CALMet Commons

Webin@rs: yes please!

In recent years, webinars have increased their popularity as tool for training activities and as virtual meeting space for organisations and businesses. What is about these webinars that makes them so interesting? 
Webinars have been used extensively to widen the reach of training activities; the audience is not just the one in the class or lecture theatre but it can be anywhere in the world where people have internet connection. Webinars join audio and visual components, making them very attractive for distance learning as well as for business meetings.

Organising a webinar could be a daunting task, even if you are an experienced organiser! Therefore, the CALMet Online session lead by Alessandro, Anna, Ivan, Lu and Maja,  was entirely dedicated to creating a checklist to be used by those who need to organise Webinars as part of a training initiative. 

The final checklist is made up of five steps: Plan (goals, topic, audience mapping), Organise (set dates, decide on tools), Resources (how to prepare then and how to keep the audience engaged), Deliver (how to run the event) and Wrap-up (collect feedback, act upon it). You can see the final checklist at:  Webin@r Checklist

During the session, we learnt how to make use of mind maps which are a great tool to generate ideas from a central concept. Once all the ideas are out on the table, they can be categorised which in the Webin@r Checklist session, took the form of a ladder with five steps: one for each stage of the preparation and delivery of a webinar.

Finally, we made use of the Padlet Wall, that is a virtual board, where we could share our ideas, collaborate, learn and get feedback from others. The Padlet Wall is a web based tool, easy to use and fun. 

The outcomes of the CALMet online sessions were: a checklist and two tools (mind map and padlet). Now we are well equipped for our next training event!