 Written By Nick Glavan It’s hard to believe we’ve been running our I-Corps course virtually for nearly 3 years at this point. While at first, the switch over to online meeting sessions was a challenge, we’ve tried to iterate on our approaches to make our virtual classroom achieve the same outcomes (or better) as our old in-person sessions used to. Here are some of the best methods we’ve learned along the way: 1. Hop in the virtual room early: Most meetings for me begin 15-30 minutes early by opening my virtual session, turning on the waiting room, and checking my settings. This extra time allows me to get all my lecture materials prepped, ensure all the proper sound, video, and sharing permissions are ready, and I can test out some last-minute functions without the pressure of an audience of attendees. I also can admit people from the waiting room one-by-one, which helps if I want to just bring in another meeting facilitator to try something out before our cohort joins. 2. Start with a question while you wait attendees to join: After all the instructors are in the meeting and prepped, we’ll admit everyone from the waiting room and welcome them while we wait a minute or two for their peers to sign on. This can often feel awkward because most people are joining with their camera and microphone turned off, not responding to “good mornings”. To try and side-step some of that discomfort, we put a question for attendees to answer in the chat while we wait. We’ve tested both course-relevant questions(“what’s your best customer interview tip?”) and more general get-to-know-you questions (“what’s your favorite holiday and why?”). Both get decent response rates, though we recommend the emcee of the meeting do some prompting to get the ball rolling. It’s also good to read aloud and comment on the responses as they come in, so that you can acknowledge those positively participating. 3. Vary your style of interactions: Having a question for attendees to respond to in the chat is just one way to get your attendees interacting in the meeting. We found that having at least 3 or 4 variations of interaction per hour is necessary to keep the class engaged. This might include a pop-up poll, a quiz to recap what was just covered, calling on random participants to respond to a question and provide their rationale, or using breakout rooms for participants to collaborate and discuss an objective as it applies to their individual projects. A favorite method of ours is the “chat waterfall”: We ask all participants to type a response in their chat bar but wait to hit enter until an instructor says. This allows all participants to take their time typing a response without the pressure or influence of seeing others sending in their responses first. Then everyone hits enter at the same time, and the chat zooms by with a bunch of responses all coming in together. As instructors, we highlight some exemplary responses aloud, and have a team member monitoring the chat who can respond to other individuals about their responses as the meeting moves forward.  4. Frequent reminders on camera etiquette: It can be hard to get everyone on the same page when you have a virtual call of 60+ participants on the line. There will always be someone with “technical difficulties” who can’t get their camera to work or is calling in by phone. But by including frequent reminders that we expect attendees to be present in our sessions, and requesting they turn their cameras on for the duration of each meeting has helped. We often start each meeting with a reminder that it helps our instructor team to see the reactions of our audience as we cover concepts, so when we need to slow down or explain something in a different way so the full class can understand. We also repeat reminders as we launch into participation activities, that especially in a virtual class, there are only a handful of chances for peers to really interact with their classmates, so seeing who is speaking is really in making these quicker connections, which might be occurring more naturally in an in-person setting. 5. Breakout rooms for short activities with new people: Breakout rooms are a staple of online classes but using them can be tricky in a meeting where time is tight. Our most successful breakout room activities are ones that are kept short (10-13 minutes tops) where we mix participants across various teams or groups, usually in rooms with less than 4 participants each. In one of our program sessions, we send participants to rooms to design a process flow map of making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We provide just enough time to barely get this map completed, so the participants know they’ll need teamwork to get it fully done. With a shared goal, and some pressure from the clock, strangers form a team bond quickly as they work together to get their ideas on the page. We try to vary the participants in these rooms each week, so our cohort members are always getting a chance to work with someone new. Once they’ve had this brief but productive working session with one another, participants are more likely to follow up with their peers in class to make connections or share ideas. Also, once they participated on small scale in a breakout room, they are more comfortable participating in the large cohort session when we ask the breakout room teams to share their work. 6. Have some backup: This definitely isn’t a one-person job. Having others to support meeting operations while leading a virtual class has been our biggest key to success. With a large class size and so many moving parts, we put extra time into planning who is responsible for different elements throughout our virtual sessions. Typically, one person leads the lecture and runsthe shared screen slide presentation, and someone else will be in charge of monitoring the chat box and assigning breakout rooms. We’ve been lucky to have additional support members where these tasks can be delegated even further, so each team member can dedicate their focus to providing a quality class session to our participants without being overwhelmed by technicalities of running a virtual meeting. A huge thank you to Burton D. Morgan Foundation, who has also supported our I-Corps program as we’ve expanded our capacity this past year and continued to improve our facilitation of this vital entrepreneurial education course. Applications for our spring 2023 cohort of I-Corps are already open, and our current fall 2022 cohort will be finishing out their I-Corps journey with a virtual finale on November 18 at 9am ET. We hope these tips on running virtual meetings help you in your next session. What tips have you found helpful in running virtual meetings? Please share your thoughts in a comment or use social media with the hashtag #NEOeship to help our entrepreneurial community.
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