Designing Digital Collaborations Workshop: Flow and underlying logic
By Hayley Ho, Silvio Nießner, and Kateryna Pereverza
In this story we share the design and flow of our Digital Collaborations Workshop — an online event we developed with the aim of creating a space for reflections on what we have learned about learning and collaborations over the past year, to a large extent remotely in digital spaces. Along with describing the flow and structure of the workshop, we discuss the underlying logic and reasons behind the choices we made. We ran the workshop in May 2021 with a group of motivated volunteer participants (teachers and students) who contributed with interesting insights and perspectives from their own experience. With this story, we explore how the process of designing a workshop and its resulting structure can be described in a meaningful way so others can potentially use it or adapt it to their own contexts.
The idea to hold the Digital Collaborations Workshop emerged during this year’s edition of the course “Transdisciplinary Approaches for Systems Innovations” (TASI) that we run at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The course was conducted remotely and digitally for the first time due to Covid-19 related restrictions. To create a learning environment supportive for collaborative and reflexive learning in this project-work based course, many of its elements were redesigned and adapted for a remote digital setting (we have already shared some of our approaches and reflections about the digital edition of the course in a conference talk). With this, an interest to reflect on our own experience of developing a digital course and learn from others came naturally at the end of the course edition in March 2021. Soon, a team of four engaged collaborators that included students and teachers were sitting in a video call discussing how we could run the workshop in an engaging and productive way.
We decided to organise the workshop in May 2021. It felt very timely as many discussions in universities were being conducted around a possible “hybrid education” scenario in the upcoming autumn term. We wanted to create an environment to reflect on our own experiences and invite others to share theirs, creating opportunities for collaborative learning. Making the workshop open for external participants but not promoting it too widely was a decision we took early in the process of planning, aiming to host it with a medium-size group of 10–15 people.
The idea to reflect on past experiences during the workshop was soon complimented by an intention to imagine possible future scenarios for education. We wanted to discuss what a “new normal” for learning and collaborations could look like after Covid-19 restrictions are lifted. Will “pre-Covid” approaches still be possible after more than a year of remote digital experiences? What do people really mean when talking about returning to “normal”? What was good about that “normal”, and what improvements were there from remote digital environments? With these and similar questions in mind, we designed the event to have two-parts: we would start with reflections about the past and then move into the future to imagine and challenge assumptions that we might have today.
Collaborative approach to the workshop design
Our overall approach to the workshop design was to organise it in a time-efficient way. The end of spring is traditionally a busy time in academia, and we did not have much time to dedicate to the workshop design. We had to find a way to collaborate efficiently, trust each other, and share responsibilities in a productive way. Even though we had not organised events together before, we were all part of a regular discussion meet-up group that had emerged at the end of the previous edition of the TASI course. In these meet-ups we had become accustomed to sharing the responsibility of collaboratively creating a quickly defined agenda and driving the discussions forward. This contributed to setting an efficient pace of collaboration to design this workshop as we could build on existing trust and understanding. Our limited time and core effort could be used for creating rather than preparing for meetings.
With this collaborative mindset and without the need of “project management”, we organised video call coordination meetings when necessary to synchronise and make decisions on key aspects. We tried to keep these short but sometimes we lost focus and the discussion got side-tracked. Often the group had to consciously bring back the focus when we wandered into different directions or deeper discussions. For this reason, some of the work that we planned to complete during the meeting had to be finalised after the meeting through alternative channels such as Slack.
We jointly worked on materials and other tasks in Miro, having one space (board) for preparation work and another to create the workspace in which we would conduct the workshop. The live workshop was held in this Miro space with Zoom as the video conferencing tool. The four workshop organisers also participated themselves and thus took on a double role as participants and facilitators. Each organiser took the responsibility to facilitate a part of the workshop depending on individual preferences. This not only enabled the other organisers to be “fully participants” when not facilitating, but also resulted in a workshop that incorporated diverse ways of facilitating.
Experiment with asynchronous participation
We had a relatively short time-frame to organise the workshop, and created an online form to be sent out to interested students of the TASI course as well as colleagues and friends from different universities. From the responses of interested participants it was not possible to find a time-slot in which everyone was able to take part, and due to time limitations it was not possible for us to organise more than one workshop session. Since we wanted to enable as many interested people to take part, we decided to offer the opportunity for asynchronous participation.
We wanted the input of those who participated asynchronously to be integral to the live event, so we decided to experiment with asking them to individually work through an adapted version of the workshop on Miro before the live event. Their input would be added to the Miro board for the live workshop, and they would also be given a link after the live event to see and add to the combined outcome. While many expressed interest to participate asynchronously if they were unable to take part in the live event, only one person did so. It remains unclear why so many did not participate in the asynchronous workshop despite showing initial interest. However our attempt to try out asynchronous participation was an interesting experience that let us reflect on how we could use the flexibility provided by digital tools for different possibilities.
Workshop flow: Check-in & Setting Expectations
As participants did not know each other, we wanted to use the check-in for participants to introduce themselves to each other and to bring everyone together to start thinking creatively in the context of the workshop topic: digital learning and collaborations. We also wanted to activate participants to move around in their physical spaces and connect it to the virtual space we were meeting in. To achieve these three goals, we developed the following ice-breaker.
Ice-breaker
Participants are given a few minutes to grab an object from where they work remotely that a) they think many other participants also have, b) they think only they have.
Participants show objects through the video call, and through the objects they indirectly introduce themselves and make connections to each other.
