In my case, I was the facilitator for working group 5 of cohort 1, which was comprised of five Universities spread around Europe, each coming to the project with a different context yet similar priority areas and challenges, eager to share, collaborate and learn. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have worked on the EUA's LOTUS project, and to have met so may amazing leaders in the space of leading teaching and learning enhancement and change. During the process, I learned a great deal on several levels with one being around facilitating group meetings. Hence, I wanted to reflect and identify ten learnings around this that may be of help to others. You can find these outlined below! 1. The mood of the group is important. Establish, promote and sustain a collaborative, collegial and fun tone. Depending on the level of their role, people can spend their day jumping from meeting to meeting. Hence, when they come to your meeting, it's vitally important to realise you can set the tone and a mood based on the way you engage the group members. So throughout your meetings, consider how you can make this one count, make it stand out from normal meetings and to engage and connect your group members. Remember, in your role as facilitator, you can create and impact the tone of the meeting, and the mood in the camp. I prepared for my initial meeting with my international University colleagues by learning how to pronounce my 'hello and welcome' message in each of their languages. Lots of smiles all round that morning! Another aspect is humour - keep a fun tone, make your meeting one that is remembered (just to clarify I mean small moments of light humour, not a stand up routine!). 2. Ensure balance across all members Working groups are often made up of various members, many of whom won't know each other and may each have a wide variation of roles and experience. You can also add in all the various personalities to the mix. As a facilitator, it's good to be aware of this, as it's vital to ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to engage and contribute. If you allow one voice to dominate, it may cause others to disengage, even sub-consciously. In the case of my group, I was fortunate as we consistently maintained a very equal contribution throughout, but it's something I was tuned in to from the onset. 3. Use technology to support brainstorming that in turn can fuel discussions; e.g. engage with menti, jamboard, miro, google docs etc. When facilitating a virtual meeting, there is an onus to mix up the content, engage group members and perhaps create ways to capture thoughts and reflections from the group, on top of open conversation. With advances in technology, there are many tools to support engagement, and if used in the right away, it can give everyone a voice, fuel subsequent discussions, capture points that may otherwise may not be mentioned, include all 'voices', and provide time for deep reflection and more. There are so many potential advantages. In my meetings, I regularly used shared google docs, google slides and menti and in each case I feel they added something extra to the meeting, and supported the acquisition of thoughts, opinions and reflections. The outputs provided a valuable platform to dissect and discuss amongst the group. Important not to over-do the technology also, ensure you use it where it truly supports the group and discussion, but not for the sake of having technology present. 4. Have a structure to meetings - especially if online ; consistently keep to time I was once told by my father that there are two key things to a meeting - the time it starts, and the time it finishes! Wise words! As a facilitator, you will be designing and finalising agendas and during the meeting, it's essential the meeting runs to time, for every meeting, all the time. If you are concerned about a busy agenda running over, pare it back and build in some Q&A or a short break. Should there be several speakers, ensure they know how much time they have, and that they (as well as you!) are using a timer of some sort. Bonus points for you if you identify a way to announce their time is up in a fun way (noise, toy, sounds, musical instrument etc. - again this can make them smile!). Ultimately, ensure each meeting is structured and kept to time throughout. 5. Share practice and approaches with other facilitators Communities of practice are keys to success, and while this may be your goal amongst your group members, don't ignore the community of practice amongst other facilitators. The EUA convened all the facilitators from the 5 working groups on several occasions to share experiences and further learn from each other. This can be both reassuring, inspiring and motivating. A professional development resource in itself! I was fortunate in that a National Forum colleague (Alison Farrell, a champion facilitator) was also a facilitator with another working group throughout the project, and sharing practices and ideas ahead of meetings was such a helpful approach to engage with. 6. Circulate meeting summaries regularly and punctually; agendas are needed well in advance Preparation and planning goes along way for group members; what did Roy Keane once say..."fail to prepare, prepare to fail"! Time has to be in your schedule to engage with other facilitators to compare plans and ideas, to design an inclusive agenda, and one that ensures the meeting has a way to achieve its goal. In industry terms, a high FTE goes in to these meetings. I circulated all my agendas one week in advance (we had pre-determined the best meeting date/time etc. via a doodle poll), and on this I included summary info. about the group as well as some pre-meeting work, with the latter being very light touch, present more to engage and frame the upcoming meeting. Following meetings, I converted my notes in to mindmaps, documents or powerpoint