Help: Tips for Successful Meetings

As in physical settings, holding successful online meetings requires preparation, well-specified goals and expectations, interpersonal skill, responsibility, chemistry (the right mix of people), and experience. Unlike face-to-face meetings, online meetings lack the visual, auditory, and social cues (e.g., head nods for agreement; eye contact; gender) that we take for granted. The reduction of these cues has been cited as being responsible for more egalitarian participation across gender and status, but also for lengthier decision making processes. The trick to holding successful meetings in Tapped In is to follow all the rules for successful face-to-face meetings, and to agree on conventions to simulate the missing cues. Below are some tips and conventions that we have found useful in conducting successful meetings in Tapped In. Tapped In staff and the Help Desk are available to help you plan and facilitate your first meetings.

Establish the Expectations of the Meeting

Be sure that the participants know (a) the purpose of the session (e.g., brainstorming, coming to consensus), (b) the time allotted, and (c) the agenda.

Assign Meeting Roles

Appoint someone as a meeting leader, a "scribe" to write notes on the whiteboard, and possibly a facilitator, whose job it is to take the "pulse" of the participants. Leading a meeting in Tapped In can be more difficult at first than face-to-face. Be sure to agree upon the rules of engagement with participants and enlist their help in providing feedback during the meeting.

Break Up Into Smaller Groups

The rule-of-thumb is to keep the number of participants about the same as you would in a face-to-face meeting. Break large groups into smaller groups to address different agenda items in separate rooms and then report back to the larger group.

Encourage Equitable Participation

If you find that some participants are not comfortable breaking into the conversation, establish nonverbal behaviors by using the Emote command to simulate a request for speaking time (e.g., :raises her hand).

Manage the Pace of the Conversation

Privately poll participants that may not seem actively engaged using the Private Message feature to see if they are keeping up or have other concerns. Slow the conversation down, if necessary, or summarize the conversation periodically to give the participants a chance to gather their thoughts.

Use Notes, Discussion Boards and URLs

Tapped In provides organizing and information sharing devices, such as Notes and Discussion Boards. Use the Notes to post the meeting agenda, record new discussion topics, and post key ideas and action items in preparation for your meeting. Encourage participants to write ideas and questions on the Discussion Boards in a place you designate as a way of ensuring that they get covered in a chat or discussion board-facilitated conversation. You can also share URLs that become hot links when typed in (with http:// or www at the beginning). You can ask people to look at the URLS in the discussion and then discuss what they?ve seen if you like. If you post a URL in the discussion, be sure to tell people to come back to the discussion window (by closing the new window that opens when they click on the URL) after a certain amount of time.