already able to do. In learning this is called scaffolding.

What I found super interesting is that the student sometimes encountered a barrier and thought he was at the max of the total numbers he could recall. But then he found a new way to apply a logic to the numbers and he could continue, yet remember more numbers. Peak explains “you develop new mental models” - new ways of looking. This is I think a clue to higher performance- higher performance comes with new mental models.

Learn from the best and define good performance

With Wordblitz and memorizing a high amount of numbers it is easy to measure a performance. With leadership, for example, this is much more difficult. What is a top performance? In deliberate practice you know what a good standard is and you work towards it. The standard is set by the top performers in the field. It then helps to have a trainer or coach who knows the standard and can help you. How do you achieve this in a field where top performance is less visible? You can find out who the experts are by asking people. You may approach the experts and interview them. Have them think out loud while they work. You can even copy experts to understand them. I have once painted a painting by Marlene Dumas and have indeed learned quite a lot from it in terms of color choice.

You need feedback while practicing. Are you doing well? When are you on a plateau? It helps if you have a coach who can observe you and give you feedback.

How do you translate this into a good blended design?

Important tips from Peak are:

Find the experts and set the standard
Make sure people practice consciously (purposeful and deliberate practice)
Ensure they get feedback on their performance
Help develop mental representations

What the latter looks like is illustrated by an example of a chemistry lesson at a school. In the past, facts were mainly taught by telling the students. Now students get questions and tasks. When answering, they have to think out loud and mistakes were corrected, sometimes by student assistants, sometimes by the teacher. The main advantage is that they are immediately corrected in thinking errors.

Find the experts

Technology offers new possibilities to invite experts.

You can do a lot with video and audio. Think of the success of the YouTube teachers. Not only students can learn from this, but other teachers could also copy it. Ask for the experts in their field. Don't make the usual talking head video, but let the expert respond to 3 practical situations. How do you handle this? In developing the mission safety module for defense I asked what commanders do who do well. We re-enacted 3 situations in an audio conversation.
Working Outloud is an interesting approach. Can you invite people to think out loud? I remember the video of a teacher who had won a prize. Other teachers really enjoyed seeing how they approach it in class
Organize (online) masterclasses. Focus on a case or participant.

Make sure people practice consciously (purposeful and deliberate practice)

The advantage of a blended trajectory is that the total time is often longer than a live trajectory and you can therefore build in much more practice. A new idea to include purposeful practice is that you can form groups of people that want to practice a certain skill. Can you give them a standard?
With collaborative learning in projects, you can pay more attention to what people want to practice. In the course, participants do this during the facilitation assignment. Some groups manage to do this better than others by organizing the assignment in such a way that everyone can practice.
You can also let people practice online (against the myth). Eg recording a video via Traintool or Flipgrid reacting to a difficult situation. Or think of virtual reality.

Feedback

Can you organize that participants receive individual feedback online? Deploy coaches? In our series of online courses for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the feedback from a civil servant was indeed very useful. However, the coaches always said it is very time consuming (though fun). Can you also work with a standard answer made by the experts?
You can also use peer assists for feedback. It is even more important to develop a standard. In our course participants make a blended design and receive peer feedback and from us as supervisors/ experts.

Help develop 'mental representations'

I find this the most difficult one to translate into blended learning design. I think it's about teaching fewer tricks, but helping to think for yourself. Can you help me with this one?

Instead of organizing a Microsoft Teams course, invite a colleague who is handy to explain how he / she learns works with Teams.
You can also think of visualizations, let people draw how they approach it. This can be done on paper but also online using Miro of Mural

Five competences to develop to facilitate hybrid sessions

Mon, 30 May 2022 13:12:19 +0000

I get quite a few invitations for workshops on facilitating hybrid sessions. Hybrid sessions are with a group in the room and a few (or many!) online. During our blended learning course in collaboration with Kessels and Smit Belgium we experimented quite a bit: with methods do I use in a hybrid session? engaging participants in different ways and different setups from everyone online on the beamer to 'heads on a laptop'. It is really not easy. I think I have 3 sessions I felt good about, all the others left me really puzzled. What do you need to successfully guide a hybrid session? In this blog I will discuss the competencies of the hybrid trainer or process facilitator.

Don't underestimate the challenge of hybrid

After several hybrid sessions, I have learned that you should certainly not underestimate what hybrid demand from the facilitator. However, not only the facilitator is challenged: it demands a lot from everyone: the online participants and the participants in the room. At one of the first sessions I started out hopeful with the following quote:

"A good hybrid session combines the best of both world: online and live"

After 4-5 meeting I my perception changed. Live and online have their advantages from the point of view of the facilitator. In a live session you can focus on the room and the energy in the room. During an online session, you can conveniently use the chat or other online tools. With hybrid sessions, however, you can't use either benefit. It is a new form that demands that the facilitator is a sort of centipede. The facililtator must divide attention across the room and online. This feels like you should have eyes in your back. You are also highly dependent on technology. In one hybrid session, I was so busy getting everything right that I couldn't chat informally with the participants before the start of the session. This felt like a real loss because I like to start building connections before the session.

"For some in the room it is quite demanding to be a buddy with an online person. You have to pay more attention to the chat and the screen and multitasking. Others find it very easy and have fun"

Hybrid sessions demand a lot from participants and you have to manage that as a facilitator. A hybrid session is exhausting for the people who participate online. Perhaps the sound not 100%. You often don't know whether or not you can break in to ask a question. But discussion may also feel less spontaneous for people in the room. When you agree to raise your hand, it feels like school. People online may request that people in the room don't touch papers or coffee cups for the noise. All this may cause the fun to wear off, and you as the facilitator have to deal with all these deceptions.

Competencies of the hybrid facilitator

Not every facilitator and teacher is looking forward to hybrid... With the pandemic they learned to work online, and they are happy with another new thing. And they are right! It's not easy. However, I do think hybrid is here to stay. So sooner or later you will have to embrace hybrid. You better start getting good at it.

There are many tips and tricks for a hybrid meeting on the internet, but which competencies do you need to develop? (Competences are a combination of knowledge, skills, attitude and/or personal characteristics/personal qualities). The following five competencies are important from my experience:

Choose the right technical set-up
Organize collaboration
Design your session with hybrid methods (and elaborating it in a script)
Facilitate with an eye for the needs of the room and online
Improvise

Photo Monique van den Hout

1. Choose the right technical set-up

There are different ways of organizing the technical set up. Do you work with your own equipment, for example speakerphones or a meeting owl? Then you probably already know how it works. Sometimes you have to work with the (unfamiliar to you) technical set-up in a room. Are you satisfied with the equipment? Do you have enough time to test it or test it beforehand?

We distinguish three different main setups:

onliners on the beamer
laptop heads (see photo)
everyone behind the laptop and log in.

Only through experience with these different forms you will get comfortable and be able to make the best choice that suits the session. Are you not that experienced yet? Then start with a simple setup, for example the equipment that is already present, or a laptop head. And don't forget to test! Or even better: make sure you organize help.

2. Organize collaboration

I regularly facilitate hybrid meetings with a facilitator. An online and a live facilitator. In the collaboration with Belgium, participants had the choice to participate in Antwerp, Utrecht or online. We even had 3 facilitators.

“A hybrid session requires multiple roles”

In a hybrid session there are extra tasks compared to a 'normal' live session. Think of monitoring the online group, making sure there are breakouts, walking around with laptops. It is nice if you can divide these tasks amongst various persons. If you do not have the luxury to have a co-facililtator, you can appoint an online contact person. Or work with buddies between people in the room and online. In universities there is sometimes a student assistant who helps with the online group.

Do you have the luxury of having a co-facilitator? If one is online and one in the room it works perfect. It is even nicer if the online facilitator is at a location close by, for example a room adjacent to the group. It allows you to set up the room together and quickly tune in during the break. Also think about how you will work together during the session. Do you call each other during the break or do you text each other?

3. Design your session with hybrid methods

Facilitators and trainers are very strong in methods. You can translate almost any method into a hybrids version. However, you need to keep an eye at the overall balance of working separately (the onliners together and the people in the room together) and joint.

Questions to consider are: if you are going to work in groups, are you going to mix? And if so, how do you ensure that there are no annoying loud beeps (tip: create breakout groups)? This also requires experience.

Are you a starter? Work in two different groups: the people in the room and the onliners. It is easier for both groups because they can ignore the others. You have to make a very detailled scripts. An example of a detail: who will mute the online group if they start working together? What do we do during the breaks? Pay attention to the nitty gritty.

4. Facilitate with an eye for the needs of the room and online

You have your session script. Now the day itself. You are probably in the room. Always keep the people in the room and online in mind. It helps if the onliners are also clearly visible. If you work with an online facilitator you can occasionally switch to your co-facilitator.

"If you participate online, it's nice if you have an overview of the room"

Make sure the technical setup and etiquette are clear at the start. Do you want onliners to raise their hands? Can they break in the discussions if they want to say something? Where do you position yourself? Regularly check everyone. Is the sound still good? Do you need an extra break?

5. Improvise

Sometimes everything is set... and something interferes with your solid plan. Your co-facilitator has COVID and now you have to set things up alone. You want to use the chat but that produces a ping sound, annoying people. You have so much experience with your own speakerphones but the bluetooth is on and they connect to two computers. You instruct people to raise hands, but the participants don't like this and get rebellious... There is a birthday cake in the room and the people who are present don't care for the people online. This requires a lot of improvisation. It helps to see hybrid as a great new challenge. Go for it!

50 ideas for humour in your online sessions

Mon, 02 May 2022 13:39:22 +0000

This humour product is a collaboration of Natasja van Schaik, Steven van Luipen, Ite Smit en Joitske Hulsebosch. In 2020, we started working and learning online a lot. We asked people whether they laughed as much online as they did when we all went to the office together. This was not the case, even though you can still have fun with each other online.

Everything went wrong online with children coming into the picture and connection or sound that didn’t work. Just by choosing to see the humour in that, you can laugh together online. We gathered many situations, and then we organised a number of sessions about humour online, including at the OEB Conference in Berlin. One thing led to another, resulting in 50 working methods for online sessions with humour.

Why is humour important?

Research shows that humour not only influences the way you feel but also influences how others see you, the dynamics in a group and the innovation within an organization. This results from 15 positive effects of humour – eight psychological consequences and seven physiological:

If you use humour, you are even seen as more competent, according to research. A story told with humour will be remembered better, and so will the narrator. Laughter triggers the release of oxytocin – the ‘trust hormone’, so people in the group feel safer when they laugh together. They can open up and show vulnerability. People who have laughed together experience their relationship as more satisfying. This has a positive influence on the performance of a group. Just think of the teams you like best to work with, they will probably laugh together on a regular basis. As we age, our brains become ‘functionally fixated’, and humour expands the brain. This, in combination with increasing trust (fear is the killer of creativity), increases creativity within an organisation and with it – innovation.

In short, using humour has many advantages. That is why we have collected 50 methods that you can use to bring humour into an online session. They are divided into four sections based on two criteria: how much time it takes (easy–difficult) and whether or not it’s linked to the content – the learning objective of the session, in four quadrants. The latter is important because humour linked to the content has more learning effect if used in the right way. ‘Loose’ humour can improve the atmosphere.

A. Easy and linked to the content

B. Difficult and linked to the content

C. Easy and not linked to the content

D. Difficult and not linked to the content

Easy – linked to the content

1. There’s a weird question in my quiz

In a quiz, you can add humour, via funny questions or answers. For example, in a lesson about Aristotle, ask about his favourite food or add weird answers that are clearly wrong but can bring a smile. This can be done in an online quiz with tools such as Kahoot or Mentimeter.

2. Say it with cartoons

A cartoon expresses an opinion in a funny way. Have participants express their ideas through cartoons; you can let participants choose a cartoon and collect the cartoons on an online brainstorming wall. You can also show some cartoons that you have chosen and let people choose one. You could also collect the cartoons for yourself on Pinterest. See our collection on online technology.

3. Your point of view through a drawing

Cartoons also work to express points of view. To get participants to take their point of view, for example, you hang three different cartoons on a whiteboard or brainstorm wall that provoke an opinion. Participants can put their name to the cartoon that best fits their point of view, as a fun starting point for a dialogue.

4. Extreme errors

Things go wrong for all of us, but there are always examples where things went much worse. Find an example online of something that went very wrong such as a video, photo or short story related to the topic your session is about and show it to the participants. You can also ask the participants to find an example themselves as a warm-up exercise.

5. Puzzle with a rebus

Rebuses are great fun to make and solve. Try making a rebus for an assignment in training or a topic on an agenda. You can make a rebus by cutting out pictures and letters and you can also work with emoticons. If you want to make it easy for yourself, you can make the rebus via the Rebus Club website, so you’re ready in just a minute.

6. Share a funny story as a stand-up comedian

You can learn to be funny. In addition to spontaneous jokes, you can also collect anecdotes and tell them in your lesson. This takes some guts and practice.

Daily practice offers many humorous situations. All you have to do is look through ‘the lens of humour’. Are you in a Zoom meeting and is your child in the picture? You can be ashamed of it, but you can also laugh about it. Go through your own experiences in your mind. Are there situations that you can make a funny story out of? You don’t have to violate the truth, but a little exaggeration makes it even funnier. You can use these around the topic of your lesson. Of course, you can also share a funny story that is not about the content. Funny stories bring light to the group, which promotes creativity. For example, listen to the start of the presentation by Fons Trompenaar.

7. Another picture

Pictures can be used in many ways; in a presentation, in an email, in the chat. You can surprise people by using a funny picture, or one that deviates from the context. You can google a picture, but there are also other free options online to take a picture. If you are creative, you can create a picture with

Streaks is a free downloadable app, for Apple and Android. The great thing about Streaks is that it's super simple: you download the app, click on the big plus to add a habit and you choose a frequency. After this you have to record your habit by clicking the circle each time you've performed. What's great is that you can link Streaks directly to your pedometer so it automatically keeps track of your steps. The app is called Streaks because it encourages you to stick with it and get a streak. You have to persevere every day or you will break the streak. I have to admit I have gone out for a second short walk to get my extra 500 steps :).

2. HabitShare

Habitshare is also free and very easy to use. You can write down your activities and how often you want to do this activity, daily or weekly and which days per week. The advantage over Streaks is that you can add friends and invite them to follow a habit. You can also chat with your friends. It does work as a stimulus if you get notifications from your friends. Their slogan is therefore "habit tracking just went social". The app is available for both Apple and Android. Here you will find more info and reviews. Four stars and not five because Habitshare does not look as attractive as Streaks.

3. Fabulous

Fabulous is an app with beautiful design. This app is not free. It costs $39 a year. You can try it for free for 7 days and after that I got another month for free. The app is based on behavioral science - from Duke University's Behavioral Economics Lab by Dan Ariely. It works slightly differently than Habitshare and Streaks. You indicate which areas you want to work on, eg your health or study habits and then you receive tips for habits. For instance, I choose health and had to drink 3 glasses of water in the morning. You can also participate in all kinds of challenges. It is a nice app if you dive right into it, there are stories that you can listen to, explanations and a community. Three stars because it is so beautiful but quite complicated and not free.

4. Habitica

Habitica is an app which is gamified. Their slogan is therefore "Gamify your life". You can create an avatar of yourself. I unlocked a sword, chocolate and candy. Unfortunately it didn't work for me. I didn't quite figure out how to put my tasks in the app. But if you like gamification it might be a nice app. One star but as far as I'm concerned because I didn't get into the Habitica mood. Freely available for Apple and Android.

More, more!

There are many more habit tracker apps:

MyEP - with videos andd coaches
Randomly remind me (only for android)- good in reminders and motivational quotes
Yapp reminder - like Randomly remind me but for Apple
Way of life - looks good and with the promise to motive you :)
Zombies run - I think this one is great for running, because you have to make sure you stay ahead of the zombies!
Coach.me - habit tracker app is free and for 25 dollar per month you can get a coach
Productive - free, easy and high ratings
Superbetter- a game based on research. I am currently trying this one
EpicWin- helps accomplish tasks
Nukshuk - has a nice story. The name comes from the Inuit who use stones to help each other remember
Moments - both for habits and to-do lists. I tried it once and abandoned it.

A special mention is for Conqueror, an app that allows you to virtually walk the Great Wall of China! (not for free)

My experiences with the habit trackers

I tested the four apps for a month. My intentions were to read blogs via Feedly, walk 5000 steps a day and play guitar. What struck me is that the apps don't motivate you. You must already be motivated yourself :). For example, I had to get used to the idea that I was finally going to play guitar, and I found it quite easy to ignore a reminder from the app. I already have the habit to read Feedly, I wanted to do that more regularly and that made me more prone to respond to a reminder. Besides, you have to get into the habit of using the app.

If you are self-motivated, the apps can help you by:

Formulating your intentions and setting the bar. It helps to make your intentions concrete and to choose how often you want to do something. Streaks also suggests to reduce the frequency if you don't comply. For instance, I've reduced the frequency of playing guitar from daily to 1-2 times a week.
The apps send you reminders at a time of the day that you choose. It helps not to forget.
You can feel peer pressure which may help you perform. Habitshare and Fabulous do this. In Habitshare you can share your intentions with friends, and if they also share their intentions, you will receive notifications. When I saw that my friend Karin was learning Spanish, I felt guilty about skipping guitar. In Fabulous there are challenges and a community that you can join.
You get insight into the numbers. In Streaks you get notifications when you struggle with a task and the suggestion to adjust the frequency. You also see how many steps are still missing in a day. In Streaks you will see great statistics.

Is introducing technology hard? Don't blame the technophobes!

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 17:42:28 +0000

Are you getting started or are you fully engaged in introducing new social technology in your organization? It is not an easy task is it? It's tempting to blame the technophobes and people who are not tech-savy. The BUILD framework helps you look deeper into what makes it hard. By the way, when I talk about social technology, I think of:

a Learning platform (LMS type), Moodle with courses or Goodhabitz
a Learning Experiences platform Stream LXP or Degreed
a new system supporting hybrid meetings like Logitech sets or Meeting owls
a social intranet or community software like Winkwaves Harmonics or Jive

You are probably convinced how important the new tech is, and how social & agile & effective the organization can be.. if only everyone would follow the online courses, share knowledge in online communities, work out loud .. and of course embrace the new technology. Getting everyone involved and enthousiast to use the new tech is quite difficult. Colleagues are often not waiting for something new in their busy lives.

I have seen how NOT to do it at an organization that had set up a room for live streaming. This way people outside the room could join in with interesting session and meetings. However, no one knew how it technically worked. It was also quite complex to operate the system with two cameras and a recorder. The support technician was difficult to reach. There was no talk or brainstorming done about the usefulness of live streams. The room was mainly booked because the chairs and tables were attractive :). I suspect that the technology in this organization no longer exists and that it has cost a lot of money.

Don't blame the technophobes

This is a funny video with the current king of the Netherlands setting up a videocall with his mom. It is quite recognizable for anyone with older parents or grandparrents... She acts quite technophobe.

A technophobe is someone who has difficulty or is unable to deal with technology. It doesn't mean they don't like any social technology. They are often using, for example, social media because their friends are using those media.

If introducing the technology is difficult, it is easy to think that it is due to the digital skills of your colleagues in the organization. AARGH. "If only everyone was a little more tech savy..". The challenge, however, is not technophobia. It is much more complex.

BUILDS- Watch the influence of the technology on the users

But if you don't have to focus on the digital skills - what should you focus on? The BUILDS framework says: look closely at the influence of technology on work and the 'business'? What do you gain and lose as a user?

The book Shock of the New is written by Chad Udell and Gary Woodill and explains their BUILDS framework as a lens to look at digital transformation. The framework helps you take a good look at the intended and unintended consequences of a new technology. If you understand this, you can guide the introduction much better with smart actions. Often there are quite a few consequences. The introduction of Yammer in an organization shifted the communication hierarchy. Middle managers lost their control over the information flows. If you don't pay enough attention to these consequences and give the middle managers a role, you can get stuck.