summaries and posted these to our group's 'shared space' online. I also highlighted key points, questions etc. in the summaries so group members could identify/relate back. I appreciate some meetings can be recorded to facilitate note-taking, but I wanted to ensure an open, trusted space was present in our meetings, hence I used the old fashioned hand written notes, capturing as much as I could while actively listening. Ensure to generate your summaries punctually after the meeting, so to maintain connection for group members - but also as this is when you are most familiar with the discussions, your shorthand notes taken and the key points which were made at the time. Hence a lot of your time facilitating a meeting goes in to the before & after the meeting work! Roy certainly does have a point with his advice :-) 7. Actively listen and synthesise, clarify as you go; build connections & reframe As meetings progress, and in the role of a facilitator, it can be helpful for everyone if you are consistently prepared to synthesise across the discussions, or to identify similarities and connections that arise across group members from points being made. You can identify the right person to bring in to the conversation at the right time, and this can really ensure everyone can have an opportunity to speak. Building in pauses, or reflection points, to summarise and reframe the discussion can also be of value. You can also use these to move things back to the main topic, in case people have ventured slightly off course via ongoing discussions. In addition, always allow some time in the agenda to 'close' the meeting, to bring the key topics discussed to the fore, determine any required actions, request any final thoughts or reflections from group members. It's vital not to be abruptly ending, you can lose a lot taking that approach. Consider employing a 'hold and share' approach at the end perhaps (if virtual; each person types their key take away point from the meeting in to their chat, but 'holds' off pressing 'send' until instructed). This allows thoughts to be captured without seeing others' opinions, which can sometimes away a conversation. Implementing this can provide a great discussion point to kick off your next meeting too! 8. Consider further opportunities for members to engage (e.g. breakout rooms) Like anyone who regularly attends online meetings, large groups can sometimes stifle engagement and openness. Therefore, considering what I outlined earlier about engaging with utilising technology, this can be further complemented by breakout rooms. Here, there is scope to allow members to meet in smaller numbers, to more openly discuss and share their viewpoints, before reporting back to the main group at a later stage. However, these sessions also require preparation. Questions must be clear to participants, and as facilitator, you must know how to notify the breakout room with the question/discussion point at hand and/or reminders informing how long left are also regularly required. Consider how you want them to document their discussion, via an elected rapporteur? perhaps via a shared google doc, with each group having a specific section?, or via a share google slide deck with each group work on a specific slide? The benefit of the latter, is at the end of the session, there is one complete slide deck with contributions from all breakout rooms. The rapporteur approach is useful if the meetings are tending to focus or rely more on a discussion/chat based approach back in the main room. 9. Remaining neutral So you are facilitating a working group, with several institutions being represented and you hear a specific point being made on topic that you have a wealth of experience on from your institution. What do you do? Firstly, it's important to realise that what works in one institution may not work in another. Also, each institution may be at a different stage on their path to T&L enhancement or may be limited by national policies or requirements - which you as facilitator may not be aware of. Hence, of course you may ask more questions to learn more, or mention a specific aspect of your expertise to support the group, but really you need to be mindful that you are not necessarily representing your institution when acting as a facilitator, so you need to allow time for each institution's context to come through, as opposed to believing you are doing something the one and only, best way (this could come across as boasting to some!). 10. Realising it can take time for groups to 'gel' and to see impact Sometimes over the course of a few meetings, you can begin to notice the group members begin to 'gel', connecting their points, challenges or priority areas more with those from other institutions as they speak. It occurs over time, and after a few meetings, I began to notice this more and more. For sure, we had reached this phase almost as the project was drawing to a close. Hence, embrace and appreciate once this phase is reached. When you consider that impact is often felt after the event/programme/project itself, you can see this connectivity between members as the platform for future impact. We created a shared contact sheet, with group members' details and areas of interest for future collaboration. Helpful relationships have been created, in a shared and open space, and I feel several future connections, partnerships and successes will further emanate from this group yet. Yes, we've seen some initial impact already, but there is a lot more to come yet as they return to their institutions following their involvement in the LOTUS project.
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Ronan BreeEducation Developer,Science Lecturer, Archives
March 2023
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Any opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.
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