Espen Andersen's example on zoom meeting struckture.

https://twitter.com/espenandersen?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Eprofile%3Aespenandersen&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fappliedabstractions.com%2F2020%2F03%2F26%2Fgetting-dialogue-online%2F

Back in the nineties, I facilitated a meeting with Frank Elter at a Telenor video meeting room in Oslo. There were about 8 participants, and an invited presenter: Tom Malone from MIT.

The way it was set up, we first saw a one hour long video Tom had created, where he gave a talk and showed some videos about new ways of organizing work (one of the more memorable sequences was (a shortened version of) the four-hour house video.) After seeing Tom’s video, we spent about one hour discussing some of the questions Tom had raised in the video. Then Tom came on from a video conferencing studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to discuss with the participants.

The interesting thing, to me, was that the participants experienced this meeting as “three hours with Tom Malone”. Tom experienced it as a one hour discussion with very interested and extremely well prepared participants.

A win-win, in other words.

I was trying for something similar yesterday, guest lecturing in Lene Pettersen‘s course at the University of Oslo, using Zoom with early entry, chat, polling and all video/audio enabled for all participants. This was the first videoconference lecture for the students and for three of my colleagues, who joined in. In preparation, the students had read some book chapters and articles and watched my video on technology evolution and disruptive innovations.

For the two hour session, I had set up this driving plan (starting at 2 pm, or 14:00 as we say over here in Europe…):

Leading the discussion. Zoom allows you to show a virtual background, so I chose a picture of the office I would have liked to have…

14:00 – 14:15 Checking in, fiddling with the equipment and making sure everything worked. (First time for many of the users, so have the show up early so technical issues don’t eat into the teaching time.)
14:15 – 14:25 Lene introduces the class, talks about the rest of the course and turns over to Espen (we also encouraged the students to enter questions they wanted addressed in the chat during this piece)
14:25 – 14:35 Espen talking about disruption and technology-driven strategies.
14:35 – 14:55 Students into breakout rooms – discussing whether video what it would take for video and digital delivery to be a disruptive innovation for universities. (Breaking students up into 8 rooms of four participants, asking them to nominate a spokesperson to take notes and paste them into the chat when they return, and to discuss the specific question: What needs to happen for COVID-19 to cause a disruption of universities, and how would such a disruption play out?
14:55 – 15:15 Return to main room, Espen sums up a little bit, and calls on spokesperson from each group (3 out of 8 groups) based on the notes posted in the chat (which everyone can see). Espen talks about the Finn.no case and raises the next discussion question.
15:15 – 15:35 Breakout rooms, students discuss the next question: What needs to happen for DNB (Norway’s largest bank) to become a data-driven, experiment-oriented organization like Finn.no? What are the most important obstacles and how should they be dealt with?
15:35 – 15:55 Espen sums up the discussion, calling on some students based on the posts in the chat, sums up.
15:55 – 16:00 Espen hand back to Lene, who sums up. After 16:00, we stayed on with colleagues and some of the students to discuss the experience.

The dashboard as I saw it. Student names obscured.

Some reflections (some of these are rather technical, but they are notes to myself):

Not using Powerpoint or a shared screen is important. Running Zoom in Gallery view (I had set it up so you could see up to 49 at the same time) and having the students log in to Zoom and upload a picture gave a feeling of community. Screen and/or presentation sharing breaks the flow for everyone – When you do it in Zoom, the screen reconfigures (as it does when you come back from a breakout room) and you have to reestablish the participant panel and the chat floater. Instead, using polls and discussion questions and results communicated through the chat was easier for everyone (and way less complicated).

Satisfactory results, I would say.

I used polls on three occasions: Before each discussion breakout, and in the end to ask the students what the experience was like. They were very happy about it and had good pointers on how to make it better

We had no performance issues and rock-steady connection the whole way through.
It should be noted that the program is one of the most selective in Norway and the students are highly motivated and very good. During the breakout sessions I jumped into each room to listen in on the discussion (learned that it was best to pause recording to avoid a voice saying “This session is being recorded” as I entered. The students were actively discussing in every group, with my colleagues (Bendik, Lene, and Katja) also participating. I had kept the groups to four participants, based on feedback from a session last week, where the students had been 6-7 and had issues with people speaking over each other.
Having a carefully written driving plan was important, but still, it was a very intense experience, I was quite exhausted afterwards. My advice on not teaching alone stands – in this case, I was the only one with experience, but that will change very fast. But I kept feeling rushed and would have liked more time, especially in the summary sections, would have liked to bring more students in to talk.
I did have a few breaks myself – during the breakout sessions – to go to the bathroom and replenish my coffee – but failed to allow for breaks for the students. I assume they managed to sneak out when necessary (hiding behind a still picture), but next time, I will explicitly have breaks, perhaps suggest a five minute break in the transition from main room to breakout rooms.

Conclusion: This can work very well, but I think it is important to set up each video session based on what you want to use it for: To present something, to run an exercise, to facilitate interaction. With a small student group like this, I think interaction worked very well, but it requires a lot of presentation. You have to be extremely conscious of time – I seriously think that any two-hour classroom session needs to be rescheduled to a three hour session just because the interaction is slower, and you need to have breaks.