Put yourself in the shoes of your users

The U from BUILDS- is the U of user experience. You have to really empathize with the users for the change to succeed. It seems like an open door, yet we sometimes overlook this step. You know your colleagues, right? Especially the technophobes :). After all, you've been working there for 2/5/10 years.

One pitfall is that we think we know the users, another pitfall is to start thinking about users very late in the process. A change process in which tech plays a key role often starts with selling the idea to management so that there is budget, then comes the selection and purchase of the technology. If the tech has been set up, the project already appears to have been successful and ends. But then it starts.

The plea of BUILDS is to answer the following questions much earlier in the process. This can be done through interviews, group discussions or workshops.

What new ways of learning and working does the technology offer? What does it offer the users? What will make them happy and what not?
To what extent does the technology provide a user-friendly experience compared to what they also use and like privately?
In which ways will users deploy the technology? What changes are necessary? It is great if you can observe what people are doing now so that you know the biggest changes
Develop one and preferably multiple use cases. What is the use case of a colleague? What are the different types of users?
Can the users use the technology in their own way, does it offer this flexibility?
How will you test and set up together with users? How do you keep collecting feedback to improve it?

Make sure you do all this analysis at the beginning before purchasing the tech. Then you know which different groups of users there are. Make sure you involve these people in the vision development. But also when making choices regarding technology, testing and design.

Suppose you want to introduce a social intranet, you could invite a few people (both management and different types of employees) to test three different platforms. This way you can immediately observe how they use it and you can discuss the benefits for everyone, but also the obstacles.

An example: they may find logging in with different passwords very difficult. In that case you can work on single-sign on, so that employees can log in with one password. In this way you ensure that you do not see your colleagues as simple technophobes, but that you understand their hurdles and remove those. The aforementioned middle managers were extensively trained in 'servant leadership' so that their role changes and they can become enthusiastic about Yammer. The don't see it as a loss of control anymore but as an opportunity for new leadership styles.

Even after the launch of the tech, you continue to involve users. At Rijkswaterstaat, for example, managers and employees were offered a platform to share experiences via blogs and Yammer. The board then entered into discussions with them via Yammer in so-called YamJams. Keep an eye on the users and adjust if necessary so that the technology supports their work and does not make it more difficult.

Learning cultures and gamification at #oeb21 in Berlin

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 17:37:23 +0000

I was really looking forward to the #oeb21 conference in Berlin. I gave a workshop about humor, learned a lot about learning culture and got inspiration and pratical tips for gamification and... we went out dining!! (while that was no longer possible in the Netherlands because of the evening lockdown). Before travelling I could hardly believe I would travel. The Netherlands was in evening lockdown and I would attend a conference with 1000 people? It wasn't until we got on the train that I dared to look for museums on Tripadvisor :). There were fewer participants at OEB due to corona. There were about 650 people and normally more than 2000. There were quite a few COVID measures: you could enter the conference space only if you were vaccinated or cured and you also had to take a daily corona test. Fortunately, that was just around the corner. Together with Steven van Luipen and Ite Smit I gave a pre-conference workshop on 'Stimulating social learning by humour and playful design', I will write a separate blog about our workshop.

What was hot?

The theme of the conference was resilience. Corona clearly influenced the content: there were many sessions with lessons learned from COVID-19, and a lot about proctoring in education. And equipment for hybrid classrooms. The debate on Thursday also focused on COVID with the statement:

This house believes education failed to learn the lessons from covid-19

It was a very interesting debate and in the end I agreed with the statement. Furthermore, many sessions focussed on learning culture, gamification, use of video in online learning. What I did miss was some visionary contributions and trendwatchers. Something about new developments & trends, the role of L&D around fake news or the Metaverse? I am not a visionary myself so I like to be inspired by other visionaries.

Learning culture & workplace learning

I find this topic very interesting, hence attended many sessions related to workplace learning. Stimulating a learning culture means supporting employees to learn and develop themselves, but also collectively as teams and organizations. It is more about guiding change and informal learning than designing learning experiences.

I was lucky that this was the theme of the opening on day 2 with Sina Fackeler from AXA in Paris and Isabelle Mancel from Thales. The interesting thing about Isabelle's story was that she managed to get a decision that all teams set aside half a day a week for team learning. Great to know that there are organizations bold enough to do this! I always hear from people that they don't have time for informal learning and reflecting. An organization that dares to invest in this is wonderful news. How does it work? Each team looks their learning backlog - I interpreted this as a definition of what they can improve and defines learning questions. They call their half days 'learning moments'. Resources are offered, but you can also do a retrospective, for instance visit another team. You can do it individually or with your team. An important success factor is support from higher management.

Sina had designed some sort of trajectory. She is working on a coalition of changemakers - based on the idea that you can change the norm when 25% are convinced but above all show the 'new' behaviour. To get that 25% there was a trajectory “Be the change” and another trajectory for leaders with “Lead the change”. Unfortunately, it was not entirely clear to me how they describe this change, although they did talk about a new definition of learning: learning happens anywhere and anytime.

What I missed in the presentation was technology, you could certainly use an LXP platform supporting a change towards workplace learning. What was also funny was that a survey at Thales showed that 77% of employees mainly learned outside the organization, which shocked them. I was think: great - outward looking professionals!

Laura Overton facilitated a World Café based on lessons learned from a CIPD report titled 'Learning and skills at work survey 2021'. The aim of the café was to looking for effective post-pandemic L&D practice as input for a manifesto. The report consistently distinguishes between organizations with a separate L&D department, organizations where L&D is the task of the HR department, L&D as the task of managers and organizations without an L&D department. The latter appeared to do better on learning culture and workplace learning :).

(source: CIPD report)

Another shock for the L&D staff in the room. My simple solution to abolish L&D is of course too simplistic. How can you ensure that L&D is relevant to the core business? In the World Café, solutions were presented such as internships, making sure that managers and employees are always co-owners when designing learning. How do you develop skills? By developing all kinds of training courses or by stimulating employees to remain curious and to learn continuously?

Be in groove with your talents

This is where Jef Staes comes on stage. Many teachers still work from a 2D mindset: from before the internet. We now live in a 3D world where information is abundant. Jef sees learning like this: you have to find your passion. Your own passion activates your talents. Passionate people start to look for information and take action. At that point, you get dopamine. You learn and experience that learning is fun.

Many students have never experienced this and that is a shame. Education should focus more on getting that dopamine experience, because after experiencing this you want to continue learning. Jef believes less in changing people and teacher than in looking for a new type of employee. As a metaphor, he uses the world of silent movies that transitioned to spoken films. New actors were found for this, the silent actors were not automatically good for the art of talking & acting. In the same way, not every 2D teacher is capable of making the transition to 3D education. And they are not to blame for it. That is such a great thing to hear I think of you have a hard time coping.

I'm a fan of Jef's ideas, although he could develop in more detail on how to do this practically. Jef talks a lot about talents, although he also sees that the word talent is subject to inflation, because KFC already advertises with 'We are looking for your talents'. A tip of the veil is: start working earlier, and at the end of your career do what you enjoy, the rest can be done by young people. Waiting until you are 23 to start work is not good, that's not how you discover your own passions.

Gamification en challenges

I missed the pre-conference workshop about online escape rooms, but luckily I did have a conversation with Willi Bernard. That's how I learned he uses Mozilla Hubs to build the escapes. He invites students to built the escapes. On average they spend 30 hours building a 1 hour escape with about 6 puzzles. Want to know more? Download his slides

I did participate in the game about challenge-based learning. In challenge-based learning, students work on complex, social problems from the real world. There is a high degree of self-regulation and people from different disciplines work together. From the examples I liked the example in which students worked intensively for 2 weeks and during these weeks skills workshops were offered, eg learning to pitch. However, they are optional, students choose whether they want to follow these workshops or not. Finally, they present the result to the challenge owners.

We were asked in groups to design a challenge for students to come up with CO2 neutral transport for 2040. The challenge runs for 10 weeks and requires 250 hours from students. This was done by means of a game. We won, yeah! However, it was an example of a game where competition got in the way of the learning objective. The aim was to design challenge-based learning together and to discuss which teaching methods you offer. We played against each other for Lego blocks. We became so fanatical about collecting Lego blocks that we stopped discussing the best working methods at all :). Which would have been very interesting to do because from the cards I could see that they have thought very carefully about this, such as stakeholder analyses, learning to pitch, etc. I will try to get the full list from them.

My biggest lesson is that with a game you have to reward the learning dynamics you want to see, so if you want participants to discuss well and choose the best learning activities, give points for the best design, or best fit of methods, instead of random points. This reminds me that I once gave an online workshop in which my breakouts failed and I had the impression participants learned even more than when they had succeeded :).

More OEB?

If you read Dutch read Wilfred Rubens: his reflections, choosing between face-to-face, asychroon and synchroon learning , do's en don'ts van hybride sessies.

Build a simple escape room for learning

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 15:06:55 +0000

Is it Catalonia or Spain? Oh yes Spain! 3 more minutes.... Yes, Spain is good! I hear how everyone is engaged in the game during the mini online escape room. We organized a meetup about online escape rooms for learning and the 45 participants of the meetup start with experiencing an escape.

A great gateway into escapes for learning. For example, you immediately experience how smart it is to build up the information, always small bits of new information. And how important clear instructions are. For example, the first sentence is: 'choose someone from your group who will read the story aloud'. This immediately helps to maintain the group's attention. Tip: do you also want to try this escape room in Dutch built by Monika Theron van het Centre for Innovation at Leiden University. Click here

Escape rooms are hot, also within L&D

Escape rooms have been popular for years, in the Netherlands the DOME from Bunschoten is now number 1 . Only 35% escape from it within an hour. Relatively new are digital escape rooms, with a learning goal. A digital escape room is perfect for more experiential, game-based learning. They can be played individually or in a group. In this blog I'll focus on simple escape rooms. There is of course a difference between extensive flashy designs and escapes that you can build yourself in an afternoon.

But are escape rooms a powerful learning tool or hype? From a white paper by Ijsfontein:

"Several pilot studies have shown that an escape room offers opportunities for assessments and can positively contribute to learning or introducing new knowledge/skills and to repeating or putting teaching material into practice. It ties in with an active learning and working environment in which the emphasis is on experience, application and collaboration"

Escape rooms fit in with the new trends of playful learning, homo ludens and serious gaming, and of course in the old, trusted tradition of active learning.

An example: Mondrian Escapes

Karin Winters of LearningRocks has made an escape about media literacy:the Mondriaan Escapes. The aim is to make teachers media literate in a playful way. The story is that the education inspectorate has been abolished, instead a media literacy inspectorate has been set up. Participants are challenged to decipher an email address of the inspection. To this end, every day a new assignment was placed online. The incentive is that you can win a free workshop. The escape was well received, but it is important to be available during the escape period and/or to give hints and tips. Not everyone interprets the assignments in the same way and you have to avoid that participants get stuck.

The aim is to learn about media literacy. Incidentally, Escape the silence was an example of an online group escape, the Mondriaan escapes an individual escape. Both are possible, depending on your goal. Hybrid forms are also possible: where participants are at the same location, but also get started online via keys with QR codes, for example.

Tools to build a simpel escape room

You can already get started with the tools in your own organization. The two examples use van Google forms en Google sites. These are simple tools which already serve the purpose. There was a question about a platform like LearningStone. Actually you can build an escape room in any platform if there is a function to assess contributions by participants. If you can enter text and questions where you only proceed to the next assignment with a correct answer, you can use it. You can also embed Google forms and sites in your LMS or site. Other tools:

A hotspot image H5P, Canva or Thinglink.
Mozilla hubs for a virtual experience
New: audio escape rooms
Google maps is great to hide information
Or you may use authoring tools like Articulate Rise

Tips to get started with a simple online escape room

Monika and Karin share their tips to get started. First of all, it is important to get to know your target audience well. It gives you a clue to how complicated/easy it must be. It is not the intention that you first have to be very digitally skilled before you can participate. If necessary, you can come up with something with well-known tools (eg a Microsoft Teams session) and pen and paper. Check out the 10 steps you can take.

Seven more tips:

Start with the goal and come up with a story - your storyline
Be very clear in your instructions
Test the escape room, people can interpret puzzles differently
You can assign roles, for example the role of reading the text aloud
Choose to run the escape with or without a moderator. If there is no moderator, you have to be clear where hints can be found to prevent people from getting stuck. Moderating takes more time, but has the advantage that you can give valuable feedback and help with reflection.
You can also use existing games or modify existing formats. This saves a lot of (thinking) work!
Designing an escape room is a creative process - this is fun to do with a team in a brainstorm

More in the presentation by Monika Theron.

How to start building an escape room?

The first step is to formulate the learning objective and to consider the difference between 'need to know' and 'nice to know'. Then make up the story. In addition, you can also google what already exists and you can use without developing it yourself.

How labor intensive is it to develop an escape? And how do you make it more than a gimmick?

It doesn't have to be labor intensive - it actually involves turning your learning materials into puzzle form. Instead of flat questions and quizzes, it becomes a puzzle. This of course takes time, but it is a lot of fun to do. You can use the escape room for multiple groups / years. Another tip is to have students build the escape room. The next group of students can then play the game.

How digitally skilled do you have to be as participant? When to use it for learning or use an alternative?

You have to take the level of digital skills of your participants into account and the goal. If the online tools get in the way of the learning process, it is better not to do it, or to simplify your tools. Suppose the goal is to get to know each other, then you can perhaps get to know each other in a different way in a game. You can also opt for simple tools, such as using pen and paper.

Read about escape rooms

Play a digital escape room by Mirjam Boer for nurses (Dutch, 5 min)
Read how this escape room was built: scroll down
Another example is the Deltion experience escape room (Dutch)
Een escape room bouwen. Basic explanation in Dutch by LearningRocks
Todaysteachingtools explains how to build an escape rooms (English)
Bouw een escape room door de Baas op Internet

Tool of the month: Flipgrid app for video sharing

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 10:07:10 +0000

The tool of the month is Flipgrid, a handy app for sharing videos within a blended training or online event. It wasn't love at first sight between me and Flipgrid. The first time I tested Flipgrid I couldn't figure out how to easily invite people without the videos being public. I added everyone one by one by email and found that quite a hassle. Only later did I discover that you have to create a group and create multiple topics (to which people respond with a video) within the group. If you set up a group you can invite people very easily with a simple code. Further on in this blog post you will find an example of what such an invitation looks like. But the love has grown! I now use it regularly. A very simple way of using Flipgrid is to ask participants to introduce themselves via the app with a short video. Super easy and fun to see everyone before a meeting o workshop!

So it takes some effort to know how Flipgrid works, but if you have mastered the tool you can do very nice things with it.

What is Flipgrid?

Flipgrid is an app in which participants can easily record and share a video message right from their smartphone. They click on a big blue button with "Add response", which gives access to the camera and microphone and off they go. What makes Flipgrid fantastic for me is that you can set how long the answer can be, eg 1 or 1.5 minutes. What's also nice is that you can comment on the videos by text. Here's a great explanatory video by Richard Byrne.

Three ways of using Flipgrid

Flipgrid to get to know each other. You can use Flipgrid before you give a training session or (online) workshop. Ask participants to share what they want to learn, or introduce themselves. As a facilitator, you have a richer feel of your participants: face, voice and learning questions. Add a light-hearted question if you like, such as 'what made you laugh out loud this week?'
Flipgrid for groupwork harvesting. I regularly use Flipgrid for group assignments, especially when the group is working together online for 1-3 weeks. I ask them to record a flipgrid video with their harvest in 1 minute. It helps the group condense their findings. I will show the videos during the (online) meeting. This way the presentations don't get boring and I know exactly how long it will take. You can make use of Flipgrid's mixtapes which is a feature which allows you to show a number of videos in a row via one link.
Flipgrid for presentation skills. You can of course use Flipgrid to practice presentation skills. I used it to let participants practice a pitch. The advantage of Flipgrid is that participants can re-record as many times as they want. I showed the pitches during a live online session. All participants gave positive feedback and tips via the chat, but you can of course also ask to give feedback online in Flipgrid, or give feedback yourself as a trainer.

Example Flipgrid instruction

How can you share your story?

Download the Flipgrid app from the app store: Android or Apple You will be asked for a flip code. The code is: 34xx5z
Follow the steps to record your video. Click on Add response, log in with a Microsoft or Google account and start your video.
Your contribution is approved by me. So don't worry if you don't see your own video right away, I'll approve it as soon as possible. If you have any questions, you can email me.

What can go wrong?

It happened to me twice that Flipgrid didn't work properly, or better said: my exercise didn't work properly. I used it once with a group that didn't know each other well and I asked a quite complicated question. There were only two responses. With another group I was eagerly looking every day at the Flipgrid app on my smartphone, but no videos appeared. What happened? Flipgrid had changed the default settings to moderation. There were contributions, but as an 'educator' I had to approve them first via the website. Unfortunately you can't turn it off. Oh yes there was a third exercise with few responses! I was depend on other to send the invitation and they sent on the day of the live session, hence we had few responses. So the lesson is to use it only when there is space and energy to invest in downloading the app and record.

Nog een creatieve toepassing: een kennisclip maken

Er is een nieuwe mogelijkheid om een screenrecording te maken: een opname van je scherm als video. Hiermee kun je een kennisclip maken als je bv. een powerpoint of andere uitleg laat zien op je computerscherm. Deze functie is een beetje verborgen maar in de video hieronder legt Richard Byrne precies uit waar je deze kunt vinden.

Translation resultsWhat about Flipgrid and privacy? You can choose settings to guarantee privacy.  For example, you can choose that only you see the videos. GDPR wise it must be clear who can see the videos and what the purpose is. It is good to delete the videos after a certain time. Personally I think it is better to use Flipgrid than Whatsapp for sharing videos. First, because you can set the time and subjects. Secondly, because with Whatsapp you cannot prevent people from receiving continuous notifications. With Flipgrid people are more in control when they watch new additions and it is not mixed with private messages. 

Large-scale online course design? Use collaborative learning for high engagement

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 12:15:23 +0000

The big challenge with large-scale online courses (100+ participants) is to keep people engaged. It is easy for people to drop out: due to urgent matters on their to-do list, due to learning assignments that do not exactly match their learning goals, due to not understanding the platform…. Offering the course for free does not help either: the threshold for participants to register is very low, but equally low to give up. Collaborative learning can help keep people engaged and motivated online. In this blog I motivate my experiences with the food system e-course.

In May I was asked to design and facilitate the free food systems e-course together with Wageningen University and the Netherlands Food Partnership for 500 participants from all over the world. I immediately thought this was a super fun assignment. Such a large and diverse group! I saw it as my personal challenge to ensure that the 500 people would remain active, and that they would also apply the food systems thinking in practice. It was a 5 week trajectory: 4 week with a food systems theme like 'Why does a food systems approach matter?'. Halfway through there was a catch-up week. The time investment was 16 hours.

I have chosen to focus strongly on collaborative learning. This consisted of group assignments with the ultimate assignment to write a joint blog. An expert jury selected the best blogs and the three best were published. This collaborative assignment was an important factor in keeping people active and has been highly valued. Some spontaneous reactions online:

“Here we go Group 17- the “Food Ambassadors”! I am delighted with the dedication and respect of our members, thanks to our team leader”

“My Group 1 colleagues: it is good working together with everyone. Thank you Yvonne for expertly leading the group. Let's keep up the good spirit”

“Group 8: It was a great trip!”

My own experience as drop-out

I participated in the Learning Experience through Design workshop of NovoEd before the holidays. I really wanted to finish this one. I really looked forward to it, had quite some time and a good motivation: I wanted to work on my own case: a new learning experience. Yet I gave up. I had to get used to the platform. I wanted feedback on my case and signed up for a group with the idea of getting feedback, but there were 100 people in this group so I did not gain connections. I was deeply ashamed when I saw a month later that I did have a comment! I didn't see this because I didn't get a notification. I had a positive boost when my work was shown as an example during a Zoom session. Then I went on vacation and dropped out. So you see that there can be a lot of drop-out moments. Could I do that better through collaborative learning?

