Help
with your presentation
Click
here for help with:
Creating
a presentation
Posting
your work
Moderating
your presentation or training
Getting
live support
Creating
a presentation
Papers
and online trainings can be presented using .doc (Microsoft Word), .ppt (PowerPoint)
.pdf (Adobe Acrobat Reader), .rtf, or .html format, although the latter three
are preferable to ensure compatibility with the largest number of computers. Other
formats are possible but tend to limit the number of people who will download
the paper or project.
If
you use pictures or audio, please check the size of your file upon completion.
If it is too large, many potential participants may tire of waiting for the file
to appear and interrupt the download. To reduce the size, consider using freely
available WinZip®
or Stuffit™
compression software. The Forum supervisors or Forum Support Team
can help you with most
technical questions.
A
free presentation course
To assist you in making your presentions both
online and face-toface, we are delighted to receive these self-study resources
from Norbert Barnich who constructed them at Management Centre Europe. MCE is
our host for the SIETAR QuickPlace workspace.
You can find a general
course on presentations at http://www.mce.be/wbt/mmedia.
Within that course, the last section RESOURCES gives links to freebies, including
tutorials on Powerpoint from various sources. Norbert's very useful tutorial is
avilable there, either converted to HTML or as a whole 1 Mb Powerpoint downloadable
tutorial. On the page "Resources: new version", go down to the heading
"Tutorials for PowerPoint and other applications".
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Posting
your work
Information
on the details of putting your submission online are found in the Step-by-step
instructions page.
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Moderating
your presentation or training
What
is my role?
As an online moderator, you are helping the participants in
your forum thread have conversations that further collaborative learning and the
exchange of ideas. Your
tasks include:
- making
sure that newcomers get integrated into the group,
- answering
questions about the use of the communication technology,
- keeping
an eye on the overall tone of the conversation, and
- helping
structure the communication so that it stays clear and user-friendly.
How
can I do this?
In
contrast to face-to-face facilitation, where everyone can also get communication
cues through the body-language of other participants, it is important to remember
that you are relying on verbal communication only in an online environment.
Therefore, be sure to:
- Be
explicit and specific in your communication
- If
in doubt, be a little more courteous than in face-to-face communication
- Role-model
positive behaviors for the group membersDevelop Group guidelines
Developing
group guidelines is a good idea. These guidelines cover the objectives for the
group, and set ground rules for the interaction (e.g. about attachments, privacy,
responding to mails etc.). It is useful to send these guidelines to each newcomer,
and also periodically to the whole group (as a reminder, and also if there have
been changes).
Set
the tone
As a moderator, you influence the tone of the conversation.
- Welcoming
new members is a good idea, as is asking them to introduce themselves (if they
have not done so yet).
- If
there seems to be a marked imbalance in participation, you may choose to point
this out. (Many messages from a few, lots of silence from some or many). You may
want to inquire if the group is all right, check on how people are feeling or
address problem situations with a private email to the individual(s) involved.
Manage
conflict actively
If an interaction is starting to get off-topic, abusive,
or people get marginalized, step in. Help
participants with conflict resolution by – if necessary – calling time
out, and, above all, by focusing on the process. Check perceptions and feelings,
encourage reflection by asking questions about the process, help participants
work out a way forward. Most of the time, these processes help to clarify expectations
about behaviors in the group.If there is high escalation, talk to individuals
one-on-one, either by e-mail or by phone, to help resolve the conflict. This also
makes sure that less-involved group members don’t get exasperated by “endless
bitching”.
Act
as a role-model
Make sure to act as a role model, especially for behaviors
such as
- politeness
- a
questioning, open-minded approach
- supporting
learning and exploration.
Your best leadership tool, most of the time, is
asking good questions.
Support
the conversation
In an online conversation, you need to use different
methods than in a face-to-face conversation in order to structure what is going
on. In our experience, online groups need MORE structure than face-to-face groups.
Maintain
flow of Thought/Quality of Thinking
To encourage the quality of thinking,
you may ask questions to broaden, deepen, provoke or inspire communication (e.g.
There seems to be an assumption that X, what if we assume that Y, ...? How would
this look from ... perspective? Have you considered...? Could you clarify? Could
you help me understand what you mean by “Z”? Do you agree or disagree?
I would like to know more about...). Also, encourage the participants to ask questions.
In
addition you need to provide and/or manage and maintain:
Summaries
It is important to summarize discussions at regular intervals. This helps to clarify
what has been said, and also gives a group a better sense of having arrived at
a result.
Summarizing
can be done by group members, or by the moderator.
Be
sure to communicate how this is to be done (who, how, when), and make sure that
this is done.
Timeframes
and Deadlines
It is very helpful to communicate the beginning and the
end for discussions (and tasks). In this way, the energy stays more focused, and
the sense of commitment to the group is greater.
(Rather than “somehow,
some time”—this leads to inaction.)
Titles
of Messages
Encourage participants to use somewhat self-explanatory titles
for messages, and ask them to only put one topic in each message.
As
for respondents to messages, request that they use the original title (re. XYZ),
so that threads of conversation stay clear.
Creating
or Shifting Threads
Sometimes, certain discussion topics become very extensive.
In this situation, it is a good idea to create an extra forum, folder or thread
for this topic.
If
only a part of the group is very involved, it may also be a good idea to ask the
group if they would like to see a special-interest subgroup formed.
Group
communication vs. one-on-one communication
Generally speaking, encourage
participants to communicate with the whole group.
However,
it is also a good idea to point out that the group does not need to hear things
that are truly one-on-one conversations (Hi, Sandra, isn’t it funny, I met
your friend Jim at...).
Documents
& Librarianship
The group members might be sharing documents and information
that need “storage”. Find a way to store this information separately
from the ongoing messages, (get help with this if you don’t know how) and
let the group know what you are doing, why, and how.
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Getting
live support
Forum
Supervisors
Forum
Service Team Members
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