When focusing on the why element of activity design, we need to ensure we don’t miss these essential elements in our design:
- Is this activity good learning?
- Is it engaging?
- Will they be connecting with the group and myself?
- Is it fun? (If that’s appropriate to the subject matter)
Live online it can be really easy to forget the main reason we run an activity: learning transfer. The technology can confuse or dilute a learning point. A common live online design simplification starts with the technology. A psychical classroom activity seems too complicated to achieve live online, so instead of flip charts and working in pairs, live online is diluted into a stamps on a whiteboard.
We must always consider what is the best learning outcome, and how can the technology facilitate this, not the other way around. The engagement level of the activity is important as we know that when an attendee is engaged they will retain more. If our physical classroom with the flip chart worked because the attendees were discussing and learning together, then our virtual classroom needs to also achieve those active elements. Social learning might be important for your activity, such as our flip chart example has participants working in pairs when in the physical classroom: they are connecting with the other person, sharing ideas and learning together.
If this social connection and discussion is important to the learning we need to make sure that live online we do that too, even if it’s in a different format. This could be as easy as breakout rooms and whiteboards (or an appropriate external tool like Padlet or Jamboard).
Combining this all together can still provide a fun element in appropriate situations, and an activity that feels fun, or engaging, will help with our participants with their motivation, feel connected to us, and others and the content.