Did we succeed to keep people engaged in the Food systems course?

Not 100% but 54%! The course had a total of 558 participants who were selected to participate in the course. Of these participants, 299 completed the e-course and obtained their certificate (54%). I am very proud and satisfied. This is a high percentage compared to other large scale online courses. Research by Katy Jordan shows that in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), the completion rate can approach 20%, but most MOOCs have a percentage of less than 10%. Some MOOCs are larger and scale up to 50,000 participants, I can imagine that lowers the completion rate.

Is the glass half full, or half empty? Maybe you also think 54% is low? I regularly work with people who have less experience with this type of online trajectory and find 54% very low. They compare it with face-to-face training where completion is almost 100%. Online offers much more flexibility, maybe someone will learn a lot by participating in two of the four modules and only following the resources that are relevant. In other words: in doesn't mean the 46% did not learn anything.

How to measure success?

Success can be measured in several ways: by observations and measurements- and measurements can be clicks or surveys. We had a weekly barometer - a short survey to get feedback. When interpreting your findings it helps if you can compare it with other online courses.

1. Observations. People reacted super enthusiastically, gradually there was more and more reaction to each other.

“During this course, expectations were exceeded. I am very grateful to be part of this community of scientists and mentors. The facilitators were great and very rich in knowledge sharing. Thanks again WCDI!”
“Thank you very much to our supervisors. You guys were amazing to share with us so much knowledge that you bridged my knowledge gap. I am eternally grateful to WCDI for this free, customized training. To my fellow participants, thank you for connecting and hopefully we'll keep in touch. Karibu Tanzania”
“I enjoyed the modules and how they were designed. I have learned and make good use of the knowledge gained. A great appreciation to all supervisors and WCDI. I look forward to collaboration between some of the resource persons and myself in the field of food safety and biotechnology. Thank you very much!"

2. Measurements. Engagement can also be measured quantitatively. The first week there were 3,800 responses, but the other weeks there were even more – above 4,000. There were between 180 and 280 participants in the plenary sessions with guest speakers, while the recordings were also viewed an average of 150 times.

46% are dropouts. These were mainly people who did not start, or people who dropped out after the first week. 25% never started the course despite the fact that we emailed them separately a week after the start that they are taking the place of other people who also wanted to join and were rejected.

If you would like to support these people, you may need more personal attention, which takes a lot of time. 22 people who did not start have responded to our survey and this shows that being too busy with work was the most important factor followed by the internet connection.

So what were the main success factors?

An important precondition for involving people: good content – practice-oriented

It may seem obvious, but the content of the food systems course was relevant and practical. The topic of food systems is relevant because of the great challenge: how do we feed 9-10 billion mouths in 2050? An important UN food summit will take place in September. This was the second edition of the food systems e-course. The content of the first edition was developed in collaboration with experts from Wageningen University and an external consultant, all with extensive field experience. Hence, the content was good and relevant. Lots of short, relevant videos and cases and interesting speakers in the synchronous Zoom sessions. The advantage of a second edition was also that the core team was well attuned to each other. In this case, the experts were really practice-oriented, which was a big advantage. My role was to refine the questions and to organize collaborative learning.

Collaborative learning as part of a broader vision of social learning

Collaborative learning was part of social learning. Other components were forming a group feeling, building trust, and learning from each other. We have used the Curatr platform within StreamLXP. This platform is developed for social learning which facilitates online exchange. There was a network café where people introduced themselves and placed themselves on a worldmap.

“This map is so cool! It's nice to see three others from my country on the course."

The network café was also open to people with a call for collaborations or advice. For instance:

“I am working on a book proposal focused on the intersection of urban agriculture and forced displacement/humanitarian crisis. It will largely focus on case studies from the field. Given the wealth of expertise in this e-course, I was wondering if you have come across any projects in your work focusing on gardening/agriculture for refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs)?”

Another way of social learning was through the open space. After the catch-up week, we started an open space area online with important themes that emerged from the discussions by participants. We also asked a number of participants in a Zoom session to present and discuss their case with an expert.

The facilitation was aimed at creating a group feeling. People with an interesting contribution were mentioned in the emails, the network was made visible by means of a map, but also by making a YouTube playlist of participants' favorite songs. When playing, you become aware again of the great diversity in the group. The playlist was certainly popular, new songs were contributed until the very end and had 1200 views.

Gamification

Last but not least, there were elements of gamification. A leaderboard showed the most active participants- not only the people which reacted a lot but also those whose reactions are valued. At one point it became a race between three participants who started to post a lot of comments and documents with the aim of getting on top of the leaderboard. We wondered how to deal with this, but it didn't seem to interfere with the learning process and it was also funny. What we did though - is consciously reward other people, for example people with a special case or the first with a certificate.

Online collaborative learning for large numbers: use clear instructions and mentors

With 500 participants, guiding groups takes a lot of time. We tried to lower the number and upper the motivation by making it voluntary. During the intake, people could sign up for group work and we made it clear that this would take an extra 4 hours. We hoped for a maximum of 120 people (20 groups of 6), but this 370 signed up! A bit overwhelming but also fun. Many people who had not registered during the intake were very eager to participate when they saw the enthusiasm of the others. We have formed another new bonus group for these participants.

To keep it manageable, we opted for (1) clear assignments and (2) the help of voluntary mentors. Each group had its own mentor – not for content guidance but mainly to help the group organize itsellf and see to it the groups did not get stuck. Each mentor has fulfilled this role differently.

We have chosen to group people by region/language area, so for example French-speaking West Africa together, Spanish-speaking people together. The advantage was that they could collaborate in their own language and did not have to bother with large time zone differences. I personally think that this has been an important success factor, also in understanding each other's context. Especially for the Latin American groups. Once in a while, that didn't work out because a lady from Asia ended up as part of a French-speaking group.

Last but not least, we had the groups work on a real life case of one of the group members. As a result, the first assignment was mainly filled with getting acquainted and choosing a case. This took a relatively high amount of group collaboration time, but ensured the groupwork was very practical and participants could go in depth.

A number of ways in which we have tightly managed the group work:

Four short assignments of an hour with a tight deadline, all assignments were online and were explained again in the Zoom sessions. The assignments worked towards a clear final assignment: writing a blog.
There was guaranteed feedback from experts; but only after handing in the assignment before the deadline
The opportunity to work for an hour in your own group in Zoom every Wednesday after the guest speaker. Many groups have taken advantage of this. The groups were free to choose their own time, however this can be quite some hassle.
In the first assignment we stimulated the creation of a Whatsapp, Viber or Signal group for fast communication within the group. Some groups opted for email as a means of communication.
We asked for one contact person. This made it easy to get in touch.
In the first assignment we asked to choose a name for the group. These became names like “11 tomatoes”, “Simba”, “Asian Booster” and “los Andinos”.

Volunteering for group work worked very well for motivation. Of the 38 groups, only 1 group has not started. There are 34 groups that submitted a good final assignment. However, only 4-6 people were active in each group. I wonder if that percentage would be higher if you formed groups of 4-5 people. The fact that you could win as a group also helped. The groups were motivated to submit a blog, and there was a respected jury and clear judging criteria.

Collaboration learning worked for course engagement: group members progressed further in the course

The beauty of the Curatr platform is that you can form groups to monitor and compare the performance. For example, we compared participants with group work with the other non - group work participants. Progress is measured in points. The group people clearly got more points.

The mean score of the participants with group work was: 317.3

The average score of the participants without group work was: 219

It is an indication that group work helps to keep up the engagement with an online course. This may be chicken and egg: the participants with higher motivation may be more likely to sign up for group work.

Fortunately, there is also other research that shows that collaborative learning contributes to the capacity for self-directed learning online. Wang et al describe in ‘How does group cooperation help improve self-directed learning ability in nursing students? a trial of one semester online learning that nurses' group work contributes to self-direction and collaboration skills. This helps participants in online learning to plan their own learning activities. I personally think group work works as peer pressure and builds social capital. For instance, in one of my own groups someone became ill and received emotional messages wishing him strength and thanks for his efforts. Such a bond can also be formed in a short time.

We also asked which learning activities they learned the most from. The online resources, plenary sessions and online discussions score the highest, but there is also a group that puts group work first or second.

Intake, feedback and a certificate also contributed

In addition to social learning and good content, I think there were a number of other factors that helped to keep people engaged. First of all, a good intake and selection. People were asked if they had time (some answered no and were therefore not selected :)) and what their motivation was. The 500 fortunate participants were selected from more than 900 applications. In addition, there was continuous feedback from the experts and some mentors on the contributions. This was highly appreciated and even more feedback was requested. In addition, there was a clear structure with a final weekly assignment: the gateway to the next week. When all gates were completed, people could download a certificate. This was certainly an incentive for many participants.

“Yippeeeeee! On June 30, I obtained my certificate. After trying the last quiz several times, I finally crossed the line. I would like to say a big thank you to the organizers of this course, all our wonderful tutors, mentors at the plenary session and all participants for making the last 5 weeks unforgettable for me, having fun while learning. You are all much appreciated. Lots of hugs!"

“I feel good, very good, because I got my certificate today. My appreciation goes out to all supervisors of the four modules. Mr Erik Slingerland, our mentor, thank you for your tireless efforts to ensure that we complete the group assignments on time. To the course organizers and the entire WCDI team, God bless you for giving us this opportunity. Fellow participants… Congratulations to all of you. WE DID IT!!"

Conclusion

It is clear that collaborative and social learning have contributed to keeping participants engaged in the food systems e-course. The organization and supervision takes time, but you can minimize it through clear instructions and the use of voluntary mentors. Online you have to look redefine participation differently compared to face-to-face. You will never get 100% of participants doing all learning activities. Someone who does not fully participate but does participate in two online sessions can also learn something from this what he / she wants to learn, self-management and making choices become more important. It seems that a percentage of 50% is a good achievement for a large-scale online course.

Sibrenne and I are looking forward to May 20, the day that our book 'Blended learning design' (in Dutch) will be published. It was a happy writing process (18 days in all), but the proofreading was kind of tough. I read the whole book twice and had not really planned this intense kind of proofreading. But it looks wonderful! So I feel relieved that the book is currently at the printing press (ofcourse there will be an ebook too!).

The outline of the book is - organizing the start (with design approaches etc), design, innovative blends, from goal to tools, from infographic to interactive videos (on learning materials), online facilitation and online specials.

The 3P model

One of my favorite models is the 3P model by Chatti, Matthias Jarke and Marcus Specht. The model is developed in response to the changing world of online media and information. Trainers are now 'competing with Youtube' as Hans de Zwart said. Rather than competing, you should make good use of the available sources and use them for pull learning activities. In that way people learn more pro-actively plus you teach them how to network, find and judge resources. Please find my explanation of the 3P model using Squigl.

The 3P model in the water management and policy course

An example: with the 3P model we are developing a course for civil servants dealing with water management and policy, popularly known as the water course. Important principles for this course are:

We focus on the learner, his needs and preferences.
We provide a varied program in which we actively involve participants in the design.
We choose a learning platform that they can continue to use after the process.
You learn with others. We want to focus on getting to know each other, learning from each other and expanding the network.

The process takes three months. 120 participants participate and they are guided by three facilitators with knowledge of the business. The first week they get to know each other on the basis of statements. Participants are explicitly invited to share their own professional practice / experiences. (Participation) Questions are: what is your engagement with water management? Which challenges do you see? What questions do you have? We organize a live session to inventory and cluster these experiences. This clustering helps in the development of elective modules.

This is followed by two months, during which everyone takes a module of their choice. (Personalization) Each module has an assignment in which something must be selected or designed that is useful in one's own practice. The groups themselves look for information. There is a list of experts they can interview (Pull). Each group is also asked to contact at least one company. The process is concluded with a presentation of the products of the groups. The participants also discuss how this group may wish to continue as a knowledge network and who can play a facilitating role in this.

Using Squigl to make animations

I am a big fan of Squigl. Squigl works with text and you search images. There is a library of images you can use and this library is expanding, hence there is is already a wide choice. However, I still wish to draw my own images using my Wacom tablet. You can record your own voice or use an automated voice (which I did since I am not a native English speaker). Do you want to know more about how to use Squigl? Watch this video.

Tool of the month: online brainstorm wall Padlet

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 16:32:58 +0000

Often when I blog about tools I put a new tool in the spotlight. However, online learning can be rendered more effective by smart use of 'old' tools. That's why this time the tool of the month is good old Padlet. You probably already know Padlet. Padlet is an online brainstorm wall on which you can stick post-its online. I've been using Padlet for quite a few years, from the time it was still called Wallwisher. In fact, I have a privileged position at Padlet. As an early user I am allowed to use the number of Padlets I created in the beginning (20+), while you can now only create three for free. The great thing about Padlet is that your participants don't have to create an account to brainstorm. I am also a big fan of the export function. You get a nice PDF that is also easy to read. Have a look at ehis result from a brainstorm about online humor.

You can use Padlet in many different ways. Below are a number of smart ways in which you can use our tool of the month. If you have one of your own, it would be nice if you add it in the comments to this blog post.

The basics of Padlet

If you are not familiar with Padlet, this video by Richard Byrne is a good way to familiarize yourself with Padlet.

You can find more instruction videos on Richard's website.

You can use Padlet for all the same ways you would use post-its and a flipchart in a room. You can ask your participants a question and have them stick post-its on a wall or flip. You can do this in exactly the same way online. The twist online is that you can choose whether you want people to brainstorm together in a live online session, or invite people in advance to brainstorm on their own. Sending out a Padlet before the session is best when collecting questions or ideas. In the session you can then discuss or cluster on this. When you first want to explain something, and work on it later, it works to work on a Padlet during an online session.

On to more creative uses of Padlet!

The three step brainstorm

With a three-step brainstorm you build your storm in three steps. Brainstorm first, then ask people to read and like, and then discuss the ratings. Padlet can be set in such a way that participants can also give comments and likes to contributions (go to settings -comments and reactions). An example: I invited participants to post a good blend of online and face-to-face activities. Then I asked participants to read the contributions and give likes. During the discussion I zoomed in on the highest ranked contributions asked for reasons. Together you can thus make a list of the working elements of a good blend. Another example of a three-step brainstorm is to invite participants to post difficult situations, then make suggestions to each other via the comments and finally discuss a number of cases.

The world map

When you create a Padlet you choose a template. One of the template is 'map'. You can use the world map in Padlet to let participants introduce themselves by putting themselves on the map. This gives a nice overview of the group. You can also ask everyone to add specific information, such as their areas of expertise. You can also zoom in on one particular country - see the Netherlands in the image. You can also use the map in Padlet to present information linked to a geographical location. Suppose you want to offer information about climate change, you can add info and link that to the specific location.

Breakout groups

You can also use Padlet well as support for group work in breakouts. In Zoom it is always a struggle to clearly communicate the assignment to the groups, the groups can't take the slide to the chat. Sometimes I say 'just take a picture yourself'. One solution is to create a Padlet with columns (this template is called 'Shelf'. You can use a column for the assignment itself and give each group a column, where they take notes. This is a nice way for you as a facilitator to monitor the progress in the groups. If you see one group's column is still empty you may visit that group.

The mini-course

Microlearning is hot. You can use Padlet as the basis for a short course, for example a ten-day course on 'staying fit in times of corona'. You can use a column per day with a short assignment. You can add a video, podcast or article. Another way is to link multiple Padlets. Start a 'Mother Padlet' and link to the other Padlets. Here you will find an explanation how to link them. Or make an escape room as a mini course.

Padlet in your own platform

There are several platforms where participants cannot interact easily. Or the comments are quite hidden (like in Moodle). You can often 'embed' = insert other content in your platform, like a video. If you can embed a video, you can also embed a Padlet. For the users the experience is seamless, it is as if they are responding in the platform.

Video and audio Padlets

A nice feature of Padlet is the option to record a short video via your webcam. Hence, you can use Padlet in the same way as the Flipgrid app. For example, ask the participants to record a pitch of no more than 1 or 2 minutes and ask the other participants to give feedback via the comments. During a series of digital working visits, we keep each other informed via short video messages. During a project, the presentations were shared via a Padlet and we gave feedback via the audio. That makes it more personal.

Ideas added by readers:

Use Padlet for evaluation: ask people to write down their ideas in different columns. One column per participant or per evaluation topic.
You can add your own image as background. You may use for instance a graph and ask people to add ideas concerning the elements of the graph. You need to use the canvas template for this, otherwise the posts can not be placed on an exact place on the wall.

Happy learners with an attractive platform

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 10:55:29 +0000

Do you facilitate an online or blended course? If it takes longer than let's say a day or week, you may be using an online platform. Maybe you are already content that you understand all feature or you may have someone 'doing' the platform stuff. That is a shame because a well-designed and attractive platform is important. So you should be bothered about the style and content of the platform, even if you think there is not that much that you can tweak (what you can tweak depends indeed). In this blog I explain why the attractiveness of your platform is important and will give a number of tips that you can get started with right away.

In this video you see the 'Rapping Flight Attendant David Holmes'. He explains the safety instructions via a rap. Not only musical and fun, but it also turns out to be effective. "This is the first time I have listened to the instructions" a passenger told him. Making fun can help capture attention ... How can you use this with your online platform?

Happy or sad online? The importance of emotions

Donald Norman writes about the importance of emotion in design in an article called Emotion & Design, Attractive things work better. Two elements are important for a great platform supporting learning. First, the attrractiveness - the immediate atmosphere that you experience as a participant on a platform. And secondly, the convenience - the ease with which the participant can use the platform and move around and find their way. Most importantly, the first influences the second: appearance affects the ease of use. A study of ATMs in Japan and Israel shows that an attractive ATM with the same buttons is perceived as easier. Norman explains this on the basis of emotions: an attractive design makes you happier and hence you are more open to finding solutions, for example clicking a few times before you find what you are looking for. On the other hand, if you are in a bad mood, you can keep clicking on something and get annoyed. So you can get away with more problems if it looks nice.

How to make your platform attractive? You can do something about the design, font, color photos. What atmosphere do you want to create in the platform? That probably depends on your target group. Business- like or informal? With hand-drawn images you get a different atmosphere than with photos of well-dressed employees. Blue gives a different feeling than orange. Also play with fonts. And test. Ask participants what they find attractive and what they don't.

Tips for an attractive platform

Make use of illustrations, photos and drawings. Illustrations contribute to the attractiveness and atmosphere. If you have or can hire a graphic designer in-house, he or she can help you develop the style. If not, you can also ensure that you add images such as photos or cartoons. You can use sites with photos such as Pixabay or Unsplash for this. Or use icons such as Nounproject or Iconduck. You may also search for images with use rights using Google images.
Provide a clear structure. A participant enters the platform and must be able to find his way. A good menu function helps with this. You may put a welcome message on the homepage in which you give people a brief explanation. Remember that not everything has to be visible from the start, maybe you can keep a few themes hidden for later? Or do you expand the platform based on the wishes of the participants?
Put the most important thing first. Online you work with lots of hyperlinks. How often does someone have to click to get to the information? This has a great influence on the number of responses to a question, for example. When a question and all answers are visible straight away, this produces many more responses than when you first have to click twice before entering a forum.
Use multimedia. You can work with text online. Such as exchanging ideas and experiences or answers to an assignment in a forum. It can be refreshing to work with other media such as video and audio. When you can "embed" videos (this is placing the video on your platform in such a way that the video plays there too) it is more attractive than a link.
Use appealing language. Language has a decisive role: use recognizable language, but also be creative. Calling a space for group a "bungalow" does something to the atmosphere. Or create a "garden" as a place to exchange ideas, which sounds different from "forum". Using a word like bungalow with a simple image can give the feeling that you are really sitting in a house together.
Make activity visible. Nothing is more annoying than going to an online environment and feeling that little is happening there. A main page that constantly looks the same does not make you curious. Make the activity visible on the main page: tweets, latest activities, a newly started discussion, a posted blog post, an added video, a new link to an article.

