Course Content
Intro
This module aims to equip practitioners with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to facilitate hybrid sessions with stationary and remote participants at the same time in a variety of different contexts and settings. As was mentioned in a previous module hybrid learning offers plenty of benefits: more flexibility for teachers and users, accessibility for the various groups of potential learners, or affordability to enumerate the most important ones. At the same time facilitating workshops in a hybrid space can be challenging – in fact, the facilitator needs to conduct two parallel meetings – one for the face-to-face learners and one for an online group. It is worth underlining that hybrid spaces are not only about the technology that we use but also about communication between people, their behaviours, engagement, and motivation.
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SCOPE OF THE MODULE 2
Teams in Hybrid Spaces
This session aims to introduce you to team management in hybrid spaces. Safe Space: what is it? How to create a safe space in a hybrid environment? Informal communication – how to extend informal communication into hybrid spaces? How to integrate two ways of communication in hybrid spaces? How to transfer non-verbal communication in hybrid spaces?
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THEORETICAL PART
Safe spaces: how to create safe spaces in hybrid classrooms
Informal Communication – how to extend informal communication into hybrid spaces
Moderating Hybrid Activities
The aim of this module is to equip facilitators with the knowledge, competencies, and skills necessary to conduct hybrid meetings. In the previous module, you could learn about the importance of preparations and the power of communication. In this module, you will have to deal with three major challenges related to working in a hybrid space, such as maintaining motivation, engagement, and visibility.
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Moderating Hybrid Activities
Motivation
Engagement
Visibility
Monitoring Hybrid Collaboration
The aim of this module is to present the tools and good practices that will enable you to monitor activities and collaboration in the hybrid environment as well as create and read teams. It refers you to the previous modules and the content related to building and maintaining motivation and engagement. You will also get familiar with the term of the organizational culture which is the crucial element of the monitoring activities.
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Monitoring Hybrid Collaboration
Draft Lesson
Reading the Hybrid Room
What do we miss?
When teaching in a hybrid space, you will need to devote your attention to many different aspects and not lose sight of the main purpose of the meeting. This means that you may miss some important details.
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What do we miss?
Activities
Extra materials
Self-assessment
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9 questions to test your learning level
Engagement and teamwork in hybrid spaces

Organising activities in a hybrid space is a challenge for the way we communicate, so we take special care with it. The online space in particular requires us to ensure that our messages, emotions, and intentions are well understood. This is all the more challenging as a significant proportion – up to 60% – of our communication consists of non-verbal messages, which are much harder for online users to read. These include an open posture, nodding in agreement, actively listening, looking into the other person’s eyes, and a range of trust gestures such as smiling, nodding, open hands, and uncrossed arms. 

Fortunately, the first solutions have already emerged that make it possible (extend these messages into hybrid spaces). These have been described interestingly  by Erica Dhawan, best-selling author of Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance. The author breaks digital body language down into four key principles: 

  • Valuing Visibility. This means valuing people’s time, inboxes, and schedules. When hosting a meeting, we have to think like a TV host more than an office host to be visible and get people’s attention.
  • Communicating Carefully. Hasty communication can break relationships. Take your time to write clearly and read messages carefully so that your message makes sense and you understand what the other person is saying.
  • Collaborating Competently. Digital collaboration requires involving everyone and listening to everyone’s ideas. As digital collaboration increases, we have to fight the proximity bias of rewarding people we see more often, even if they aren’t performing well.
  • Trusting totally. Digital body language comes down to assuming the best intent and showing our vulnerability. We’ll all make mistakes or have misunderstandings at some point, but we have to trust other people and bounce back quickly from our mistakes. 

In practice, we can manifest non-verbal messages in a hybrid space by combining offline messages and complementary online tools. For individual feedback, this can look like the following: 

  • Active/attentive listening – stationary environment – tilting the head to one side, looking at the interviewee, nodding, and asking supportive questions. Online environment – responding with emoticons, commenting in chat. 
  • Gestures to show confidence – smiling, nodding, open hands, no crossed arms/legs. Virtual world – use of phrases: “I hope this will be helpful to you”, “email me if you need anything”, use of instant messaging, emoticons. 
  • Engagement – virtual world – ‘I am acting’, ‘we are doing it’ messages, real world – open posture, nodding. 
  • Digital non-verbal communication – switching on the camera or at least using your own photo as an avatar. 

Note that informal communication plays a big part in building relationships in hybrid spaces.  Informal communication stems from informal relationships between employees and members of an organisation. Informal communication is spontaneous and unstructured and has no hierarchical charter. It reinforces personal relationships and brings employees and or participants in a given process closer together. Its nature is well reflected in chat rooms, where everyone can express themselves at any time. 

Remember that, regardless of the group you are currently working with and whether they are present in person remotely, at least one way of communicating always works – a smile.

 

ACTIVITIES

 

Activity #1 

A meeting in a hybrid space can raise a lot of concerns among participants about the barriers that may occur during it. At the beginning of the meeting, talk in groups (preferably mixed) about what your concerns are about this form of communication. How can you solve them? Try to agree on a clear set of rules for communication.

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