Part II: Working Together: Online Facilitation


IDRC: Resources: Books: Catalogue: From Workplace To Workspace

Part II: Working Together

Online Facilitation

What is Online Facilitation?

Facilitation online means paying attention to the social processes of the people you're working with electronically to enable the group to achieve its goals. The facilitator is the person or team that provides leadership in the group to get things going and keep them going. Just as in face-to-face facilitation, online facilitation can involve:

helping your group articulate its goals
creating a forum for discussion
enabling broad participation
promoting constructive debate
when possible, moving shared ideas into action
when not possible, acknowledging differences without debilitating the group
working through specific activities (e.g., meetings, document development, information sharing, etc.)
and the many other responsibilities which engage your skills with people, with group dynamics, and with mobilization.

An online facilitator deals with an added dimension -- the unique qualities of mailing lists. Key among these are:

Transparency: From the moment it is launched, your mailing list is a written record of how your group works, what it accomplishes, how decisions are made and who is doing what.

Asynchrony: Group members will be online in different places and at different times. Expectations regarding pacing of communication and interaction need to be developed.

Text-Only Communication: Working together in type alone requires more care with each contribution, as well as skillful and unhurried interpretation.

Originally, when mailing lists first emerged, the role of the facilitator was limited to assuming technical responsibility for the orderly operating of the list: watching for and dealing with error messages, and making sure people could access the discussion area, for example. More recently, understanding how people relate to one another and work together in an electronic workspace has become the primary function of the online facilitator.

Facilitation Roles

Good online facilitators are sensitive to the unique qualities of online workspaces, and how these can be applied to a group's particular collaboration needs. The online facilitator must first and foremost be a "people" person -- technical know-how isn't mandatory and often gets in the way if not applied appropriately and sparingly. Here is what facilitators typically do:

encourage and gently guide discussion
make sure everyone gets to know each other
plant ideas or start new topics of discussion
help participants 'listen' to each other's postings
bring together diverse threads of discussion into a summary
periodically clarify the purposes of the list
track down people that seem to be missing from the discussion
be available to answer participants' questions
keep discussion on track when a focused group interaction is taking place, such as an online meeting
demonstrate good online form, with respect to formatting, quoting style, etiquette, etc. and gently point out when someone has made a mistake
periodically circulate the group's "ground rules" to remind both veterans and newcomers how to work together
help new users make the transition from private one-on-one email to list participation
manage access permissions to the list
mediate conflict.

Managing discussion and information-sharing on a mailing list is quite different from doing it in person. You don't have the same tools at your disposal as you do in a face-to-face meeting, such as a finite agenda or timekeeper. How much control you exert online really depends on the nature of what you're trying to achieve. If you are using your list to hold online meetings, you'll need to facilitate more actively than if the purpose of your list is general, less time-sensitive information-sharing and collaboration. Your first priority should be to help everyone achieve an online comfort level. That may mean giving up rigorous adherence to rules of how, where and what gets posted. The last thing you want to do is scare off a new participant by telling them they've posted something incorrectly.

Co-Facilitation
As you can see, there is a variety of work involved in facilitating your list. Depending on the size and volume of activity on your list, it's a good idea to identify people willing to share the work with you. Having someone watch the list and keep it moving at times when you're unavailable is important. If yours is a fairly active list, you may also want to identify people to focus on different areas: one person can concentrate on developing topic content, while another person concentrates more on the group process dynamics, for example. Co-facilitation is like co-leading a group of any kind. People sharing this responsibility need to be in touch regularly, and be clear about the division of work and the roles they are most effective at assuming. If you disagree on how a situation should have been handled, resolve your differences privately.

Occupational Hazards
Facilitation is emerging as a new online "job". It is an area where one can experiment and try new ways of doing things. There are some side effects to be aware of: you may feel exposed, lonely or unsupported at times. Working online means working in a very open manner and therefore you may be vulnerable to criticism in ways that are rarely available in other work environments. Public scrutiny of your work can take getting used to. If you are just starting out as a facilitator, be aware of this need for support.

You should seek support from other list facilitators and from your colleagues, to ensure you have a place to talk about what is happening (or not happening) on your list. Being able to ask questions regularly will keep you from getting stuck or frustrated. Using a co-facilitation approach can be a useful way to deal with this. Matching a new facilitator with a mentor who keeps an eye on the list, but posts to it only rarely, is another very effective way to reduce feelings of isolation. Finding a mentor is easier than you might think. Look around online, find a group you admire and ask them how they do it. If their facilitator is too busy they will probably know of others to recommend. Occasionally, an ISP will have a list for listowners and this can be a good forum for sharing list facilitation issues. If your ISP doesn't have one, you may want to suggest the idea to them.