Experimenting with three network tools: Wonder Me, Spatialchat and Gather

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 14:54:21 +0000

In October I ran into Wonder at the online conference of facilitators and I got really excited about it. You can easily 'walk around' and talk to people. Then I discovered that there are many more such tools. Time for a meetup with my Dutch network (called Losmakers) to experiment with three different tools and brainstorm about ways to use them.

1. Wonder me

We tried Wonder me with the whole group of around 40 people. It didn't take me long to set up the tool. I already had a room and put a new background behind it. I made 3 circles with topics. However, in my Wonder experiences people just walk around and don't seem to follow the topics of the circles. 'As in real life' somebody remarked. In the word cloud you can see how the LOSmakers experienced Wonder me. Especially striking: very positive, intuitive, handy and fun. A few had problems with sound or became a bit dizzy from zooming in and out. People appreciated that you can immediately walk around without long explanations. The tool is really user-friendly. Personally I had difficulties with my webcam, but apparently this is a result of the stricter privacy settings of chrome?

2. Spatialchat

People also found spatialchat equally easy and playful. The difference with Wonder is that you can set up and furnish different rooms here. In each room you can choose a background image and you can also, for example, prepare a video or other content. What is the difference between Wonder and Spatialchat? With Wonder you hear the people in your circle and not the others. With spatialchat you can hear people close by, but also people further away. This gives the real pub effect, but the question is whether this is desirable online. So we went with a group: 'up the mountain', to have a quiet space where we did not hear the mumbling of the others.

3. Gather

Gather has rooms, and you can even build a city. It reminds me of walking around in Habbo hotel (for those who still know Habbo). Hence, people thought it was old-fashioned. Also funny, playful and a possible substitute for breakouts, although some would use it mainly for friends and not for professional meetings.

What can we do with those tools?

As a wrap up we discussed how to use it. They are all tools for informal meeting, so people are happy to meet informally or to chat after a session. A closing online drink, for example. But there are also other ideas:

Brainstorming. It is very suitable for brainstorming, because the tool automatically loosens you up through the freedom to walk around and mingle.
Breakout sessions. You can use it as a replacement for breakout rooms. Instead of the breakout, you invite people to one of these tools. They will have to come back by themselves at an agreed upon time. In Wonder me you can stop all conversations and announce that you have to go back to eg your Zoom or Teams meeting.
Teambuilding. Use it to strengthen informal contact in an online team. Walk around in Wonder me every Monday?
Innovation. You could shake up a consultation that goes the same way every time by doing it like this.
Information markets, poster presentations or 'Share fairs'. In Spatialchat you can give each organization its own corner, and people can walk around. Or make circles in Wonder.
Open space. It lends itself to open space. The 'law of two feet' means that you can walk around and leave if the conversation is less interesting to you. This is best possible with the help of these tools.

Tip: If you want to start working with these networking tools: plan enough time to get to know the tool and set it up. Also good is testing on which devices and with which browsers it works well. Sometimes you have to give permission to your webcam or it only works with Chrome and Firefox. This is important to prevent some people from not being able to participate.

A new generation of tools for meeting and networking online

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 16:55:18 +0000

There is a new generation of tools that enriches the toolset of online facilitators. Wow. In this blog I will list a number of them and hope to make you enthusiastic to start experimenting. The first one I discovered was Wonder Me. The first time I used Wonder Me, I was amazed by the different way it made me feel and the freedom I experienced as compared to the normal webconferencing tools. I felt I could "walk around" online by getting close to someone else and I could talk to him or her. A completely different online experience than a Zoom breakout room where you are 'put' in the breakout by the facilitator and hardly dare to leave (I did so today and it was not appreciated :).. If I had too compare it to a face-to-face experience I'd say it resembles the online version of a reception. Then I discovered that a number of nice new tools have been added. The common denominator seems to be that they are tools that change online networking: make it more visual and provide more freedom.

Wonder me

Wonder me is currently free and you can sign up to get your own Wonder room. However, it will come with paid plan at the end of next year. You can invite people to your own room, and customize the room by changing the background. Your photo is show in the room and can walk around by using your mouse. When you are close to a person or group your videos and audios will work. You can recognize a group of people already talking by a circle. So you can choose how long you stay in a group or walk further. The main facilitator can send a message to anyone, then all conversations will be silenced. You can also 'close' a circle to have a private conversation. The impressive thing is that it works for up to 1000 people, with a maximum of 15 in a circle.

Remo

Remo.co also gives a lot of control to the visitor to walk around. It is more structured than wonder.me due to its setup with tables with maximum 8 participants. You can choose which table you join, the people who sit at the table will hear a knock at the door. Full is full. You can also add a topic to the tables, so it lends itself well to a World Cafe format. You can try it for free for 14 days, after that it starts from 100 dollars per month.

Videofacilitator

Videofacilitator works in a slightly different way. You can actually organize speeddating in an easy way, by having people switch to the next person. It therefore gives less control for the participants to choose themselves. However, the feeling is different than in subgroups because you can also see the other groups. You can create a free account to try it out, after that it's $ 30 a month. It may be that there a more possibilities to use it since I only experienced the speeddating process.

Spatial chat

Spatialchat can be used perfectly for an open space session. You can create different sub-spaces like rooms, and also prepare material for a room, such as a video. The maximum number of participants is 100. It is free up to 25 participants and 3 rooms. Then it starts from $ 49.95 per month

Topia

Another nice one is Topia. You can add a picture to your own space. Personally, I was not able to try Topia because I had to set a hardware configuration in my Chrome browser and Firefox is not supported. Maybe more for the future? Topia is free for up to 25 people, then $ 29 per month.. Anybody with experiences?

Gather

Gather is also making the videocall experience more visual. However, the design is somewhat reminiscent of the (old) world of the pacman. Free for 25 people. Nice that you can start a town, city or metropolis.

Getmibo

Getmibo is more for fun. As they phrase it on their website “for informal meetings, remote drinks, social mixers, networking events, or just hanging around”. You can walk around an island and your head is the webcam. Free up to 12 people, then 49 euros per month. Until recently, Getmibo was called Borrel. They have changed the name because it can also be used for more than just drinks, for example as a network option at an online conference.

These tools are a great asset to me. What they have in common is you have more freedom to "walk around" and meet each other online. They are more visual than Zoom, Webex or Microsoft Teams. You don't need a login and you can start a room. They are not going to replace the existing webconferencing tools, but they do provide opportunities to come together online in a different way and thus new possibilities for the online facilitator.

Hybrid sessions: the new norm?

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 07:13:05 +0000

In July we completed the Design and Facilitation of Blended Learning course. As teachers, we are proud of the beautiful designs for online lessons, online workshops, interactive videos and coaching programs, which were already already implemented in many cases. It was an intensive course: interrupted by corona. The second live meeting was canceled and we went online. Although we were quite comfortable doing the program online, we missed something. Since the course is already blended, it shows that we really get energy from working with the group. In the live session in Utrecht, the theme (design, tools or facilitation) is put into context and the online experiences fall into place.

I notice that the course is already well balanced in its blend: each block has two weeks online and one morning in Utrecht. It gives a lot of energy to see each other. Without the live session you miss part of the group process. Fortunately, the last session could be a live session, although two people immediately wanted to participate online. At the last minute we received two more emails ... they prefered online too! We suddenly found ourselves in a real hybrid meeting: half online, half face-to-face.

Will hybrid sessions be the new norm?

Is hybrid the future? I would not know. Maybe we will have more online learning trajectories than blended. It is interesting that one participant did not bother to travel because it would save her time. The standard could also become to organize hybrid session. Firstly, because we can accommodate fewer people or students in a room (we had to cope with a maximum of 9). Secondly, it gives participants the freedom to decide for themselves whether they are willing to travel and meet others. In any case, we thought it gave a lot of energy to be together like this, even for the online participants!

How to organize a hybrid session

We have quite some experiences with one participant online. In this case we have her face embodied on the laptop via the webcam and carry her around. In this case we had four online participants. We asked in advance about the tool options (many are not allowed to zoom): the preferences were Skype and Zoom. We decided to put people on two laptops. Mainly, because having two laptops with each two people made the organization of the groupwork easier. In the session, it also proved to be fun to have two laptop groups, so that it is not 'us in the room' versus 'them online'. It is a challenge, however, to ensure that the online participant's experience runs smoothly. Some tips from our experience:

It helps to experience it for yourself, so offer to join as an online participant at a live meeting or meeting.
Make sure the online participants are clearly visible. That can be on a big screen or as a 'laptop head'. This way you avoid to forget them.
An external webcam can ensure that the room is clearly visible to the online participants. This is especially nice with an online speaker, as he / she also sees the reactions of the audience.
It can be more difficult to break into a discussion online, but this can also apply to the live participants. Therefore, agree how to ask for the word, eg by raising your hand. As a facilitator you may structure the important more by giving turns, so everyone gets their change.
Work regularly in subgroups, mixing online participants with face-to-face (better with headset). Or create a group of two online participants who may exchange online together.
The audio was not always optimal for the online participants. A speakerphone might improve that and is something I would like to try next time.
Divide the care for the online participants. Who is watching who? You can divide the tasks between facilitators or apply a buddy system whereby everybody who is present face-to-face is the buddy of an online person.
With large groups both face-to-face and online, it is good to have a face-to-face and online facilitator who work together and occasionally work with their own group.

The group dynamics in this blended session

The group dynamics were fine after all, because they want to stay in touch! One person never met the others face-to-face but clearly felt comfortable. I felt there was no real difference between the online and life participants (except that we had our coffees together in the sun :).

A participant: "Never had such a steep learning curve. And today, I experienced firsthand how hybrid learning works. It went really well: beyond expectations!"

More tips?

Tips for organizing a large event with a livestream here
Experiences Betreat with hybrid workshops here.
Experience with a Hybrid session in Mongolia with the trainer at a distance by Ben Ziegler here
And fun: my experiences training at the distance in Cambodia in 2011 using Zipcast and Skype

My dream: facilitating a whole week online

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 11:22:24 +0000

Well some of you may have different dreams, but one of my dreams was to facilitate a whole week online. I was interested to see how to make the program balanced and interesting, combine fun with work. Thanks to corona my dream came true :).

I facilitated the yearly exchange from an alliance active in 13 countries. From Guatemala to Indonesia. For a whole week. Yes that is super fun! What I liked the most was that I felt I got to know a number of people at the end of the week. However, not the whole group. Of course, the online week resulted from the corona crisis and we could have had more fun all together in the Netherlands, so this is definitely not a plea to do everything online. On the other hand, only 20 people would have come together in the Netherlands and we involved 40-45 people in our exchanges, even 80 in one meeting which was open to a wider group.

In the video below with the title 'locked in a room for a week' I share my experiences.

We had working sessions, fun sessions and knowledge sessions. We used google classroom, regional assignments and Flipgrid to weave all together. We did quite a good evaluation with mentimeter and I was particularly happy with the word cloud and the feelings of the participants regarding the balance.

It is of course paramount to do something like this as a team. I had a group of 3 colleagues to work with. We actually didn't talk that much about our division of tasks, but it surfaced kind of naturally. During the week had a Whatsapp group, which we mainly used to briefly tune who does what. We started every day at 9 a.m. with the facilitators team looking back and look ahead. At the end of the week it was quite impressive to see what grounds we had covered, from learning about food systems to developing communication plans and learning from communication experts to formulating an advocacy message for parliament.

How do you take care of yourself as a facilitator? Being locked in a room for a week is of course somewhat exaggerated. I had kept my calendar completely empty as much as possible, so it didn't feel like an extremely busy week. I regularly went out for walks or some shopping in between the sessions. I also had a lot of fun in the fun sessions like doing bootcamp exercises for the first time in my live.

If I'd have to improve? I think I would add more exchanges about the projects on the ground. On the other hand, that would overload the schedule, so after all, it would look quite similar actually...What I would do is blend the fun sessions with the working sessions, because they were currently optional. It would have been good for the team building to have a larger group during these sessions.

Creative facilitation with breakout rooms

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 19:20:42 +0000

Have you already discovered the breakout rooms in your webconferencing tools? Breakout rooms (also known as brainstorming rooms) allow participants of an online session to work in smaller groups. We often use this face-to-face. In smaller groups people are more active and can go deeper than in a plenary online group. You can also work in subgroups online. Breaking up in subgroups is possible in many web conferencing tools, such as Webex Training, Adobe Connect, Zoom, BigBlueButton etc. Breakout rooms are not for the starting online facilitator. During the breakout you lack have a view on your participants, you can get lost yourself, or you see people falling out of the breakout room. Not for the faint-hearted. Are the rooms dusting away with you? In this blog tips for smart use of your breakout rooms.

Let's start with a horror scene

We were looking forward to our pop-up webinar. About 10 minutes before the start we were packed with 100 participants! We were super enthusiastic and everything went well. After a start a presentation of principles and examples, groups of 8-10 participants started working in breakout rooms. Each group received the same case and a chat space was available for each group. We knew that not everyone had audio connected, so we encouraged them to use the chat. Soon we were called upon to help various groups. The chat was delayed in a group. People thought that the technology did not work. Another group thought it was scary to work with strangers without seeing them. Another group could understand each other, but no one took the lead. We decided to bring the groups back.

This example illustrates that breakout rooms are not the easiest feature for the online facilitator. It helps if you have already mastered the basics of your webconferencing tools and have tested the breakout rooms. I did not share this story to discourage you, but rather to show that you sometimes need the guts to try something new. There are so many possibilities for the breakouts.

The breakout at its best

Last week I organized a brainstorm with a group of 20 persons about the content of an online conference. In an online brainstorming wall I put up 5 groups with different topics, such as start session, partner sessions, fun, etc. Before the coffee I invited people to sign up for 1 topic by adding their name on the wall. During the coffee break I put people into groups. During the breakout they used the same brainstorming wall to add ideas that allowed me to monitor progress without going to the groups myself. We achieved an important result in 30 minutes. This was because everyone could choose their own topic for which they had many ideas, people already knew each other and thus immediately started brainstorming. Last but not least the combination of the breakout and the brainstorm wall worked well.

Having people in a group exchange about a question is perhaps the most obvious application. Just like you would face-to-face. If you want to be more creative, you might consider one of the following learning activities and working methods:

A short buzz in groups of 2 to get into the subject
Let participants dive into a topic in subgroups before you explain, so you can activate prior knowledge
Speed dating to get to know each other. After 3 minutes you put people in the next group
A brainstorm on a topic in combination with a whiteboard or a brainstorming wall
Organize a debate in which they first come up with arguments in two groups (for and against)
A translation of a presentation into practice
A role play in subgroups where the chat is used in different colors by the different roles
Make a drawing or collage together on the whiteboard
A case study
Discussion of a variety of topics. Participants choose their own topic that they want to work on (with some tools, people can choose which breakout they want to participate in or if that is not possible, you can inventory this)
Give them a puzzle, a challenge to crack
Or let participants prepare a (short) presentation themselves ...

Some practical tips

Above all, the mother of all advice is: don't be afraid to experiment with the breakouts. If necessary, you can invite your participants to experiment and reflect. Think about the context and how much support you need to provide for your participants. It is easier to work with breakouts when people already know each other. Then they will take the lead faster and get to work easily. If you expect that they sometimes hesitate to take the lead, you can appoint someone, eg the top one from the list of participants.

Here are some more practical tips if you want to get started.

People fall out of the breakout (at least in Adobe this often happens!). Therefore, provide one person who can put these people back in their breakout group.
Make a slide with the instruction. Even if you explain the assignment orally it helps to be able to read it.
Plan a breakout after a break, so that it gives you time to prepare something.
With a number of tools, participants can see the time that is left. If this is not the case, as a facilitator you can, for example, send people a message 3 minutes in advance about the time remaining.
In most tools you can go to groups in between to listen / watch. This gives you an impression of what is going on.

Breakout rooms are not for the starting online facilitator. However, it is a fantastic invention! What are your favorite uses of the breakouts? What would you like to try?

Tool and tips for the online flip

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 11:08:24 +0000

The whole world is aiming at 'social distancing' As a facilitator, trainer are you going to cancel lessons and workshops or do you opt for online? It may sound challenges, but now is the time to try that online approach, or experiment more than you did before. We are all looking for ways to continue work and learning as well as possible. So take a stab!

The good thing: flipping your lesson or workshop is a creative process. Plus the flip can have advantages... Things that are difficult in a physical setting may work out better online. A good starting point is the question of what you want to do asynchronously online (each person in his/her own time) and synchronously online (together online at the same time). Brainstorm input, questions or experiences can be collected asynchronously in tools such as Flipgrid, Padlet, Answergarden or IdeaBoardz. You can offer theory through a video or short online lesson. Or you make a quiz with Quizzes or Mentimeter that each takes on its own time, which you then discuss at a synchronized moment. Tools for synchronous online are Zoom, Skype, Google Meet or a tool that is known within your organization. In addition, there are many tools that are less known with which you can create fun online lessons:

Eduflow is free the coming months
Google classroom is the free tool of Google. You can do a lot. A downside is that everyone should have a Google account.
Blendspace for online lessons
Blackboard collaborate for schools already working with Blackboard
Edpuzzle for video lessons with quizzes. Here you will find an explanation
Microsoft teams is also a good basic tool. Here you can learn more.

Ofcourse there are many more options.... We often use Ning because of the social features.

A short checklist

Do I flip my activity to online or postpone? Is there urgency to do it? Will participants have time and energy to do it online?
What activities do you want to do online? Distinguish between activities with the whole group, subgroups and individually
What do you want to do synchronously, what asynchronously? Look for a good balance
Which toolset do you need? Think of a good synchronous tool (Skype, Zoom, Google meet etc) and good asynchronous tool (Ning, Microsoft Teams, Facebook for work etc)
How long will your program last? Synchronous sessions max 1.5 hours
What do you need to facilitate well? Think of help from others, scripts for the sessions, paid accounts, estimated time to prepare yourself

Example of a flipped session

Here you find an example of a flipped work session with 10 organizations and about 5 participants per organization. The session was originally scheduled for an entire morning. The aim of the work session is to share experiences in work with disabled children. The idea is that people work on small products in groups. How is that possible online? We came up with the following form: The online work session lasts 2 to 3 hours and has a theme defined upfront.

In the run-up to the session, we invite all participants to share an important experience with the theme on an online brainstorming wall like Padlet.
When the session starts, we meet online in a webinar room (e.g. Adobe Connect).
We get to know each other (name on map of the Netherlands, answer some light-hearted poll questions and interaction in chat) and make a substantive start by discussing the results of the online brainstorm.
Then all participants work on the theme in small groups for half an hour. Each group gets its own online workspace and the chat is open to questions in between.
With "screen sharing" we view each other's result. We briefly place two groups together in an online "room" to exchange and give each other feedback.
At the end we harvest. We do this by collecting important insights and immediately processing them in an infographic. A tangible product at the end of this session.

Design thinking for blended learning

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 11:03:56 +0000

I participated in the Masterclass Design thinking for learning designers by Connie Malamed, organized by Anewspring. It was a nice experience to go through all design thinking steps in a structured way for a chosen case study. I had already experienced the value of with personas and prototypes, but not yet followed all design thinking steps in a structured manner. Our group made a design for managers of retail organizations to motivate employees to stay with the organization for longer (we made the objective smart ofcourse - 25% longer retention by the end of 2021 :).

What is design thinking and why is it interesting for designing blended learning?

