Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG): lessons learned from working across continents, communities, and contexts… all remotely.
As most schools and universities are moving teaching and collaborations online, here’s a short guide to what tools are available and best practices from our experience in running virtual teams:
MD4SG is a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research community working to improve access to opportunity for historically disadvantaged communities. What started as a small online reading group in 2016 has grown into a virtual network of researchers and practitioners from across 100 institutions.
At present, the initiative runs numerous online working groups, an online colloquium series, as well as workshops and tutorials. Participants include researchers, journalists, human rights activists, policy-makers, and individuals working in municipalities and NGOs spanning 12 time-zones in over 20 countries. The online working groups each bring together 10–80 participants via biweekly web conferences. These working groups have been successful in fostering collaborations between researchers across North America, Europe, and Africa, and have led to numerous presentations and publications.
During this time of changing work environments (in-person to virtual; at the office to at home), we’d like to share some resources and recommendations that we’ve found helpful in facilitating our working groups over the years. Some of these recommendations have to do with offering yourself and your coworkers a diversity of online tools for collaboration. Others address more personal considerations, such as caring for coworkers as the global community navigates this crisis.
As you’re reading through this article, remember to ask yourself: can your organizational structure sensitively support a dynamic and rapidly changing environment? Depending on where you and your colleagues are located, over time you may need to take time off from work even while working from home, whether for self-care, dependent-care, or other issues.
We hope what we have compiled is helpful as you’re re-organizing your work team!
Basic Logistics
This table provides a summary of different online tools you can use to schedule and hold your meetings, including participant limit, payment, features, and our team notes.
Video-conferencing tools: Zoom, Bluejeans, Google Hangouts, Skype, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, Slack, Discord
Scheduling tools: When2meet, whenIsGood
We have also gathered some additional resources and tips below, we hope these are helpful to you and your community.
Remote vs In-Person
What has worked well?
- Interactive lessons versus lecturing. It helps to have online sessions that are very discussion- or activity- focused. If a power-point presentation is given, try to reduce the presentation time, or take breaks during the presentation to ask questions and engage in discussion.
- Record meetings. One of the advantages to having online meetings is that they are easy to record. This tends to work especially well in presentation-focused meetings. Make sure to obtain permission from all participants each time you record!
- Having a co-teacher or co-organizer. Organizing online work is in some ways harder than organizing in-person meetings. Having a co-organizer is helpful for creative planning, as well as for facilitating the meeting itself (e.g. one organizer can moderate discussion while the other manages logistics).
What modifications are needed for a remote environment?
- Automatic mute. As default etiquette, everyone should mute themselves unless actively speaking. This helps eliminate background noise and other distractions. Remind participants to unmute when they talk!
- Audio vs visual cues. Visual cues such as nods are difficult to see in online meetings, especially when there is a speaker in ‘presentation mode’. Instead, take regular breaks to ask if there are any questions.
- Buffers for technological difficulties. You may want to leave a 5-minute buffer time for those who are running late, and for everyone to test audio and video.
- Virtual whiteboards. For whiteboard presentations, we recommend sharing your screen on an iPad or Surface with stylus, or switching to slides. As a last resort, use a physical whiteboard with a camera that has a clear view of the board.
What else is helpful when switching to remote meetings?
- Have participants take an active role in developing and facilitating the form, content and logistics of the meetings.
- Ask if there is a preferred communication medium (i.e., hangouts, Zoom, Bluejeans, Skype, Microsoft Teams, etc). Having participants who are familiar with the technology being used can go a long way!
Best Practices
Before the meeting:
- Set a rhythm by establishing consistent meeting times and means of video conferencing.
- Set a meeting agenda and email it out ahead of time. Especially for virtual meetings, it is crucial to set clear goals whenever possible.
- Provide meeting materials in advance whenever possible (e.g. presentation slides, readings, shared document for note-taking).
- Send reminder emails about meeting times as your team is getting adjusted.
Starting the meeting:
- Be clear about expectations for when the meeting will officially start. This is especially important as you may need to build in more of a buffer between meetings.
- The time when people are trickling in may feel more awkward than in-person meetings. This is okay. Having a moderator greet participants and provide updates on when the meeting will start can help reduce awkwardness.
Facilitating discussion:
- Use question prompts to facilitate discussion. It can be helpful to include a visual cue with the prompt, such as having a slide or typing the question in the chat window.
- Encourage people to use the chat window. Chat is a great option when internet connections are spotty, and utilizing both chat and spoken word in online forums allows participants to contribute to discussions using the medium that is most comfortable for them.
- Call names so that participants know when to speak. This is especially helpful if participants are afraid of talking over others. It can also help to ask a particular team member about their thoughts for a specific topic, e.g. “I know you have worked on this topic, what did you think?”.
- Don’t get discouraged if participants are shy or quiet at first. It may take time for people to adjust to this new setting. Continue to encourage sharing and discussion.
Fostering collaboration:
- Use a shared document for note-taking, brain-storming, follow-up tasks
- Consider designating a specific (rotating) person to take notes in the shared document during discussion-oriented sessions if you want to be able to refer to a shared record of what happened.
- Clearly label who is responsible for what task during the meeting and use the document as a way of keeping track of team progress.
- Switch coding/engineering lessons to shared environments (e.g. Google CoLab notebooks)
Last but not least, remember that group dynamics will be different in an online setting:
Encourage consistency, but hold plans loosely.
In the beginning, we’ve found that it is helpful for virtual teams to meet consistently at regular intervals for set amounts of time. For our working groups, this is usually 1 hour every two weeks. The first few meetings may not feel as productive as you’d like them to be. Don’t worry, this is normal! We’ve found it often takes a few meetings for people to settle into a productive rhythm in a new context. The important thing is to encourage consistent participation. Keep asking members questions, and offering discussion prompts, and be okay with long pauses. Don’t worry if some meetings run shorter than expected;, the most important thing is that the time is used valuably — not that all of it is used.
Temperature-check group dynamics.
We recommend leaders and participants of teams ask team members (via individual lines of communication) about what is working and not working with how the team is being managed. Empower people to take management and leadership into their own hands, as this will help inspire people to make use of communication channels. More specifically, by making it “normal” to ask about management and team practices, as a leader, you won’t have to ask that only in situations where negative dynamics arise. We’ve found making “temperature checks” a normative practice inspires trust, signals that member voices and opinions matter, and that they can use their voice to shape and direct how our community works together.
Take time to ask how people are.
In the first few days or weeks of the switch, and then consistently thereafter, ask how people are and open up a channel of direct communication in case people need to talk about impacts in a non-group setting. Be generous, and let people know it is okay to take time for self-care. Advocate that they do this proactively. We recommend that managers institute organizational structures that allow people to do this independently and without requiring them to ask permission. This will empower people to take breaks when they need them and recoup energy that will most definitely be taxed for most people.
Keep Context in Mind.
We hope that you are located in an area that experiences minimal impact from the pandemic. We’ve found it healthy for our community to openly discuss how situations impact communities differently. If appropriate, consider having open discussions. It’s a good learning opportunity, especially since we sometimes find that, as organizers,we were not aware of all the challenges people on our teams are facing. Some might be struggling with shortages of medicine and others a loss of a loved one.
We hope these compiled tips are helpful as you transition your work and teams.
Written by Sara Kingsley and Jessica Finocchiaro with contributions from the remaining MD4SG leadership.