Maintaining a List

The facilitator has a number of jobs to do, most of which can be handled in about fifteen minutes a day. The amount of time you actually spend depends on the other roles you have in the group you are facilitating. If you're also the project coordinator or a meeting chairperson, for example, you will spend longer on the list because that is where you do a lot of your work.

There are some things the facilitator needs to check every day, others that only need attention on an as-needed basis. Following are some guidelines for setting up your facilitation routine.

Facilitator -- Daily
Attending to your list every day is critical. Not only does this allow you to keep things running smoothly, it signals your presence to the group and helps participants feel comfortable to express themselves.

Things you should scan for are:

requests for help or information: if there's been no answer from others, see if there's anything you can do, and post a note to let everyone know you're following up

postings that you can help further develop to get people responding

Keep an eye out for problem postings:

brewing or outright conflict

copyrighted material: it shouldn't be posted without permission from the author

To keep your list interesting and relevant you should also:

be a bridge between your mailing list and any offline places your group works together.

Of course, you're not just the facilitator you're also a participant in the workspace so take the time you need to add your comments and start new topics of discussion.

Listowner -- Daily
If you are also the listowner, you will have messages to watch for on a daily basis. The types of messages and responses to them depend on which mailing list software you are using. Here are some examples:

Subscription/Unsubscription messages: If your list is set up as "restricted" or "closed", you'll need to approve each subscriber. When your list is first launched, you will likely have many of these to deal with, so checking a few times a day to process them is a good idea, if it's feasible. Also, when people unsubscribe themselves from your list, you may get a confirmation message.

Bounced messages: Sometimes postings don't make it to the list, they are intercepted by the mailing list software and returned to the listowner. Some reasons for this are:

someone who hasn't been approved to access the list tries to post a message to it.

The listowner should keep a copy of the error messages on hand to learn their meanings, and until they have dealt with them. Generally, listowners are expected to deal with error messages within 24 hours.

Beware of Vacation Messages

Some people on your list may set up an automatic vacation message that responds for them when they are away. These can wreak havoc with your list, depending on how they are set up. You should advise people to unsubscribe or postpone receiving messages if they are going to be away. Often people will forget to do this, so as a backup you should also have them check that the settings on their vacation message are set as follows:

make sure that their software DOES NOT quote the original incoming message in the vacation response (quoting can cause the same message to be repeated dozens or even hundreds of times to all subscribers)

the vacation program should be set to 'reply-to-sender' rather than 'reply-to-all'. This prevents the vacation message from going to all list subscribers. In the event of a vacation message problem, you can unsubscribe them from the list. If feasible, leave a message for them by phone to let them know you've done this.

Weekly
If it's not happening naturally from within the group -- and it may not for the first several weeks, ensure that there is at least one new posting a week, to keep people coming back to the list.

Periodically
The timing of these tasks depends on the volume of activity on your list. If yours is a very active list, you may need to attend to these tasks every month or so, or even more frequently. Also, See "Keeping Your List Active" for more ideas on ongoing facilitation work.

Look for Lost People
Sometimes people just disappear from the list. Perhaps their computer is malfunctioning, or they've been ill, or on vacation. Or it may be that the group work hasn't engaged them, or perhaps they don't feel comfortable there anymore. You should investigate to see if there's anything you or the group can do. If you find out that they will be offline for a while for some reason, post a note to the list to let everyone know.

Update Your "info" File
As your group defines the list and ways of working together, you should check to see that your "info" file reflects this evolution. You can replace the "info" file as often as you want. Even if there is no need to change it, you should circulate it from time to time to remind everyone why you're using the list and your accepted ways of collaborating.

Launch Anxiety
The first few weeks of a new list can be nerve-wracking. If you find the initial silence deafening, make sure you regularly (every few days) post something that will incite discussion. For example, post your own introduction and request that others do the same. Then you can post some of your initial ideas about what the group can accomplish in the space and ask for feedback. If you are expecting a particular group of people and some are missing, don't hesitate to contact them directly to see if they need assistance getting started. It's during the first few weeks that you'll be glad you did some initial thinking and strategizing about how to make effective use of your online workspace. It will pay off with quicker participation by your group members.

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