Design thinking is an emerging trend to shape innovation in a creative way. Central is the experience of the customer / user. There are 5 steps: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

Design thinking has long been used to design products. However, it is quite new to use design thinking for the design of learning interventions. The difference with "regular" design processes in my eyes is:

Design thinking is "human-centered". Hardly a not a new element, because when designing a training or course, needs assessment is fairly standard practice when designing. Or designing together with the target group and stakeholders. Design thinking, however, offers specific tools such as personas and empathy maps.
It is an iterative, creative process. Making a design in a day was great for a fast start, getting everyone on board and having the outline. After prototyping you will go back to the drawing table with the feedback on the prototype in your pocket. The iteration - refining, tweaking etc instead of sticking to decisions simply because they were made in the beginning is very appealing to me.
Prototyping! This is something I will start to use more often. It seems more difficult to prototype a training than eg a new teapot. What I learnt is that you can be creative in prototyping: think of a mock-up of a new learning environment, an infographic, a video in which you explain the set-up, a role play between trainer and participant etc. The rapid prototypes ensure that you visualize your ideas. As Connie shared: with one client she hadn't made a prototype, and as a result people said very late in the process: oooooh now I understand what you were talking about! Without prototype it is very easy to talk, agree and have different understanding.
There is a large toolkit with tools that you can apply. What makes me very happy is that it is not a blueprint approach, it is not prescriptive, you can choose the tools that fit your process.

Resources

35 gratis templates design thinking (toolkit)
Innovating for People – Book by Luma Institute
Design thinking toolkit IDEO

My main take ways

Currently I discuss with content experts and teachers whether we have to do interviews or whether they know the target group. Connie does insist on the interviews with the target group. Although content experts sometimes know the target audience very well, there are always judgments and impressions that may be incorrect. An example is a group that appears to be digitally skilled, but may not have a sound card in their computers at work. This still has some consequences for your choices. I'm going to be stricter when organizations say there's no need to do interviews.

In addition, my biggest eye-opener was to create prototypes. What can you do to show and request feedback? In the session we had built a prototype of an online platform, and in the feedback it became clear that safety is very important. Safety to be able to practice with coaching conversations with employees. Super useful for quickly sharing your design and getting responses.

Curious about our design? Unfortunately I did not take a photo but it is a process where managers start with a study of the motivation factors by conversations with employees. Then there are face-to-face and online sessions. We conclude with gamification: prices for the branches with the longest-serving employees.

An interesting discussion in our group: would we have come up with something completely different if we had not gone through these steps? Maybe not. But now you know for sure that it is well thought out and I suspect that interviews give you a better sense of the learners' context. However, it also shows that the process does not guarantee a consistent design. It requires empathy for the design to fit reality well.

Do you morph? About professional identity and the importance of doing new things

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 15:19:44 +0000

Judge Willem Korthals Altes (70 years old) is challenging his retirement. He gets an honorable pension because of his age but he doesn't want to stop at all. "My work is part of who I am," he says. The Dutch singer Rob de Nijs (76 years old) has Parkinson but is determined to finish his tour. After this a farewell tour, a CD and a farewell concert and then he intends to stop. Two examples of professionals who, in the words of Jef Staes, are "in sync with their talents". Working no longer feels like working. Suppose you have to give yourself a percentage between 0-100% for being in sync with your talents, what percentage would that be? And many of your colleagues?

The importance of morphing

Photo by Jack Leeder via flickr

Morphing is a gradual transformation into a new version of yourself (see morphing illustrated in the images). A colleague increasingly felt that her work was not important, got a burnout and decided to change the focus of her advisory work. During her burnout period, she has invested in a new direction by, among others. going to conferences. In this way she has found a different focus in her work and is currently capable of making more hours than before her burnout. Your focus and talent is not something you "know" at the end of your studies and work with until you retire. You must take steps in your professional development. Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at London Business School, analyzes the future of work. She calls for shaping your craftsmanship yourself: "create the space which will enable you to write a personal career script that can bring you fulfillment and meaning", but not only that: you have to move with the market and developments in your environment. She calls this “sliding and morphing.” The reason for morphing is two-fold: on the one hand the developments in the market, but also changes in your own interests.

How to morph? Keep on doing new things

How to morph as a professional? The Dutch writer Peter Ros gave me a number of ideas with his book Warorde. According to Peter preparedness for change is a learnable skill. Don't wait for a crisis until you change. Stimulate yourself (or colleagues) with new things. Consider for instance:

Work in a different place

Change jobs regularly

When self-employed: develop a new service or product

Look for people who think differently (for example, if you work for the government, go and see a school)

Start again from scratch: how should I do it now?

Read blogs from dissenters

Make an appointment with someone that annoys you

Meditate 2 x 20 minutes every day

Provide "fiddle time"

Do something you never dared

Listen podcasts

Travel to an unknown destination (sprs.me)

An example of staying prepared are the people in Netflix who developed a

chaos monkey. A tool to derail the working of computers. A great way to challenge employees to get everything right again. Another example are de monkey milestones van AFAS. These are creative assignments for new people within AFAS. The name monkey apparently works well for shaking things up :).

Tool of the month: game-based learning with Seppo.io

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 17:32:44 +0000

About 5 years ago I was brainstorming with a group of colleagues to design a workshop. Someone shouted: a traffic jam workshop!. I didn't have a clue what that was, but immediately had a vision of a workshop in the train to avoid the traffic jam. It has always stayed in my mind as something I would like to organize one day. A traffic jam workshop with a start in the train. But yes, it is difficult to organize this because there are always people who still want to get in the car.

Last year I found myself again in a brainstorm, but this time to organize the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Ennuonline. The traffic jam idea was tweaked. Not starting on the train but in groups at a different location and then have them walk via assignments to the place of the celebration. Seppo.io turned out to be perfect for this purpose.

How does Seppo work?

"Teach with a game. In a fun and easy way." That is the motto of Sepp.io. You can create a treasure hunt by adding assignments at locations on the map. You can create different types of assignments:

A creative assignment in which participants share a photo, video, text or a spoken message
A multiple choice question
Enter a word in a phrase or an exercise where you have to match elements

The latter is more suitable for school assignments, so we mainly used the creative assignments. One of the assignments was for example: "convince the director of this building of the usefulness of technology in learning". Or: "exchange the weirdest response by a participants to the idea of online learning". Below you can see it was a day with a lot of wind: Beaufort 7.

What makes Seppo so great is that is it really easy to create assignments. When the groups start to walk you can see them walking online and monitor their progress live. You can set the assignments so that it opens when the group is within 50 meters of the place. This forces the groups to walk everywhere to be able to do the assignments. What is also fun is that you can see the groups walking. We first saw a small group go in the wrong direction. Tip: walk the route yourself at least once to test the instructions and place of the markers on the map and remove errors.

Seppo for learning

In this case, our goal was an energetic start and participants getting to know each other in small groups. Both were achieved! The tool is certainly also suitable for other purposes. Suppose you start a scavenger hunt and then have a face-to-face session. During the hunt you can invite participants to exchange on a topic and share the results during the search, as in the example of convincing the director. You can aggregate and show this afterwards and further analyze it. Which arguments will convince the most and why? After this you could also do a role play in which people practice again. The value of Seppo is in the stimulation of creativity and spontaneity. Do you also see other applications? It's nice if you share it in the comments because I definitely want to do more with Seppo.

Free or paid?

We used the paid version of Seppo.io. You can also use it for free, but in that case you cannot use certain functions such as ask the groups to share photos and videos. An alternative to Seppo is Goosechase. You can use this for free up to 3 teams.

How to develop effective multimedia for learning? The 10 principles of Richard Mayer

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 08:45:49 +0000

Are you looking for principles for creating videos and other learning materials? Before the summer I organized a meetup about interactive video in the Netherlands (with interactive video the viewer can, for example, answer questions or choose what he / she will continue with). It was really an eye-opener for me. In any case, multimedia like video, animations and infographics are becoming increasingly important in online learning and you have to dive into it when you design online learning. But what is a really good video? I often get the question how long a video can be, but of course it's not about the length but about the content. Mayer has developed 10 principles for multimedia learning.

I read the book Multimedia Learni ng van Richard E. Mayer. The book is entirely based on research and therefore is a slightly boring read, but has a solid basis. I have the crazy habit of reading all books from cover to cover and have therefore read it all. I think you can summarize the practical lessons in one blog post, so you are lucky :). My advice is to read this blog post and not the entire book.

Mayer defines multimedia learning as presenting material in both word and image for the purpose of learning. What I liked a lot is the distinction between:

No learning (nothing is withheld from it)
Rote learning (people remember but cannot apply it)
Meaningful learning (remember and apply)

The goal is hence to facilitate meaningful learning by developing multimedia material. He highlights important principles, all supported by research. I will explain the principles here. After that I will explain that one principle does not work in the context of intercultural trajectories.

The 10 principles of Richard Mayer

Principle 1. The coherence principle The coherence principle states that people learn better when interesting but less relevant words or pictures are taken away from a presentation. Less is more actually. This also applies to background music.

Principle 2. The signaling principle People learn better from multimedia if you help guide the attention of the learner. This can be through the use of arrows, colors, or an element that will be placed under a magnifying glass. I immediately applied this principle to video interviews I was working on by adding the most important words here with text. In my opinion, this is not in contradiction to the following principle:

Principle 3. The redundancy principle This principle means that you should not offer the same text in words and audio: that would be redundant. There is evidence from research: participants who saw pictures and a heard an explanation scored better than participants who received the same pictures and story but also had the explanation written in text. For video this simply means that you should not subtitle with the same text as voice.

Principle 4. The spatial contiguity principle People learn more easily when the accompanying words and images are close to each other. We are just lazy people and would prefer to be offered everything on a silver platter :). We don't like to search for the explanation.

Principle 5. The temporal contiguity principle And this also applies to time. It is more convenient to see the pictures about the origin of a storm at the same time when a voice explains it, instead of first seeing the pictures and then the explanation (or vice versa). This explains the success of animation and other instructional videos.

Principle 6. The segmenting principle Multimedia learning is more effective when the material is divided into different segments and learners have control over following the steps. This is often the case with interactive video, but can also simply be done by dividing a 15-minute video into 3-4 videos which allows people to choose when they continue with the next one. Here, of course, we see the power of interactive video. Although you may also argue that a good question in a video has a signal function.

Principle 7: The pre-training principle People are better able to learn from multimedia when they already know the most important concepts. We applied this, for example, by ensuring that before a client SPOC (Small Private Online Course) starts, the participants can go through an e-learning with the basic knowledge. This means that everyone is aware of the most important concepts and we can go into depth during the SPOC.

Principle 8: The modality principle People learn deeper from images combined with spoken word than from images and written word. This means that spoken explanation with an animation works better than all text on the screen. Indeed I sometimes see animations with text only and I always have the feeling that it would be faster if I could simply read the text. This principle is actually just a little too logical for me: it says that you should use both eye and ear smartly, right?

Principle 9: The multimedia principle People learn better from word and image from from text only. Yes ... so visualizing helps! Fortunately but otherwise we would have to go back to uploading PDFs as online learning. Uhmmmm I really saw that once? An online course where you had to download and read around 20 different pdfs in Moodle ...

Principle 10: The personalization principe I find the personalizing principle the most sympathetic somehow. It says that people learn better when a conversational style is used instead of a formal style. This has always been a basic principle in our courses: make it personal and engage in an online conversation. Mayer translates it as: in spoken text in an animation use direct speech: you, your. Furthermore, a friendly voice helps. Good to know: research shows that the face of the speaker (eg with a screencast) does not automatically help for better understanding. This would help only if the face contains relevant information, for example due to facial expressions.

Which principle does not apply in an intercultural context?

Yes, what do you think? It's the redundancy principle. I experienced an exception to this rule which makes sense to me. After reading the book, I immediately wanted to apply my knowledge to a video interview, so I had an argument not to subtitle the video in the same language as the interview (English). However, it is an intercultural context, with many non-native English speakers. It appears that in this case people really like literal subtitles, because the accents are not always easy to understand. After seeing the video with subtitles, I got more out of it myself, although I'm quite used to different accents in English. That brings me to the boundary conditions.

The boundary conditions. When do the principles apply?

In each chapter there is a discussion of the 'boundary conditions'. These are the circumstances in which the principle applies. For example, you can deduce from the examples in the book that a lot of research has been done using instructional materials. The example of explaining the occurrence of thunder and lightning is widely used. Many of the principles apply most strongly to inexperienced participants and complex material. I think this is something to keep in mind, for example, more experienced learners can handle more superfluous information.

So for instance, for the redundancy principle the condition is that this is especially true for groups who speak the same language, as mother tongue. Mayer has not investigated whether this also applies to non-native speakers. It is therefore important to realize that there are always exceptions. Don't apply the principles too rigidly.

Conclusion

What can you learn from Richard Mayer? You can benefit a lot from these principles if you develop learning materials on complex issues for starting learners. Provide a clear message, visualize where possible. Use voice. Avoid duplicating the same information. Make it personal and make sure learners have control over the speed to go through the material.

PS. Do you live in the Netherlands? Want to learn about multimedia? Participate in onze eigen leergang over blended leren.

Organizations: keep an eye on your high speed learners

Fri, 31 May 2019 08:51:18 +0000

A participant during my master class on learning of the future shares: "I was learning a lot through the online world and would be at the cutting-edge in my field, this learning was logical part of my work as recruiter. Now I have a new job and it is not a logical part of my function. I don't have the time anymore to be active online. I see that I am no longer aware of all the new developments in my field". You will not get better proof of the power of online, informal learning. And at the same time it shows what the biggest bottleneck is: organizations do not have an eye for self-learning professionals and do not facilitate this type of learning either. The focus is still on courses.

The masterclass started with my definition of the knowmad: "someone who learns continuously and thereby makes smart use of the online world"

The first part of the masterclass I focussed on skills for knowmads, including developing (online) identity, networking, smart use of tools and technology and application in practice: translating the online world and applying learnings. The second part I discussed the organization as a learning environment for the knowmad. Although I do know that many organizations do not actively facilitate informal learning, it was quite shocking (but interesting of course!) to hear stories from the participants.

Two important things struck me:

The big challenge for professionals is to deal with information overload: people indicated that they continuous flow of all information and via various channels (emails, apps, Linked) makes them feel bad. The consequence of this is that they withdraw from the flows and start to avoid information, get rid of Twitter and only follow what is needed (emails). This is a logical response if you start to feel bad because of the flows of information, right? The entire group felt that they had no control over the many information flows. No participant worked in an organization that supports employees to take back control over the information flows.

Organizations do not have a keen eye for inquisitive employees, the high speed learners: that is why professionals often do informal learning in the evenings. This means, for example, that someone who works in a high-tech environment and constantly keeps up to date via podcasts and youtube videos may look for the new job after a few years. To what extent has the organization benefited from this knowledge development? As long as the employee works in the organization, he or she will apply this knowledge. However, it remains personal knowledge but does not become organizational knowledge unless there is a conscious focus on collaborative learning and sharing this knowledge.

An interesting question from a participant: innovation seems to be a keyword for knowmads who learn continuously, but not everyone needs to focus on innovation? I think it's a good question and I am not sure about the answer. There is definitely a difference between functions in their focus on innovation. A high tech environment for instance will have an inherent need to innovate. Personally, I think that actually there is no single function in which innovation is not necessary. Contexts and technology are changing. The customer also wants something 'new'. What do you think?

The slides of this master class:

Knowmadisch werken: het leren van de toekomst from Joitske Hulsebosch

Tool of the month: interactive video

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 16:29:11 +0000

This time the tool of the month is not one but no fewer than five tools. I co-organized a meetup about interactive video in the Netherlands. My own experience with interactive video had been adding questions to videos with the help of Zaption (which no longer exists) and Edpuzzle. I also experimented with Vialogues to facilitate a conversation around a video source.

However, the meetup opened up a whole new world of interactive video. It is much more than just adding a question to a video. In this blog I share the 5 tools that were central to the meetup, with examples. The examples are in Dutch, but I think you can catch the interactions. It is very nice to see what is possible and it definitely opens up your creativity.

What is interactive video?

Interactive video is a video in which the viewer can take various actions. Hence it gives more room for engagement and personalization. The viewer can click for more information, answer a question or make a choice. With his action, he determines the course of the film: a different order, or a question appears to answer. What I learned during the meetup is that it is useful to distinguish between Three types of interaction:

navigation - a viewer chooses the path him or herself
questions - speak for themselves
hotspots -you can add information in text or video

Tooling: een overzicht van 5 tools

We have looked at 5 different tools. Listed from simpel to more complex (or advanced) to work with:

Behalve H5P zijn het allemaal tools van Nederlandse grond!

H5P

H5P is an open source program that you can use for free. You can upload your own video and make it interactive. Create an account, choose ‘interactive video’ and upload your own video (max. 16 MB). You can add questions and polls, and additional information via hotspots. You can also use H5P directly from Moodle and Wordpress if you have installed the plug-in. Here you see an example video made by Göran Kattenberg from Kattenberg Learning Innovation Consulting and The Blended Group.
H5P is actually a 'suite' of tools with which you can create learning activities with and without interactions that you embed in a learning environment. The newest is 'branching scenario'. With that you glue videos together with interactive branches.

Cost: Free
Difficulty: *
Basic layer: can be video from YouTube or your own upload
Hosting: Your video is on H5P (or on Moodle / Wordpress if you use the plug-in) but you can embed it on other sites
Interesting because: it is free and therefore a great way to start interactive video

Hihaho

Hihaho is a very simple program that you can get started with right away, you don't need any special video editing or other experience. You can create a free account and then click on + new Hihaho and then you can import a video from for example Youtube or Vimeo. Then, you can start to add your interactions via 'Enrich', for example a jump, a question or a break. As an example, an instructional video that was recorded with a smartphone. There are a number of questions.

Cost: 10 videos and 100 viewers for free. Then from 19 euros / month
Difficulty: *
Basic layer: from YouTube, Vimeo, JWPlayer or Kaltura but also Media site, Blue Billywig and own upload
Hosting: Your video remains hosted at the location of the base layer. You could see it as HiHaHo putting an interactive layer over your video. Both layers are merged into a link, embed code, Scorm package or xAPI. HiHaHo videos are used a lot in learning environments. By using SCORM or xAPI, results in the video also become visible in the LMS.
Interesting because: it is a very easy program. There is almost no learning curve, you can get started right away.

Explorit

Explorit allows you to add questions to your video and also provide feedback to the viewer. You can import from Youtube, Vimeo but also from Blue Billywig. You can export the edited video again via a full export, or you can also embed it on your own site or, for example, in Moodle. It is fairly intuitive to learn. Clients with an enterprise account receive 4 hours of training and can then get to work. View an example below about the provincial and water board elections. The Provincial election part is mainly based on interactive video, the Water Board election part is based on interactive images.

Costs: Basic account 25 euros / month, Professional account 125 euros / month
Difficulty: **
Basic layer: not only a video, but also an image is possible as a base layer. Video must be on YouTube; soon a video from Vimeo can also be linked
Hosting: You can either export your video as html or use it directly from the site.
Interesting because: you can also add feedback to questions and you can also make interactive pictures

Ivory Studio

Ivory studio describes itself as 'the online editor for interactive video' and that is actually a very good name. It is very similar to video editing programs such as Imovie or Windows Moviemaker. It is widely used by filmmakers. You can also do more with Ivory Studio than with the aforementioned tools, such as uploading your own media, adding different videos, choosing from 5 different interactions. Last but not least you can personalize by linking to databases. An example: a company that does DNA analysis for babies sends the parents a personalized result. Parents of babies with blue eyes receive a different video than parents of babies with brown eyes. View the example below to get an idea.

Costs: 1 video for free, then flexible prices, eg 65 euros / month for 5 videos
Difficulty: ****
Basic layer: own video
Hosting: Your video runs on the Ivory Studio player
Interesting because: you have many options and can personalize using data sets

Blue BillyWig

Blue Billywig is also both a hosting platform and an editor for interactive videos with which you can do a lot and have a lot of options. It is used for marketing but also for e-learning modules. You can use 360-degree videos, personalize and ask questions.

