Facilitation
This is a tricky question to ask every potential Congregant Zoom facilitator of an online learning opportunity. One way to do it, is to ask it on a standard Facilitation application.
What is internet speed of the Zoom host?
A free online document storage system and other applications.
What is Google Docs?
Online learning requires this feature to help organize handouts, resource and requirements.
What is a Learning Management System (LMS). Google Slides/Docs is an easy way but there are other applications as well.
This year-long spiritual development curriculum has long been adapted for online use.
What is Wellspring? The other years are in process of adaptation.
Reducing sessions to 60-90 minutes, scheduling on Saturday, frequent breaks, movement and music are all ways to minimize this.
What is Zoom fatigue?
This was once a congregational luxury in facilitating adult faith formation.
What is a single facilitator? Co-facilitators are necessary for online learning. Attending to the material, noting participant non-verbal cues AND reading CHAT are too challenging for one facilitator to do well.
This feature helped Zoom become the most popular (i.e. inclusive) online meeting platform.
You can hold meetings for up to 40 minutes for free and attend any meeting of any duration for free. And it was relatively easy and stable platform.
Adapting Curriculum for online use requires you do this before anything else.
What is checking the Action Plan? Does the offering meet the mission? If not, is there something close? Be mindful of adapting curriculum simply to offer something.
Pastoral or family-sized congregations, sometimes challenged to offer curriculum which costs $ for training or to purchase, can do this in an online environment.
Take the class at another congregation? This is a version of partnering with a local congregation but online learning allows pastoral or family-size congregations far more access to curriculum.
This learning approach helps adapt curriculum online by requiring pre-work by participants — work done prior to the session allowing time to process it in person.
What is a flipped classroom approach?
This used to be a 10-15 minute phone call when working with facilitators in our congregations.
What is training? Not only on technology but also on reading non-verbal cues and creating participant community. And also the JEDI (justice, equity, diversity and inclusion) competency and comfort.
A popular application for online registration.
What is Signup Genius or Eventbrite. Signup Genius is very familiar to parents of school-aged children. What are others?
Reading a curriculum and adapting it for online use requires at the very least two of these.
What are sets of eyes? Reading thru a curriculum (and it should already be online), moving it to GoogleDocs,a and having two people make necessary changes is ideal. Having someone else read it for clarity a treasure!
This is your best option for streamlining the adaption process when offering an online curriculum, like Building Your Own Theology or the Faith of the Unbeliever, when it is not already available online.
What is Google the curriculum titles and find another religious professional who has already offered it? The offering doesn't have to be online specific but requesting their written lesson plans, reduces the amount of writing you have to do.
This curriculum adaptation is both an underused feature in in-person faith formation (for all ages) but is absolutely revolutionary for online learning helping to build community among learns.
What are breakout pairs, triads and groups?
This is a pandemic Twitter Account that has subtly taught Twitter users how to set up their video backgrounds for maximum effect.
What is @RoomRater? Facilitators need to be mindful not only of the technology issues, but also their background space to cut down on distraction: lighting, sound, interruptions, turning off notifications, etc.
Video can be a shared screen function in Zoom but it requires these three prerequisites.
At least 1.5Mbps uplink and downlink.
Playing video at full screen.
Clicking on the "optimize video share" before sharing screen.
This is often a way to afford expensive curriculum offerings.
EmbraceRace is a curated class available to learn what?
What are "For parents" to raise children who are thoughtful, brave and knowledgeable about race?
This change might be the very first one you and your partner make in your adaptation.
What is reviewing and revising learning goals?
A painful but necessary final step in checking on your online facilitation for yourself or another facilitator.
What is record yourself teaching part of a lesson? It sounds tedious but one of the best ways to improve your facilitation online is to video yourself and then watch. Everyone is surprised the first time in the difference you see versus how you thought it was going. Bonus: you can check on your background too.
Canva, projectors, SignupGenius, ConstantContact, Creative Commons, Google, Edmudo, Edpuzzle, Padlet, Miro, Doodle Poll, Facebook Live, Spotify, YouTube.
What are technologies or applications that support online learning? You are likely to need alot of these, or ones like them, to support online learning. How will you learn and teach them?
Increase registration signups by these three strategies.
Advertise - signup, social media, newsletter, etc
Invite people or a Committee to lead a module and invite others.
Make it exclusive...with a signup. Or conversely call it Advanced.
What is review other UU congregational adult faith formation offerings?
Think-Pair-Share; Show Not Tell; Story Circle; The Jigsaw Method are all learning strategies that help accomplish this.
What is diversify the face-to-face meeting/learning style that the majority of online learning and meeting engage? Others are out there too.