Effective Online Meetings

You’ll be introduced to leading Effective Online Meetings by directly experiencing a set of Design Thinking and Agile tools and methods under the guidance of our leading coaches, which you can then use to shape and improve how you run virtual meetings.  

You will gain a foundational understanding of the principles that underpin online meeting facilitation and you will practice these methods so that you can start applying them at work right away.  

No prior knowledge in using online meeting tools or in facilitation is required. We will develop your online facilitation skills using two popular meeting tools, Zoom and Mural. Note that this course is not software training; we will not be going through all the functionality of these tools in detail or all the other software and tools available for remote meetings; our focus is on practicing ways to make your meetings more engaging, collaborative and productive. 

You will learn to:  

• Understand the fundamentals of running online meetings to achieve different goals, for internal and client meetings 
• Use virtual tools to make meetings more visual, focused and productive 
• Help all meeting participants to collaborate and have a voice 
• Use efficient ways of creating a good record of important content and actions during online meetings 
• Energise and engage virtual teams, with our tips and tricks for planning better meetings, managing diverse groups, handling disruptions and more 

• Session 1 - Discover:

  The first session covers the theory: we’ll do a quick introduction to leading productive online meetings, starting with the key differences between in–person and online meeting facilitation and an overview of some of the fundamentals of meeting facilitation and its key principles. We’ll introduce and demo a few essential methods for productive online meetings in a visual, collaborative and engaging way, useful for multiple team or client meeting scenarios and you will start to practice some of these approaches. 

   

• Session 2 - Deliver:

  This session is more practice-focused. We will explore and practice warm-ups and energisers to get help engage others in a meeting and approaches to encourage and record feedback. We will also look at ways to manage diverse groups of people and handle disruption. At the wrap-up we will address any final queries about the methods covered. You’ll get the chance to ask any closing questions to the expert coaches, giving you a chance to get more advice specific to your current needs. 

Q. Why Effective Online Meetings?

A.

At the Design Thinkers Academy London, we recognise the huge and immediate challenges that business currently faces due to Covid-19.  Now, more than ever, we need to adapt and face the world with a new mindset. So, as many of you sit at home, we want to offer an opportunity for you to become proactive and to meet these challenges head on.

This course is about learning how to facilitate meetings that leverage all your team’s brainpower and help you collaborate efficiently during these times where it’s most needed. Additionally, now that many are working from home and having meeting after meeting, all day long, this is the perfect opportunity to stand–out from your competitors by making your client meetings more fun and engaging, while ensuring alignment and proper documenting of the meetings for future reference with minimal effort.
Our Effective Online Meetings course offers you the perfect opportunity to quickly adapt your skillset and enables you to make the most out of the current remote working situation, putting you in the best position to keep your team and clients engaged to make your business flourish going forward. 

Q. How will the online sessions be taught?

A.

Different to many other online courses, this is a live course, meaning you will be directly taught in real time by our coaches. It is not a pre-recorded, online tutorial course, but is a high intensity live course from leading coaches in the field and will be individual to each delegate taking part. 

Q. How does this course differ from Design Thinking facilitation training?

A.

Effective Online Meetings is a shorter, more direct course where you do not need any prior knowledge of design thinking, whereas you need experience of this to attend our Design Thinking Facilitation training. Both courses help you to learn and practice facilitation techniques, but the latter is more advanced and focuses on facilitating design and innovation workshops.  

Effective Online Meetings is also purely focused on online meeting facilitation, experiencing first-hand its possibilities and constraints. We introduce some useful facilitation techniques from both Design Thinking and Agile methodologies to help make online meetings more engaging and productive, but do not teach these methodologies in detail.   

Q. How will I do the course online? What equipment do I need?

A.

The only equipment you’ll need is a computer with a fast and reliable connection to the internet (recommended minimum speed 1 Mbps, you can check your network speed here https://www.speedtest.net/), microphone, webcam and speakers or headphones. 

Access is easy and universal, using industry standard web-based tools. Zoom is our primary tool for video-conference calling, with visual exercises taking place in Mural. You do not need to have used these tools before or to have any kind of subscription to do the training. Note: both these tools are available and accessible through Chrome browser; we recommend using Chrome for the best experience.  

Q. How long will the course take?

A.

Time commitment: 2 x 3 hours of live online sessions with our coaches, with no additional self-directed work required 

What time will the course take place: 14:00 – 16:30 BST

Q. I would like to speak to someone for more information. How can I contact you?

A.

We have special rates for NHS workers, unemployed, charities and students and multiple bookings. Please get in touch to find out more. If you’re booking a lot of spaces, you may want to talk to us about tailoring a course especially for your organisation. Call us on +44 7711 068 553 or email shanna@designthinkersacademy.co.uk to find out how we can help you.

Q. English isn’t my first language. Does that matter?

A.

People from all over the world will be taking part and this cultural mix is one of the real strengths of our training. However, it is important to have good basic spoken English to get the most out of our courses. 

Q. Do I need to pay VAT?

A.

• UK business
• UK non-business individual
• Individual from the EC (Europe)

• Businesses from the EC (reverse charge rule)
• Worldwide non EC businesses (out of the scope of UK VAT)
• Worldwide non EC individuals (out of the scope of UK VAT)