Costs: on request
Difficulty: ****
Basic layer: own video
Hosting: Blue Billywig is the hosting platform
Interesting because: you have many options, you can personalize and you can use 360-degree videos

Conclusion

There is a whole world of interactive video tools and toys to explore. You can use the easier tools yourself to get the viewer to think for a moment. At Ivory Studio and Blue Billywig you really have to dive into the tool, but then you can produce wonderful material. These tools are much more like an editing program. In addition, it can be an entire project to make an interactive video, devising the storyboard, filming the various scenarios and compiling. The options are endless.

National Poetry Writing Month #NaPoWriMo: 3 Days In!

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 13:52:17 +0000

I have been successful with writing poems for the first two days of National Poetry Writing Month, the annual celebration of poetry writing that coincides with National Poetry Month each April. Since I have been writing poetry as one of my 2018 goals (the goal is specifically to publish a poem this year), I thought … Continue reading

Today Begins National Poetry Month

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 12:44:38 +0000

Today begins National Poetry Month #NationalPoetryMonth, an event facilitated by the Academy of American Poets (did you know I am a member of them?). I have been writing poetry over the past half-year or so as both a creative pursuit as well as an opportunity to express myself. What better way to do this than … Continue reading

You are invited to Wikipedia Day 2018!

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 22:51:35 +0000

Wondering what to do this coming Sunday, 1/14? Tired of watching the same shows on Netflix and afraid of being bored over the long holiday weekend? Looking to learn about how to engage in participatory Democracy at its best (while fighting Fake News) through contributing to open and free knowledge for all? If so, you … Continue reading

Mapping the EA Ecosystem

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 00:44:52 +0000

Over the years, I have been gathering links and metadata about enterprise architecture relevant resources, books, and most recently, academic articles. I share this over at EnterpriseArchitecture.dk.

Back in 2005, I called it my personomy. Over the years, it has become quite a large collection with over 1500 resources. I try and tidy up dead links etc. as I discover such, but I also keep adding new resources. My inclusion criteria are fairly simple: The resource must be relevant to enteprise architects, or otherwise be something I find worth including. I’m sure I could add much more than I do, and always welcome suggestions.

I’ve come to realise that I have created a data source that I can use to map out the EA ecosystem. I have created a visualization of my data with Kumu.io:

Presentation mode visualizations here.

Thoughts and Take-Aways from #OER17

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 21:01:12 +0000

I am happy to have had the opportunity to attend #OER17 last week in London. This Open Education Resources Conference with the theme The Politics of Open was the first time I have attended a conference which had as its focus of open practitioners, activists, educators and policy makers coming together as a community to … Continue reading

Goal Statement for 2017: Engage with Balance!

Tue, 03 Jan 2017 18:16:34 +0000

Here is my Goal Statement for 2017: Engage with Balance Like 2016’s goal statement of Think, Believe, and Act with a Healthy Balance, I want to try to be proactive and follow my passions while not rushing into things (leaving me out of balance) or otherwise distracting me from my commitments (or even what is … Continue reading

Apple Pay for Nonprofits: Frictionless Online Philanthropy

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 22:38:14 +0000

Apple has had a rule that banned iOS apps from collecting funds for charities or fundraisers via Apple Pay. That means if they collected funds, it would have to take place outside the app, such as through a browser or text. Apple also made it difficult for nonprofits to collect in-app donations without incurring huge transaction fees on top of credit card fees. Six years ago, I helped organized a protest and online petition to ask Apple to change their online donation policy for nonprofits. They ignored us, despite getting thousands of signatures and lots of media attention.

Today, Apple announced that its payments service Apple Pay will now support the ability to make donations to non-profits, starting today in the U.S. Now, “donate” buttons will be integrated right in their app and the ability to process the transactions through the payments service. On mobile phone, that means users can use TouchID. On the Web, users click the Apple Pay donate button in Safari, then can confirm their payment via their iPhone or Apple Watch.

The good news is that ApplePay doesn’t charge a fee themselves. The underlying card systems charge a merchant fee based on their normal rates. So basically “normal credit card fees apply” is the typical model.

According to a post in TechCrunch, a number of non-profits are launching with Apple Pay, including American Red Cross, American Heart Association, charity: water, GlobalGiving, The Nature Conservancy, Save the Children, UNICEF, United Way, WWF (World Wildlife Federation) and others.

With more and more nonprofit donors transacting their lives on mobile phones and an increasing percentage of mobile donors, the ability to use Apple pay will mean the potential for “frictionless philanthropy.” Apple is working with Benevity, an online giving platform, to help nonprofits integrate Apple Pay.

As we approach the kick off of the 2016 Giving Season with Giving Tuesday in two weeks, it will be interesting to observe and hear about best practices for frictionless philanthropy.

Creating A Culture of Well-being in Your Nonprofit Workplace: The First Step

Wed, 02 Nov 2016 15:40:16 +0000

I am thrilled with the response to The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout as my co-author and I have been sharing the ideas on a virtual book tour during the last month. One of our hopes for the book was that it would spark conversation about the need for self-care as part of doing the work. I was thrilled to see this blog SSIR blog post, Five Myths that Perpetuate Burnout Across Nonprofits by Ann-Sophie Morrissette..

As a trainer, one of the most exciting parts of working on a book is developing instructional materials based on the content and leading workshops to help put the ideas into practice. Over the past six months, I have been developing and piloting workshops on self-care and we-care as part of the leadership development training I do.

Last June, I facilitated a leadership workshop at the Americans for the Arts Conference where I tested some of the assessments and checklist tools in our book. Erika Atkins, Director of Operations at Opening Act, a theatre program that teaches theatre skills to students from New York City’s most underserved schools to help them succeed in life.

Erika approached me after the session to chat about her idea of adapting the workshop process as part of their staff retreat so staff could self-assess for burnout symptoms and then create self-care plans. I encouraged her and offered her some advice.

Erika’s organization is a small to midsize arts organization, with six full time staff members and an operating budget of less than $1 million. Their program includes about teaching artists. Erika says, “We’re a very small staff that does a lot of big things (16 programs, Summer Conservatory, a large social media campaign , and a gala for 500), so sometimes we stretched really thin. Before I attended your workshop, we had spent months trying to think of better ways to take care of ourselves during stressful times.”

Opening Acts executive director also understood the importance of creating a workplace culture of wellbeing or what we call in the book, “We-Care.” Erika says it did not take much convincing when she proposed the idea of having staff create self-care plans at the staff retreat. Says Erika, “My executive director already felt the need for us to have a written policy in place, so she was excited when I told her I got a bunch of ideas from the workshop. She knows self-care is important to avoiding burn out and keeping a high staff retention. “

Before their annual staff retreat, Erika discussed the takeaways from the workshop with her executive director and some ideas of how to apply it. At the staff retreat, they used assessments from Chapter 3 of The Happy Healthy Nonprofit and had everyone self-assess their symptoms. Then had a group conversation about what people were open to sharing.

Opening Acts executive director then shared a list of ideas. These were organized into different categories: Organizational Wide, Self-Care Group, Individual. Then we had the whole staff brain storm together. They also used the self-care checklist in Chapter 3 to help staff members determine what types of self-care activities should be in their plan. Each employee created their own plan. Each employee will be checking in with their supervisor during their weekly meetings to make sure are trying to follow their plan.

After going through this process, Erika had the following advice: Give your team permission to be open and honest about what they need to be happy in the work place! Says Erika, “I know it seems like a lot of extra work, but so much better to have a plan in place so that when things get crazy in your office you have go to strategies to help everyone feel less burnt out individually and as a team.”

Does your nonprofit have a culture of wellbeing? How did your organization create it? How do you sustain it when times are crazy?

What’s Your Personal Craziness Index? Identify, Take Action, and Avoid Nonprofit Burnout

Thu, 27 Oct 2016 16:38:02 +0000

In my newest book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout, the first half of the book addresses how nonprofit professionals can assess and become more self-aware about the symptoms of burnout and begin to practice self-care to avoid burnout.

Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion that occurs when we feel overwhelmed by too many demands, too few resources, and too little recovery time. There are physical symptoms like headaches, aches and pains, insomnia, and inability to concentrate as well as a general feeling of hopelessness and anxiety that can lead to depression. In the book, we include a couple of good checklists and assessments to help educate people about their symptoms.

However, there can be other signs that work/life balance is out of whack. My colleague, Aisha Moore who blogs about self-care calls it “The Personal Craziness Index.” For me, it is having dishes pile up on the sink and procrastinating on doing important tasks by doing urgent, easier tasks. This week on various Twitter chats and webinars to discuss the topics in The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout we asked participants what it was for them. Here’s what heard:

Messy desk or desktop
Too many tabs opened on the browser
Forgetting items to bring to work – lunch, charger, etc
Hitting the snooze button too often
Misplacing keys or other items and wasting time looking for them
Doing a task twice because your forgot you did it already
Going into your boss’s or co-worker’s office to ask a question and forgetting what it is
Procrastinating
Aimless scrolling through Pinterest or other sites that have nothing to do with work

It is helpful to have the self-awareness about your Personal Craziness Index and take it as a sign that if you need to shift or you will be on the way to burnout. Even though I have a solid self-care routine, I occasionally see my personal craziness index – those dishes in the sink or pracastination. When it happens to me, I take it as a sign to hit the pause button and slow down. Next, I mindfully clean all those dishes. I might take a few deep breaths and do a brief mindfulness exercise to help reduce feeling overwhelmed. I might even take a quick walk. Then, I’ll come back to work with a mindset of wiping the slate clean – and start fresh.

This simple routine will take a ten minutes at most, but it prevents me from ending up in the burnout bin.

What is your personal craziness index? How do you shift from a state of stress to state of calm?

The One Simple Thing That Nonprofit Leaders Do To Keep Inspired and Avoid Burnout

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 16:30:08 +0000

Mike Brune, Sierra Club Executive Director

Yesterday, I honored to fill in as MC and interviewer for Darian Rodriguez Heyman at the Nonprofit Fundraising Masters event. (Darian was welcoming his first child, a boy, into the world!). The event, a one-day conference designed to share the world’s most successful fundraisers’ secrets to success, most valuable tips and tools, and sources of inspiration. I did 6 fireside chats with Chuck Collins, YMCA; Annie Leonard, GreenPeace; Stephanie Bray, United Way; Michael Brune, Sierra Club, Paul Rice, Fair Trade, USA and Lynee Twist, Soul of Money. In addition, facilitated a peer learning exchange called “Solution Salon.”

Darian authored the best-selling Nonprofit Fundraising 101, the first truly comprehensive yet practical guide to all aspects of fundraising. So this event builds on that experience by interviewing master level fundraisers to unearth their wisdom and experience. There was an incredible amount of fundraising trade craft shared, including stories and lessons about getting turned down for a major as well as nailing a large gift. But, given my recent book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout, I was really interested in how these thought leaders answer this question: “When the going gets tough, how do you stay inspired?”

While their answers and anecdotes were different, one simple technique or theme came across: “Stay connected to the source of your work.”

What this means is being able to see and experience first hand the impact of your organization’s programs and how those programs transform people. For Chuck Collins, YMCA CEO, “It is all about the kids!” He routinely goes on site-visits into programs to see and understand the program’s impact. He also keeps a file of emails and letters from participants that share their personal transformations from participating in the program. Whenever he feels discouraged, he reads through that file.

Lynne Twist said something that we heard before while researching for the book, “Burnout is bullshit!” What Lynne meant is that she has the self-awareness to know when she is feeling stressed or too disconnected from the work, she says she feels it in her body. That’s her cue to go out side for a walk, get away from the screen, and have some reflection time to think the impact of her fundraising beyond the dollars. As she so eloquently said, “fundraising is an act of love. ”

Mike Brune, CEO Sierra Club, also finds going outdoors on hikes to be inspiring and keep him connected to his organization’s work and to escape the craziness of being in an office. I asked Mike how is able to incorporate solo reflection time into his day – when there are pressures like the to do list, back-to-back meetings, deadlines, and emails to answer.

Mike blocks out time for solo thinking and reflection on his calendar and they avoid scheduling meetings one day week (Friday). He admits that they can’t always stick to it, but try to the majority of the time. He uses this time for thinking, planning, reading, or writing – the work that is best done solo. He gives himself over a solid hour or more and often leaves the office. He also shared that he uses a notebook and pen for this solo thinking time. He puts all his to do and tasks on his phone – so there is a separation of thinking/reflection time and tasks.

Do you leave empty spaces on your calendar to do this time of work, but find it often gets taken up by meetings or phone calls. When you intentionally block out that “free space” into thinking meetings with yourself and keep that time scared, you’ll be able to step back and think about the big picture or just be more creative with current work.

Making room for reflection is essential for leaders and provides a strategic imperative, but often we don’t do it for ourselves or embed into the workplace culture. How do you make time for reflection and being inspired by your work? How is this embedded in your nonprofit’s culture?

A Few Self-Care Tips for Fundraisers During Stressful Year End Giving Time

Tue, 18 Oct 2016 17:26:01 +0000

Flickr Photo by Brittany Bush

We are heading into the most stressful time of year for nonprofits, especially for fundraisers. Year-end giving campaigns. With Giving Tuesday just around the corner, the kick off the that busy time of year for most nonprofit development directors and their teams is just ramping up. So, take a deep breath! Remain calm, and don’t forget to practice self-care by putting the oxygen mask on before diving into your year-end appeals and thank you notes.

You might want to treat yourself to copy our new book, “The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout,” read up on all the tips and methods that we gleaned from interviewing hundreds of nonprofit professionals about their self-care routines. The better you take care of yourself, the better results your organization will get and you will be able to replenish your energy.

If you are short on time, we published this very brief article on GuideStar, Four Smart Ways to Avoid Burnout for Nonprofit Professionals that offers some basic self-care tips that will help you get through this very crazy time of year.

If you want to learn more about self-care, my co-author, Aliza Sherman and I will be presenting several free Webinars and Twitter chats in the next few weeks. Here’s the information:

On Thursday, October 20th at 1 pm EST, Blackbaud is hosting a Twitter Chat to explore what it takes for your nonprofit to become healthy and happy. My co-author, Aliza Sherman and will answer questions and offer up tips. Follow the hashtag #happyhealthynp on Twitter.

On Tuesday, October, 25th, we are presenting a free webinar, The Happy Healthy Marketer: Self-Care for Nonprofit Marketers hosted by the Nonprofit Marketing Guide.

If you missed it, I was honored to be on a panel of experts discussing year-end giving best practices hosted by CauseVox. I discussed ways that you can avoid stress and burnout for your fundraising team as well as few tips for your individual self-care. The session includes lots of expert tips on the trade craft of planning and implementing a successful online campaign. You’ll find a blog here summarizing the discussion or listen to the full recording.

Reviews

A few more reviews have come in about the book:

Find Your Nonprofit Happy Place Review by Steve MacLaughlin
Interview and Review on Shareable: How To Create Happy Healthy Nonprofits by Cat Johnson
Review by Allyson Kapin on Care2 Blog

Thank you everyone for your support of the book and for joining the conversation about self-care for nonprofits. We have created a Facebook Group where nonprofit professionals are sharing tips and resources about self-care and bringing a culture of wellbeing into their workplaces. Join Us!

Let’s Step It Up: Join Me for a Walking Challenge

Wed, 12 Oct 2016 17:03:45 +0000

The Surgeon General in partnership with Fitbit has issued the Step It Up! Challenge open to all Americans, running from October 13, 2016 at 12:01 AM PDT and ends on October 26, 2016 at 11:59 PM PDT. The idea is to encourage people to walk more to improve health and raise awareness about making cities more walkable. You can sign up here and join my team, Happy Healthy Nonprofit.

Part of the inspiration for the Happy Healthy Nonprofit c0-authored with Aliza Sherman came several ago when I strapped on a Fitbit three years ago to improve my health after getting news from my doctor about high cholesterol numbers. She said even if you started walking 20 minutes a day, it would help. Well, I started slowly, with a 1,000 or steps a day, but gradually increased it. After six months, I brought my numbers down into the normal range without medication. And, after three years, I’m up to 15,000 steps a day and have lost a great deal of weight as you can see with my headshots below.

But something else happened, I was actually happier – and more productive at work. So, walking has become a regular part of work day. It is part of getting the work done!

But don’t take my word for it, the Surgeon General’s Step It Up Call To Action page includes a good summary of all the medical research and benefits of walking to individuals and to entire cities.

Here’s why there is a focus on walking as a public health strategy:

Strong evidence exists that physical activity has substantial health benefits. People can get these benefits through brisk walking or by adding brisk walking to other physical activities. Walking is an excellent way for most Americans to increase their physical activity.

Walking does not require special skills, facilities, or expensive equipment and is an easy physical activity to begin and maintain as part of a physically active lifestyle.

People walk for many purposes, such as for transportation to get to school, work, a store, or the library or for leisure to have fun, socialize with friends or family, walk their dog, or improve their health. Because walking is multipurpose, it provides many opportunities for people to incorporate physical activity into their busy lives.

Communities can benefit when they implement strategies that make them more walkable and when more people walk. Communities designed to be walkable can improve safety not only for people who walk but for all community members. Walkable communities and communities where more people walk offer opportunities for personal interaction and social involvement. Communities designed to be walkable have the potential to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases because people may choose to walk or bike rather than drive. Finally, walkable communities are attractive places for businesses to locate, which may help local economies thrive.

What are you waiting for? Step It Up now!

The Value of Taking Mini-Breaks During the Nonprofit Work Day

Tue, 11 Oct 2016 16:40:55 +0000

Last week, I was in London teaching social media strategy workshops for London NGOs organized by Social Media Misfits and keynoted Institute of Fundraising’s Future of Fundraising Conference. The workshops took place in different locations, including LinkedIn Headquarters in the UK, GA, and a co-working space called Second Home, a creative co-working space and cultural venue, bringing together diverse industries, disciplines and types of social businesses.

As a co-working space, if offers offices, desks, and meeting space for start ups. One thing you notice is the building interior design, created by award-winning Spanish architects SelgasCano. Many glass windows, winding hallways, and plants -lots of them – throughout the building. But what I really appreciated was the “meditation” or “quiet” spaces – electronic free zones where people can escape collaborative overload from back-to-back meetings and emails and collect their thoughts.

This is known as “brain breaks” where you simply STOP for a moment and do something to reset and renew your brain’s capacity to absorb or create that next thought. As many nonprofit professionals know too well, a hard-working but “tired” brain needs a few moments to “recharge.” An electronic free zone or quiet room can provide a good reminder to take these brain breaks. Even just getting up and walking around your desk can do the same.

But even when our brains are resting, according to research , our minds are perpetually active internalizing and evaluating information. When we are not actively doing tasks or taking information – and embracing silence, this is good for our brains because is enables reflection and creativity. Other students have found that sound noise (people talking, phones ringing, etc) can have a pronounced physical effect on our brains resulting in elevated levels of stress hormones. That’s why having quiet time in a quiet room can help hack your stress.

In the Happy Healthy Nonprofit, we discussed the importance of taking breaks from work and for nonprofits to encourage staff to take mini-breaks. The break helps boost productivity. It is also important to take tech breaks – or “Digital Detoxes”– and those can be also organization-wide activities to reduce staff stress and pressure. Some additional ways to cut down on employee’s digital stress beyond a device free zone in the workplace:

Encourage good email communications guidelines such as brevity, clear asks, and clear subject lines.
Set up internal chat lines for sharing photos or brief social updates.
Encourage staff to stay off of email during the weekends or after hours.
Use retreats as a time for digital detox – stay off email and devices during the retreat meeting.

How do you take a break during the workday? What reboots your brain? How does your nonprofit organization and its leaders encourage staff to take mini-breaks during the day?