After the facilitator kicks off the activity and picks a participant to start off sharing, that participant digitally “passes the ball” to the next participant to continue, and so on. Since the group was relatively small it was not so difficult to keep track of who had spoken, however for groups of more than 10, a useful option on Zoom can be to ask all participants to raise their hands at the beginning and lower them after they had shared.
By presenting their objects through the camera, they indirectly introduced themselves and had the opportunity to make initial connections. It was also an interesting and amusing way to kick off the workshop to discover that some of our assumptions of what is common or not can be incorrect!
Participants were asked in the registration form for the workshop to write down why they were interested to join. To start the workshop with an understanding of what our shared expectations were of the workshop, these replies were consolidated and shared in the workshop so that they could read each other’s replies and add stars to statements that they agreed with. This allowed the group to highlight the most important points and at the same time understand the variety of motivations for others to join the workshop.
Workshop flow: Gathering reflections
We wanted the reflections session to be constructive, thus designed prompt questions to start discussions off from a positive mindset rather than one that was of negative complaining. As we had experienced over the past year, there have been many challenges of working remotely and we expected that these would unavoidably come up in discussions regardless. The questions also encouraged participants to question the status quo of learning and start thinking about what they appreciate from online learning. They could bring the outcome of these discussions to the next part of the workshop where possible futures of remote collaborative learning were discussed.
Discussions took place in 2 small subgroups of 4 participants that were initially pre-organised but had to be re-organised “on the fly” because some participants did not show up. Working in break-out rooms, the subgroups had 10 minutes for each question and could add their thoughts on sticky notes to the Miro board. Since we, as organisers, were part of each breakout room, we shared the responsibility of keeping time. Reconvening afterwards as an entire group, the subgroups shared their insights for discussion. For documentation we asked participants for permission to record this sharing session.
Workshop flow: Fika break
Having taken part and organised many online activities over the past year, we were all very aware of the importance of taking short breaks away from the screen to prevent fatigue and keep up energy levels in our 2 hour workshop. As we encouraged participants to get up and move during this break, the impromptu idea of using a card deck with different short exercises was brought up. A card asking us to do squats was picked out, although we are not sure how many participants actually did them!
Workshop flow: Future scenarios
After the break, the group moved on from reflecting on the past to creating an idea of the future of collaborative learning. It was encouraged to base the future scenarios on the insights from the first half of the workshop and incorporate positive aspects of remote collaboration. The intention was that the group produces a joint output for the workshop. For this task the group was again split into two sub groups for 20 minutes and asked to develop one future scenario. The groups were asked to present their future scenario afterwards to the others in a creative way, which we hoped would keep the motivation and energy level high when moving to the end of the second hour of the workshop.
Sharing future scenarios in the common Zoom room rounded up the exploration of our experiences of remote work and collaborations. We made the step from having a collection of insights from the past to analysing them and picking those we would like to bring with us into the future. This sharing session was also recorded with the permission of the participants for later analysis.
Workshop flow: Check-out and wrap up
To wrap up the workshop, participants got the opportunity to share their reflections about the workshop flow and design on a dedicated Miro frame. We, as organisers, wanted to learn from the participants on how they perceived the workshop and what could be improved. One reflection from a few of the participants was that this structured yet open workshop flow was novel to them in the context of online learning despite having spent the entire year learning remotely.
We also encouraged those who were interested to stay in touch around the addressed topics to share their contact details. As a next step, we are going to explore how we can connect them to a joint journey of learning and exploration in our Meaningful Collaboration meet-ups or in another way. Finally, we created a Miro frame for sharing relevant links and materials around the topic of digital learning and collaborations. While some participants did so, the group was getting rather tired and we did not get as much input as previous activities.
Conclusions
Looking back on the workshop, everything went very smoothly and all participants, no matter if they were familiar with the used tools, handled them in a confident way. The strategy to start off with collecting positive things about remote collaboration turned out to be a good approach. The discussion was done in a positive way, exploring opportunities rather than drifting off in complains. This enabled a very constructive environment to explore future scenarios of remote education and collaboration.
By sharing the flow of the workshop with the reasoning behind the choices we made, we aim to explore whether such a way of sharing can increase potential transferability of the resulting workshop design to other contexts. Perhaps not the entire workshop flow, but parts of it, such as certain facilitation techniques and approaches. We would be interested to hear back from our readers in this regard.
Acknowledgements
This story emerged as an outcome of the Digital Collaborations workshop that was designed and ran by the authors and fellow collaborator Jeet Bhatia. We would also like to thank all participants of the workshop who contributed to it asynchronously and synchronously.
About the Authors
Hayley Ho develops participatory processes and methodology to work with stakeholders from municipalities, industry and communities to address societal and sustainability issues. Hayley has worked for over 10 years in London and Hong Kong for international, local and start up companies on product and packaging, cultural and trend research, brand and marketing strategies, exhibitions and seminars, as well as initiatives to encourage conversations about ethnic cultures, craft, sustainability and creativity. Currently, Hayley works as a designer and researcher in the group Prototyping Societies at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden.
Silvio Nießner has a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering and is currently pursuing a Master’s programme in Sustainable Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. In his Master thesis he works with international students in digital focus groups to investigate students’ visions for sustainability education at universities.
Kateryna Pereverza explores innovative approaches for organising in sustainability transitions such as the transformative portfolio approach, relevant transformative innovation policy, and the role of learning and collaborations in transitions. In her PhD thesis she advanced the modular Participatory backcasting, mPB as a framework for steering sustainability transitions. Kateryna has more than 10 years of experience of designing and facilitating transdisciplinary courses and participatory processes. Currently, she is a researcher in the Urban Analytics and Transition research group at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