Announcing the Launch of Book #3:The Happy Healthy Nonprofit

Mon, 10 Oct 2016 16:19:24 +0000

I am thrilled to announce the official launch of my third book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout with co-author Aliza Sherman. The book explores why burnout is so common in the nonprofit sector and simple ways to practice self-care and bring a culture of well-being into the nonprofit workplace. Vu Lee, NonprofitwithBalls, wrote the hilarious foreword and Rob Cottingham created the cartoons to illustrate the book and guaranteed to make you smile.

The book has been well received so far, with reviews from Marion Conway, Vanessa Chase Lockshin, Aisha Moore, Michael Hoffman, Lisa Colton, Sarah Durham, and Steve MacLaughlin. Arianna Huffington endorsed our book: “Kanter and Sherman provide an essential guide for nonprofits looking to make a positive social impact on their communities and around the world.”

You can order your copy here.

The royalties that I earn from my books have been donated to nonprofits to support women’s and girl’s empowerment work and given this past week, I am all the more convinced of the need to support such programs. The first two books, The Network Nonprofit and Measuring Networked Nonprofit provided college scholarships to two young Cambodian women, Savon Keo and Leng Tharath through the Sharing Foundation. I have two adopted children from Cambodia, and both these young women lived in the same orphanage as my daughter. Education in Cambodia is the path out of poverty and I am grateful that the modest amount of royalties from book sales have helped these young women make a better life. Royalties from the Happy Healthy Nonprofit will continue to support a high school and college scholarship for a young girl in Cambodia through the The Sharing Foundation — the scholarship will be awarded at the end of the year, so stay tuned.

Book royalties from the Happy Healthy Nonprofit will fund a fellowship through WAKE: Women’s Alliance for Knowledge Exchange Tech2Empower program in Cambodia. The fellowship will support the Women’s Resource Center Cambodia, a non-governmental organization based in Siem Reap Cambodia campaigning for women’s rights and welfare every day. Women’s Resource Center provides women and girls in Cambodia with emotional support, referral services, and informal education so they can be empowered to make informed decisions about their lives. Through this Fellowship, WRCC will, for the first time, hire a Khmer woman for a newly created position of Marketing and Communications Officer.

Last May, I was part of Wake’s Tech2Empower trip to Cambodia , accompanying a group of professional women who work in Technology. We spent a week training women’s rights groups in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. In Siem Reap, we visited the Women’s Resource Center Cambodia learned first hand of the challenges facing women and girls in that country and how the nonprofit’s programs support them.

My book royalties will fully fund WAKE’s Tech2Empower Fellowship to provide in-depth technology training and support for WRCC, with the goal of integrating and leveraging technology and communications to advance their work. The T2E Fellowship includes funding, access to and regular virtual support from expert volunteer Advisors from leading companies in support of the proposed Fellowship project, and customized training on tech and communication tools.

I am honored to be an advisor to WAKE, whose mission is to amplify the work of women leading change globally. WAKE gets technology and communications tools, training and support to women’s rights leaders and their organizations so they can accelerate their impact. WAKE works closely with private sector partners to provide tools, products and volunteer advisors. Women’s organizations in communities around the world are making strides to address the most critical issues impacting women and girls: gender-based violence, human trafficking, child marriage, displacement due to conflict, and unequal access to healthcare, education, political participation, and economic opportunity.

Tech2Empower (T2E) is WAKE’s flagship program created to get technology and communications training, resources and expertise to organizations and leaders working to advance women’s rights and security in their communities and globally.

With all that is going in this country this past week, it has convinced of the importance of supporting women’s rights nonprofits and causes and thrilled that the royalties from the Happy Healthy Nonprofit will contribute in a small way. My biggest hope for the book is that it also raises the awareness and discussion about the need for nonprofits to take care of their people while taking care of their missions and that self-care is part of doing the work.

The Happy Healthy Nonprofit Update

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 15:55:36 +0000

With one more week to go, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout has made to the #1 slot on Amazon’s Top 100 Nonprofit Books. Special thanks to everyone who pre-ordered a copy. If you haven’t yet, you can order your copy here.

Here’s a summary of recent interviews, reviews, and guest posts related the Happy Healthy Nonprofit.

Aliza Sherman and I were thrilled to be interviewed by Louanne Saraga Walters on her Philanthropy Show. You can listen to the interview here and learn more about The Philanthropy Show here.

A few recent reviews and guest blog posts:

Reviews

The Happy Healthy Nonprofit is a Must Read by Marion Conway
The Happy Healthy Nonprofit Book Review by Aisha Moore
Book Review: The Happy Healthy Nonprofit by Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Book Review by Sarah Durham, Big Duck
Book Review by Michael Hoffman, See3
Book Review by Lisa Colton, E-Jewish Philanthropy

Guest Posts

Updating the Nonprofit Work Ethic – guest post on SSIR
Anti-Burnout Workshop – guest post on Train Your Board
Four Smart Ways for Nonprofit Professionals to Prevent Burnout – guest post on Guidestar

7 Tips to Make You A Stronger Facilitator

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 16:21:09 +0000

Note from Beth: As a trainer and someone who teachers other trainers, I’ve been obsessed with improving my facilitation skills and written a lot about it on this blog. I’m always up for a conversation with other facilitators about shop talk and getting tips for improving my practice. So, I’m thrilled that fellow facilitators Cody Sigel, MPH, CHES and Tracy Wright, MAED from ETR agreed to share some of their secrets in this guest post.

7 Tips to Make You A Stronger Facilitator

The first time you facilitate a training, you start developing your own personal list of tips for great facilitation. You try out some things that work, and they go on your list (“I can’t wait to try that again!”). Chances are you also try out some things that don’t work, and they go somewhere else.

Some go into the trash (“I am never again going to ask people to take off their shoes as a way to break into small groups!”). And some go onto a wait-and-see list (“How come that worked so well when I watched Deb do it, and it was such a flop when I tried it?”).

ETR is a non-profit that develops and evaluates health education programs. We train providers and trainers across the nation on a range of evidence-based programs, especially in the sexual and reproductive health arena. We asked our cadre of trainers about the facilitation tips they’ve found most useful. We had a lot of great ideas, but we’ve distilled it down to seven we think will be helpful for any trainer—whether you’re just starting out or have been training for years.

Understand the science of learning and put it to work. Brain science and the science of learning are dynamic fields with constant advances being made. You’ll want to keep following the science to stay up-to-date. If you’re training adults (most of us are), you’ll need to understand adult learning. You might like to check out recent breakthroughs in the field. Get familiar with the Implementation Dip. Learn why you need to get participants moving around during a training. And keep reading and studying!
Bring your genuine personality and your own flair. The more the group feels you are being your true self, the better they will be able to learn from and with you. Are you funny? Analytical? Compassionate? High energy? Passionate about your subject? Play to your natural strengths to create powerful connections with participants.
Practice inclusive language in life, and bring it into the training room! In ETR’s trainings, we bring a lot of emphasis to inclusivity and equity. We want to create welcoming environments for LGBTQ communities, for people of all colors and backgrounds, and for survivors of sexual trauma. We strive to frame sexual health messages in sex-positive and non-shaming ways. We never want to criticize or stigmatize sexually active adults or adolescents.

The best way to demonstrate inclusivity in the learning community is to live, speak and breathe inclusivity in your everyday life. Go to workshops (one of our colleagues recently attended a parent education night at her son’s school and learned some new ways to think about gender). Learn from others (we love the Teaching Transgender Toolkit by Luca Maurer and Eli Green). Read, continually, about life from the perspectives of those from cultures other than yours (one of us recently found this read particularly impactful).

Get to know your participants, and go beyond just assessing their skill and knowledge level. Whenever we can, we assess knowledge and skills before a training event. We might have participants complete a short survey. We might talk with program directors to get a better sense about the people coming to the training. What motivates our participants? What are their challenges and barriers? What’s the political climate in their area? What are some of the cultural issues going on in their communities or programs? At the training itself, we often create opportunities to find out more.
Be prepared to hear your participants. If you’re going to “go beyond” in getting to know your participants, you’ll need to make room for discussion and put some reflective listening to use. Leave time and space for meaningful conversations about people’s experiences and challenges. Plan activities that support personal reflection and get trainees working with one another. Bonus benefit: this also ties into the science of adult learning. For example, when people discuss and repeat learning with one another, they boost verbal memory.
Draw on the expertise in the room and connect your new content to what people already know. Masterful facilitators make space for learners to make the connection between what is being learned and what they already know. Connecting to prior knowledge is foundational. It’s a key way people make sense of what they are learning and greatly aids encoding into memory. Create a space where participant expertise is valued and heard!
Build your facilitator’s toolkit. The best trainers we know always have a handy set of facilitative activities ready to tap depending on the situation . They can offer an ice-breaker, energize a slow group after lunch, help participants reflect on or reinforce learning, allow the group to identify key take-aways, get participants to generate new ideas, affirm new skills and more. We regularly post Facilitation Quick Tips on our blog that highlight specific activities and describe how to implement them.

Were any of your favorite tips included in our list? Which ones did we leave out? We’d love to hear about the strategies that work best for you or that you see working well among colleagues.

Cody Sigel, MPH, CHES, is a sex education specialist and a Professional Development Consultant and with ETR. She can be reached at cody.sigel@etr.org.

Tracy Wright, MAED, is a Project Director at ETR. She can be reached at tracy.wright@etr.org.

Nonprofit Podcaster and Blogger @joangarry Profiles Healthy Happy Nonprofit Book

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 18:51:54 +0000

If you don’t already read Joan Garry’s nonprofit blog and or listen to her podcast, you should. She is a must read and a must listen. She has the experience of being a nonprofit executive director, but now works with nonprofits, assisting with crisis management, executive coaching and the building of strong management teams to support the work of the CEO.

The one thing I really admire about Joan is that she gives straight up great advice to nonprofit CEOs to improve the effectiveness of their organizations. She also has a great sense of humor and grace. I’ve been a big fan of her work for a while and I was lucky enough to get her to write a guest post on my blog about a year ago – on why nonprofits need to nurture younger leaders. This summer I was lucky enough to be a guest to talk about the Happy Healthy Nonprofit Book on her podcast.

In researching and writing The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout, with Aliza Sherman, I remembered a post she wrote about her biggest professional mistake that lead to one of her staff wearing a heart monitor due to stress. Her insights resonated with what we were hearing in our interviews, so of course, Joan is one of many experts we interviewed for the book. Her story, perhaps, inspired Rob Cottingham, who created some amazing cartoons to illustrate the book.

Go take a listen to Joan’s podcast about The Happy Healthy Nonprofit!

Recent Reviews and Guest Posts

The Happy Healthy Nonprofit is a Must Read by Marion Conway
The Happy Healthy Nonprofit Book Review by Aisha Moore
Book Review: The Happy Healthy Nonprofit by Vanessa Chase Lockshin
Updating the Nonprofit Work Ethic – guest post on SSIR
Anti-Burnout Workshop – guest post on Train Your Board

Do You Work for A Nonprofit That Promotes A Culture of Wellbeing in the Workplace?

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 15:20:20 +0000

Gabriela Schneider, Chief Communications Officer at Issue One

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post called “Why the Nonprofit Work Ethic Is Outdated and Needs Change,” about why nonprofit professionals need to pay attention to self-care and bring a culture of wellbeing into the nonprofit workplace. (The topic of my forthcoming book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Impact without Burnout)

When I shared this article on my Facebook Page, it resonated with a lot of people. While many nonprofit professionals talked about how their nonprofits were pressure cookers, Gabriela Schneider, Chief Communications Officer at Issue One, wrote in a comment how grateful she was that her organization promoted a culture of “we care” or wellbeing for its employees.

Gabriela graciously agreed to share her experience.

Gabriela knows that practicing self-care is important, but it is just as important that the workplace culture embraces employee wellbeing. Gabriela says many nonprofit advocacy organizations tend to have an ethos of hiring passionate and ambitious young professionals and who wear their workaholic tendencies as a badge of honor. “It exploits the exuberance and optimism of youth, and in the age of social media with blended personal and professional lives, I can imagine it’s accelerating even faster burnout rates.”

When Gabriela started working at Issue One, a nonprofit that has a people first culture and wellbeing policies, she found it difficult to participate at first. “I thought that by not taking advantage of earlier closing times during “Summer Fridays,” working on weekends and staying up late to meet self-inflicted deadlines, I was going to show my workplace the real way work was done. ” She admits that she was wrong and was encouraged to maintain a healthier work-life balance as part of her job review. “I have embraced this approach myself and I make it clear to my team that I would rather not get a pre-dawn email, but instead get a more fully articulated idea after they have had time to contemplate it and strategize on how to make it effective.”

Gabriela says that senior leaders at her nonprofit model self-care. “Our Executive Director Nick Penniman sets by example and encourages staff to use their vacation time, be home with their families when needed and even block off time in the calendar to write or ‘stare at the wall’ and let the creative process unfold.” Her organization strives to improve internal communication and make managerial processes more transparent to engender trust and cooperation. Says Gabriela, “I personally encourage my team to take time off, learn a new skill or have fun.”

At Issue One, the organization promotes wellness and physical health with the following policies:

Healthy snacks for the staff kitchen
Building offers a free gym for tenants
Staff are encouraged to take a longer lunch break to workout
Flexible start time so staff can bike to work, workout, etc.
Has offered seated massage appointments as a staff appreciation perk

In addition to a generous vacation policy and health care leave time and holidays, her organization provides two paid personal days (equaling a total of 16 hours) per year to be used at the discretion of the employee. Personal days are provided expressly for the purpose of disposition of personal business, which the employee may or may not wish to discuss with her/his supervisor.

Gabriela says her organization has organized activities that facilitate a sense of community in her workplace. They host “Lunch and Learns,” bringing in outside experts. Her organization organizes study groups whereby staff help each other learn substantive aspects of their work and they hold staff retreats facilitated by managerial experts who can provide a neutral voice for guiding important conversations about how they measure success and hold ourselves accountable. Says Gabriela, “I also think starting the week off with a staff meeting where everyone has the ability to briefly update the rest of the team on our progress helps encourage the community culture.”

They also try to have fun outside the office, going out for meals or bowling. Says Gabriela, “Having fun together should not be underrated!”

Gabriela’s organization also pays attention to technology wellness and provides standing desks to employees who request them. There is no expectation for staff to send or respond to emails over the weekends or at night. The use of devices during meetings is discouraged. Says Gabriela, “Personally, I am of two minds on the last point: one can be present in a conversation and still be able to post an Instagram of a staff lunch in real time, but I know from experience, that there is too much temptation to use the device as a barrier from fully engaging with the people right around you.”

Gabriela says that encouraging a culture of wellbeing in the nonprofit workplace is something that all nonprofits need to openly discuss. It should not be a taboo topic. Says Gabriela, “We need to actively remember we are all humans who need care and compassion. Particularly as technologies makes it easier to understand society through data, it’s so key that we don’t take for granted the need for empathy and acknowledgement about how the work affects our lives.”

Gabriela says that there are many opportunities for nonprofits to discuss self-care, whether it be staff retreats, managerial check-ins, or staff reviews. She says, “We need to be mindful about how the workload may affect our work-life balance. It can’t be mere lip service, but should inform programmatic decisions about how to prioritize projects and deadlines. Perhaps health care funders and insurance companies should encourage a more systemic approach to making this a reality in the nonprofit sector. There certainly would be a good return on investment.”

Creating a culture of wellbeing or “we care,” in nonprofit workplaces is possible and easy to get started with a simple question. “Does our nonprofit encourage a culture of wellbeing or contribute to stress and overwhelmed?” The Happy Healthy Nonprofit provides a blueprint that takes nonprofits from this initial conversation to a measurable, doable strategy and plan.

#40BetterHours: The Art of Single Tasking

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 16:56:56 +0000

As part of co-authoring my next book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout, with Aliza Sherman, we both are still practicing the ideas in the book around self-care and well being at work. We talk about self-care as a holistic experience that goes beyond Kale smoothies and massages, although those things are nice. When we describe self-care in the book, it isn’t just a focus on physical health, but also something we call “technology wellness.”

This week, the Poynter Institute Katie Hawkins-Gaar and Ren LaForme joined forces to host a series called #40 Better Hours, a project to improve newsroom culture by looking at things that cause stress like workflow and communication and teaching journalist skills to combat information overload, part of a technology wellness routine. While geared for journalists and newsrooms, there is a lot here that is useful for nonprofits – and many of the same topics we address in our book.

Today’s session was on information overload and single tasking. It featured a ten minute video by journalist Manoush Zomorodi sharing some ideas and tips on new digital literacy skills of managing information overload and overwhelmed. The challenge was to focus solely on listening to the video and not multi-task and reflect on the experience.

Here’s some things she mentioned that I thought were useful:

The new digital literacy is not finding the information, but being able to make choices when you had enough information flood your brain and take the time to synthesize
“Batch Concepts” – If you are working on five different stories, don’t jump around. Work on each story or topic until you are finished and go to the next. This helps improve memory and synthesis. The same can be said for working on different nonprofit projects – write one grant proposal at a time.
Write a to do list. It helps you avoid information overload because you don’t have to waste time making decisions about to do (it is also helpful to have both morning and end of day routine around this)
Single tasking – Do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is a myth, it is switching quickly. When you switch like that, you use brain cells and that is why we find our selves mentally exhausted before the end of the day.
Be serious about getting your down time – whether vacation or taking a break. This how you not only replenish your energy, but also remain creative.
Develop your own guidelines about being “strategically unproductive” – that is taking a break from the information fire house. Understand what the signs are of information overload and simply stop.
She keeps sticky note on her computer that says, “Think about what you read.”

I have been disciplining myself – as much as possible – to single task and stay focused. I have a regular morning routine when not traveling – to read one article, listen to a podcast or view a video related to the topics in my book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit, and write about it – either on my blog or in a journal. It is not always easy to take this time for yourself for reflection and learning when there are mounting items on your to do list, but I have found it helps reduce that awful feeling of overwhelmed.

What techniques do you use to keep focused and productive?

The Happy Healthy Nonprofit Book: Upcoming Activities and Early Reviews

Thu, 15 Sep 2016 17:04:19 +0000

Credit: Rob Cottingham

We are just weeks away from the launch of the Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Impact without Burnout, my third book, co-authored with Aliza Sherman. Yesterday, I was honored to deliver the ending keynote, “From Self-Care to We-Care” at the Stanford Nonprofit Management Institute. The interactive keynote had 300 nonprofit leaders take and discuss the nonprofit burnout assessment and brainstorm self-care ideas to put into practice. Here’s some of the takeaways shared on Twitter.

During the q/a, one participant said that she was looking forward to the book and wanted right now! Well, just a few more weeks. Several participants mentioned that they would like to facilitate a process like this their staff as a starting point for developing self-care and we-care strategies. Our biggest goal for the book was to raise the conversation about why the nonprofit work ethic is outdated and needs to change and provide some frameworks and tips for change.

When writing a book, the best part for me is developing instructional workshops and keynotes and I am excited to see how nonprofits put some of the ideas into practice.

Upcoming Happy Healthy Book Events

September 16 at 1 pm EST
Aliza Sherman and I are guests on the Nonprofit Radio hosted by Tony Martignetti. You can listen live or to the archived recording here.

September 27 at 2 pm EST
Aliza Sherman and I will be guests on a Twitter Chat hosted by YNPN.

Book Reviews

Nonprofit Blogger Marion Conway, known for her nonprofit book roundups and reviews, wrote this review after reading an early galley.

“This is a book that you will want to read and keep on your bookshelf to refer to over and over again. It is a resource that all nonprofit leaders and Board leaders should read and take to heart. It is destined to be a must have book for a long time to come.”

We were thrilled to see that the book climbing towards the top of the Amazon Nonprofit Book Best Seller list several weeks before the official publication date. Yesterday it reached #9 on the top 100 nonprofit books on Amazon.

Thank you everyone who has pre-ordered a copy.

The Happy Healthy Social Change Activist: Passion for a Cause without Burnout

Thu, 08 Sep 2016 15:44:12 +0000

Last week I was honored to be a counselor at Museum Camp, an annual professional development event hosted by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH). Each year they bring together diverse, passionate people for a sleep-away camp for adults where they learn together through active, creative workshops and activities. Since the theme this year was “Change Making,” I taught a workshop on self-care for change makers based on my forthcoming book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit, co-authored with Aliza Sherman.

Nina Simon, the executive director of the museum, is an expert in participatory design and fantastic facilitator. It was great to watch her in action facilitating the creative, interactive, and fun program. The culminating project was for teams of campers to design and create a “zine,” on change making topics. Before the workshops, they facilitated a brainstorming and collaborative voting process to identify topics and teams.

Throughout the camp, anyone could drop a suggestion for a topic into the Zine Topic Suggestion box – people gathered in the large entry way of the museum to read the topics and contribute their own. We filled 8 flip chart pages with close to hundred ideas. The next step was to whittle it down to 20 topics by voting using an applause meter.

An applause meter is just what you think it is. People voted by clapping. The loudest clapping meant the idea was in the group of twenty. They were even somewhat scientific about it by creating a scale. To create the scale, they first asked the whole group to applaud for an idea they “sort of liked.” Next, to applaud an idea they liked and finally an idea they were wildly excited by. One of the counselors did a visual of the meter. Here’s a quick video.

I like this alternative to sticky dot voting! After the winning 20 ideas were selected, each idea was posted on a separate piece of paper on the walls. Each camper had three sticky notes where we added our names. Then we placed our sticky notes on the ideas we were most interested in working on. Everyone went into the various workshops and after the workshops the assignments — the twenty teams, each an assigned to a topic were announced. Teams worked on their zines until the end of the camp.

The Happy Healthy Social Change Activist: Passion for a Cause without Burnout Workshop

As a trainer in the nonprofit sector for past 25 years, my book writing naturally leads to new curriculum for professional development of nonprofit professionals. I was thrilled to be able to pilot a new workshop based on my forthcoming book, “The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Impact without Burnout” This mini-workshop was for individual change makers working solo (free agents) or with small or midsize nonprofits.

In the book, we discuss the many reasons for burnout in the nonprofit sector, but more importantly how to identify the symptoms because burnout can be very sneaky. We came up with a passion scale — from Passion Driven, Passion Waning, Passion Challenge, and Passion Depleted. The assessment helps educate people about the symptoms of burnout before it becomes too late. Next we did a series of small group exercises for participants to identify their stress triggers and reactions to stress.

Next, I had participants review an inventory of ideas around self-care practices. Self-care has to be customized to the individual – they have to design their own adventure or it won’t work. We set up a “self-care” cafe where small groups of participants discussed self-care ideas and draw them on the table (well on butcher paper). A few interesting themes came up ….

Asking for Support, Mini-Breaks, and Prioritizing

Many activists get into a mode where they feel they have to do it all or that everything is important on the to do list. This is more a mind shift than anything else. It is about learning how to prioritize tasks and understanding your personal limits, Not every task is a 10 on the scale. Another idea that bubbled up, was the concept of mini-breaks during the work day to replenish energy. And, of course, asking for or receiving help from family and friends.

Don’t Isolate Yourself From Friends, Family, or Professional Peers Who Give You Energy

Sometimes activists dedicated so much of themselves to a cause, that they become isolated from family, friends, and peers who give them energy. Several participants reflected on how it is easy to fall into that trap and looked at beginning to schedule more time with people to build relationships that give them inspiration and energy.

Being Intentional About Your To Do List

I don’t think I could have explained this better than this “Don’t Should on Yourself.” Sometimes we can create more stress for ourselves if we think that we need to do everything on our list. A lot of list is being able to say no. It is also about not feeling guilty about not doing a task.

This One Was A Joke, But Still ..

This was not a serious suggestion and was a joke, more or less. The story was that an organization had hired a consultant who scheduling meetings with staff but was not showing up. So, the joke at the office was, if you need downtime, schedule a meeting with the consultant. Actually scheduling fake meetings off-site, it is lying.

When I posted this on my Facebook wall, it prompted some discussion points. Jeremiah Owyang said, “This is unethical and it’s worth firing somebody for. It’s also a sign that the employee and the manager are not setting a good culture of work life balance. A mature employee knows how to manage up. This is a Band-Aid, not addressing the main problem.” It might suggest the need for professional development in teaching skills of up managing or being more assertive.

Hildy Gottelieb pointed out, “I’d love to explore what it would take for systems to be so human that no employee would ever have to figure out ways around it just to be able to breathe.” It is an organizational culture issue or perhaps people-centered leadership approach.

More and more nonprofits are experiencing “Collaboration Overload,” back to back meetings or an overflowing email in-box. This means there is little down time for reflection and thinking. With so many demands, it is harder and harder to carve out that time without overworking. While individual communications skills to “manage up,” it is also an organizational culture issue.

How does your organization ensure that employees have adequate work/life balance, peak productivity, and nurture a support of wellbeing, not stress?

Resource: The Social Media Toolkit for Nonprofits

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 14:55:14 +0000

The Skills Platform and Zoe Amar have created the Social Media Toolkit to aid professionals within the charity and third sectors. I’m thrilled to have contributed a chapter

There are many guides to digital and social media. From Dummies guides to video tutorials, it’s all out there. But, Dave Evans, the Skills Platform’s product manager and Zoe felt that something was missing – a toolkit that helps pull everything together.

The aim of the toolkit is to equip the charity sector’s already brilliant professionals with the right foundations, tactics and inspirational case studies to use social media effectively.

The Toolkit features a forward from NCVO’s head of Digital and Communications, Megan Griffith Gray and features contributions from notable charity social media experts in the field including; Zoe Amar, Kirsty Marrins, Madeleine Sugden, Lizzie Carter (CLIC Sargent), Sam Smethers (Fawcett Society) and Ross McCulloch (Third Sector Lab), Sarah Fitzgerald, Cheri Percy (Breast Cancer Care), Bertie Bosredon, Donna Moore (SearchStar) and me.

The Skills Platform is a training market place for the charity and health sectors where you can find quality digital training on topics such as digital transformation, social media training, digital strategy and digital leadership. Search for courses here. The Skills Platform is part of the Skills for Health Family, a not for profit organisation dedicated to the improvement of the health workforce.

Zoe Amar runs Zoe Amar Communications and is widely regarded as one of the charity sector’s leading experts in digital communications and marketing. Zoe has helped many organisations maximise their impact across on and offline channels communications and achieve great results.

Check it out today!

Nonprofit Organizational Culture Eats Big Data for Lunch

Tue, 06 Sep 2016 15:35:01 +0000

Note from Beth: I was thrilled to be interviewed by Steve along with many other nonprofit data nerds, for his new book, Data Driven Nonprofits. He was kind enough to send me an advanced copy and it is definitely a must read. So, check out this post and be sure to order a copy today!

Culture Eats Big Data for Lunch – Guest Post by Steve MacLaughlin

Why do some organizations struggle to manage their data? Why do other nonprofits extract a lot of value out of their information? Why do some get overwhelmed in the deluge of data flowing from their systems? How is it that others have harnessed data to drive better decision making?

These are some of the questions that I set out to answer in my new book Data Driven Nonprofits. For nearly two years now, I’ve been on a journey to understand why nonprofits are not more mature when it comes to their use of data. Along the way, I interviewed more than 20 nonprofit experts from a wide variety of organizations.

SECRETS TO SUCCESS
Perhaps the key to Big Data success can be found amongst the myriad of technologies and terminologies that exist today: Hadoop. Hive. Spark. Pig. Kafka. Machine Learning. Natural Language Processing. Algorithms. Predictive Analytics. Internet of Things. Data Health. Business Intelligence. Unstructured Data. NoSQL. Petabyte. Latency. Confabulation. Data Science. Yes, the technology is important. Yes, the skills are important. Yes, having the right data is important. But none of these are enough without one very important secret ingredient.

The business management guru Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Truer words have never been spoken. It is also clear that culture eats Big Data for lunch. Any strategy or plan to use Big Data is likely to be devoured if the culture of an organization is not supportive. As it turns out, culture plays an important role in the ability for nonprofit organizations to use data to their advantage.

Now, culture is also an overused term these days. For some it is a mystical force within an organization and for others it’s an excuse to blame the status quo. That’s why I turned to Beth Kanter during the course of writing the book to get a better understanding of the importance and power of culture. She helped me to understand the importance of behaviors, rituals, and mindsets that shape the culture of any organization. Time and time again, I found that the culture of a nonprofit was the secret to their success of being more data driven.

ALL SHAPES, SIZES, & MISSIONS
I found successful data driven organizations across nearly every sub-sector including higher education, international relief, religious, medical research, healthcare, human services, mental health and crisis intervention, community improvement and capacity building, environmental, and animal welfare.

What I found was that these organizations all had made data a priority. They were all using a mix of technology, skills, and strategies. But what stood out was the important role culture played in these nonprofits using data to drive better results.

The good news is that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to organizational culture. Instead, there are multiple culture types that create the right environment for data driven nonprofits to take shape and grow. There are at least seven different major culture types of successful data driven nonprofits:

Culture of Champions: There is support from the organization’s leadership and motivational members of the staff that embrace being data driven.

Culture of Testing: There is a belief that measurable improvements can be made through iteration and testing throughout the organization.

Culture of Change: There is a natural curiosity to try new things and take calculated risks to adapt to changing conditions in the nonprofit sector.

Culture of Sharing: There is a willingness to share data and collaborate to achieve better results and a disdain for creating or maintaining data silos.

Culture of Growth: There is a focus on continuous improvement where success is measurable and visible across all levels of the organization.

Culture of Agile: There is empowerment of people to interact and collaborate that allows them to adapt and respond to a changing environment.

Culture of Data: There is a high value placed on data and it is a fundamental driving force to support and validate decisions at the nonprofit.

Data Driven Nonprofits explores each of these culture types through first-hand stories from nonprofit organizations like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, University of South Dakota, Indiana University, Worldwide Cancer Research, SCIAF, Royal National Institute of Blind People, Project HOPE, Denver Rescue Mission, Florida State University, Humane Society of the United States, VolunteerMatch, Crisis Text Line, and charity: water.

These nonprofits are accelerating change in the world by staff using data to influence strategy and inform decisions that produce value and impact. All of these organizations have invested in people, process, data, and technology. But having a culture that supports the right habits, incentives, behaviors, and mindsets is the common denominator of success.

Steve MacLaughlin is a Director of Analytics at Blackbaud and is considered an expert on the nonprofit sector. His views on the philanthropic world have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, and on National Public Radio. MacLaughlin serves on the board of the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) and is a frequent speaker at conferences and events. Steve earned both his undergraduate degree and a Master of Science degree in Interactive Media from Indiana University. His newest book, Data Driven Nonprofits, was published in 2016.

Inside Goodwill’s #LaborofLove Campaign

Tue, 30 Aug 2016 14:07:56 +0000

We’re approaching Labor Day Weekend. The Labor Day holiday is more than just the signal to the end of summer and a relaxing three-day weekend. The Labor Day Holiday, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. You may be familiar Goodwill as a place to shop, but the nonprofit does much more including helping people find jobs. In honor of Labor Day, Goodwill launches the #LaborofLove Campaign this week. I interviewed Beth Perell, VP of Communications and Information Management to learn more about the campaign strategy and goals.

1. Many of us know about Goodwill as a place to donate goods or shop, can you give us an overview of your other programs and services?

Goodwill’s mission is to help people find jobs, earn paychecks and care for their families. When people donate to or shop at Goodwill’s more than 3,200 stores, they help provide job placement and training programs that support people facing challenges to employment, including veterans and military families, people with disabilities, youth, older workers and many others. These Goodwill services include career counseling, computer training, English as a second language courses, resume or interview preparation, mentoring, transportation, child care and more. We also train people to work in a variety of fields such as automotive services, construction, health care, information technology, manufacturing, hospitality and retail.

There are 164 local and independent Goodwill nonprofit organizations in the United States and Canada. Last year, Goodwill placed 312,000 people in employment in the United States and Canada. Nearly two million people worked to build their career and financial assets by engaging with Goodwill team members. In addition, more than 35 million people used computers and mobile devices to access Goodwill education, training, mentoring and online learning services to strengthen their skills.

2. What is the #LaborofLove Campaign?

The #LaborOfLove Campaign urges people across the nation to pledge to spread awareness about Goodwill and the importance of job placement and training programs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate was at 4.9 percent in July. Every day, Goodwill helps more people enter the workforce. This Labor Day, as our nation honors America’s workers, Goodwill is challenging everyone to take the #LaborOfLove pledge to support Goodwill in helping Americans get the job training that will prepare them for employment in industries like automotive services, construction, health care, information technology, manufacturing, hospitality and retail. Visit http://bit.ly/LaborOfLove2016 and learn more about Goodwill and how individuals can support Goodwill’s efforts to put people to work.

3. What are your campaign goals?

Goodwill is encouraging people to sign the #LaborOfLove pledge to spread awareness about Goodwill and the importance of job placement and training programs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 5.6 million job openings on the last business day of June this year.

We also hope to:

Raise visibility of Goodwill programs and services.
Draw attention to innovative programs that Goodwill provides to help individuals secure employment.
Drive awareness of the impact of donations to Goodwill, shopping at Goodwill, and volunteering/mentoring at Goodwill.
Emphasize how donations create jobs and transform lives.

4. Who is the audience?

Our target audience includes people interested in doing social good and helping people in their communities between the ages 18 to 35, the media, general public and donors.

5. What are the highlights of your digital strategy? How are you using both social media and mobile as part of this campaign?

We will use both Twitter and Facebook to promote the campaign and encourage people to take the pledge.

Our CEO, Jim Gibbons, will write a blog post for the Huffington Post, which has more than 38 million unique visitors.

We are also asking our local Goodwill organizations and their teams to promote the campaign and amplify the message on their social channels with their program participants, their partners and community partners. We are creating materials like a news release, social media graphics and social media messages for their use.

We plan to engage our external spokespersons and influencers, people we know are passionate about Goodwill’s mission of helping people find jobs. These influencers will promote the campaign with their social networks and contacts as well.

6. Given that Goodwill has store locations, are you doing a Pokemon Go tie-ins or other location based marketing strategies?

At this time, we are not integrating any location-based mobile strategies at store locations. We are engaging our 158 local Goodwill organizations in the United States and primarily promoting it on social media

There are some Goodwill organizations leveraging the success of Pokemon Go to drive foot traffic to Goodwill stores. However, it is not a tactic for the #LaborOfLove campaign.

7. What are your top tips for other nonprofit marketers to ensure the success of a digital campaign?

We have clear objectives and plan our strategy around our goals.

The messaging of our #LaborOfLove campaign has a more personal tone. It is important that people can connect with Goodwill’s mission in order to support the cause.

We make sure our local Goodwill organizations have the support and materials they need from us to make sharing the campaign easy to execute on their local social media channels.

Everyday People Are Heroes: Using Big Data to Engage New Agents of Change Online

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 16:16:13 +0000

Photo by CogdogBlog

Note from Beth: I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Data Driven Nonprofits by Steve Maclaughlin (launching Sept. 6th so stay tuned) and so data and nonprofits has been on my brain. So when colleague, Cheryl Contee reached out an idea for this post, I could not resist! Speaking of books, you can pre-order my next book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout due out in October.

Everyday People Are Heroes: Using Big Data to Engage New Agents of Change Online Guest Post by Cheryl Contee

In mid-July, NASDAQ announced that Blackbaud acquired Attentive.ly – a pioneering social listening and marketing automation tool co-founded by Rosalyn Lemieux, Cindy Mottershed and myself in 2012 — to offer nonprofits more innovation and better insights around list engagement.

Did you miss it? This is awesome news for nonprofits! Why?

It’s a rare acquisition of a female founded tech startup and the first time a tech startup with a black female founder on board has been acquired by a NASDAQ-traded company. #BlackHistory – We’re very excited! The merger will put Attentively’s groundbreaking big data software – that helps nonprofits identify & ally with the social media superstars hidden in their email lists – into the workflows of over 35K nonprofits worldwide. Yay!

Attentive.ly and Blackbaud understand that everyday people are the real heroes, and together working with your nonprofit, organizations can tap into that heroism and build bigger, better movements for good online. Here’s how:

1. Everyday people are the most powerful agents of change.

We designed Attentive.ly around this knowledge: Individuals may often have larger social networks than the nonprofits with whom they interact and support. A powerful Twitter, Instagram or Vine user fuels social change among their followers by sharing, engaging and ultimately mobilizing networks that radiate outward to create viral spread – potentially of your org’s video or petition. Your staff simply can’t achieve your mission by themselves. The culture of the web has changed. Your nonprofit will win when you partner consciously with the everyday people who are on your email list or follow you on Twitter or Facebook who will adopt your mission as their own and act as independent evangelizers of your cause.

It’s never been easier for nonprofits to grow their social & email lists and generate a critical mass of supporters. Yet one of the challenges facing organizations today is not just numbers. The next level is being strategic about understanding your audience. You want to capture the imagination of supporters while also building the power necessary to effect systemic, lasting change.

2. People-powered campaigns do good better.

Tools like Attentive.ly can help organizations can conduct big data-enabled social listening and identify key everyday people in their audiences that will help drive engagement in dramatic directions. These new tools entering CRMs help your small team communicate with many more people at scale much more easily using marketing automation. For example, one of our clients American Rivers set up Attentively so that each time a supporter mentioned “grand canyon”, they were put into a group who received an automated email asking them to sign their petition or share the petition if they already signed. By automating emails based on social mentions, American Rivers sent highly targeted emails asking their supporters to sign their petition within 24 hours of the mention. The Result:
• 24% petition conversion rate
• 2,500 new petition signers and 7,000 signers overall
• 0 unsubscribes (!)
Pretty smart, huh?

Also, you may have noticed that earlier this summer, Facebook announced an update to its newsfeed algorithm that will favor posts by people users care about most: their family and friends. This means posts by Pages (like your organization’s carefully maintained Facebook Page) will show up less prominently in your everyday heroes’ feeds. Facebook predicted that this change will cause reach and referral traffic to decline for most businesses, public figures, publishers and organizations.

That’s a bummer but Pages can still retain a great deal of traffic if your fans and members are sharing your content with their own networks. It’s key to empower the everyday people in your audience to create their own narrative around your issues by sharing and curating your content in their own voices. With Attentive.ly, nonprofits can locate the most passionate supporters on their list talking about your issues who also have large Facebook followings, giving them an active role and the freedom to share & customize your message for their network. Tapping into the collective intelligence of your crowd generates more commitment and enthusiasm, and often yields valuable insights and innovations.

3. The best campaign is like a really good hashtag.

Design your campaign to function like a #hashtag — think: what’s a shared rallying point? — for a wide coalition of everyday people. Use social listening tools like Attentive.ly to take the pulse of people on your list and equip them as independent actors to transform your cause campaign into a social movement! Causes are driven by strong emotional currents and, by speaking up for their own passions, people are what ultimately help campaigns build momentum and stand apart. When social listening data informs a campaign’s have more chances of being positioned in ways to drive and sustain an energized movement.

Are you ready to do good better? You’ll need a sidekick! Just because we love Beth and all the amazing people like you who read her blog, we’d like to help you get started tapping into your everyday heroes for FREE. Visit Attentive.ly/Report to match your email file (of up to 5000 names) with our social data and receive a custom infographic to see your social reach.

It’s more important than ever to learn more about the awesome ways organizations like yours are empowering the everyday people on their lists to be heroes on the Internet. Because you are an everyday hero, too…

Cheryl Contee is the CEO of Fission Strategy, which helps design dynamic digital ecosystems for change and the Co-Founder of Attentively and #YesWeCode.

CPsquare Member Blogs

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Some examples

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