Developing and supporting your dgroup
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Transcript of Developing and supporting your dgroup
DEVELOPING AND
SUPPORTING YOUR
DGROUPDCommunities webinar series
ECDPM and
22 April 2015
Meet the facilitation team
Lucie LamoureuxKM4D Associates
Pier Andrea PiraniEuforic Services – Dgroups Coordination Support
Ivan KulisECDPM
Why a DCommunities webinar series?
• Response to Dgroups partners request
• Engaging members requires care, skills and time
• Pilot - 3 free webinars to learn
• Dgroups platform
• Developing and supporting your Dgroup
• Facilitation tips and tricks
Webinar outline – 90 minutes
• Topics:
Community challenges and enablers
Importance of purpose and planning
Strategic drivers for communities
Specific examples of strategic applications
Importance of facilitation
Specific facilitation tasks
Facilitation techniques
Facilitation practice
Planning your interventions
Webinar set-up
• Format:
Three 15-minute blocks of content, each followed
by interaction
• Interaction:
During the pauses, use the “Raise Hand” emoticon
on the top left to ask questions
During the presentation, type your questions in the
Chat box and Ivan will collect them
• Technical problems:
Type in the Chat box and Pier will help you
Community challenges and enablers
Common challenges
• Access and connectivity
• Participation and
motivation
• Trust and cultural factors
Enablers
• Accessible interaction
platform (Dgroups)
• Common purpose or goals
• Relevance: topics
/activities that resonate
• Regular engagement
• Facilitation
Purpose, purpose, purpose!
• Purpose drives the design and
planning of your community
• Your community has to add value
to the work of the members
• Has to be clear and articulated
• To avoid misunderstanding with
members, share your intent!
• Successful communities explicitly
state and reiterate their purpose to
members through various
channels
Purpose checklist: Community Design Aid
• Prepared by FAO for their
knowledge networks
• A 3-page checklist with in-
depth questions
• Useful when starting a
community or as a
planning tool for an
existing one
• May make you reconsider
creating a new community
Source:
http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/knowledge/docs/
FAO-NC-DesignAid.docx
Relevance: topics/activities that
resonate
• What makes your community
special or pertinent?
• The more relevant the topics
and activities are to members’
work, the more likely they will
participate
• Needs assessments, member
surveys, etc. are key to
relevance
• Use member suggestions,
engage them, build buy-in
Pause - Interaction time
So far, do you have any questions?
Questions for you:
• Do you encounter any other challenges in your
community or Dgroup?
• Can you clearly describe the purpose of your
network? Your target audience?
• Can you articulate the benefits of participating in
your Dgroup to members?
Strategic drivers for communities
• Knowledge sharing:
• Share your knowledge or
experience
• Find knowledge from a
network of experts
• Publish explicit knowledge
(papers, articles, etc.)
• Get exposure for you/your
organization's thinking and
work
Strategic applications – Knowledge sharing
Strategic drivers for communities
• Learn:
• Grow beyond your own "knowledge
boundaries"
• Seek answers to your questions
from other practitioners and answer
others' questions
• Learn something specific in order to
improve certain capacities
• Be up-to-date of the latest in your
area of interest and work
Strategic applications – Learn
Strategic drivers for communities
• Connect:
• Connect and build relationships
with fellow practitioners
• Discover and connect with new
partners from similar and
different settings
• Find out who knows what
• Help newcomers to the field
• Establish your reputation and
identity as a practitioner
Strategic applications - Connect
Strategic drivers for communities
• Create:
• Create new knowledge by
cooperating with others
• Build a knowledge base
• Collaborate on projects or
research with others towards
shared goals
• Contribute to policy
development
• Catalyze action
Strategic applications - Create
Strategic applications - Create
Pause - Interaction time
So far, do you have any questions?
Some questions for you:
• What are some of the strategic applications of
your Dgroups?
• What do you want to accomplish with your
online interactions?
Importance of facilitation
• To be effective, communities need
to have a shared sense of purpose
and be relevant to members
• Online spaces do not guarantee
that people will contribute or
collaborate
• Facilitation adds structure and
process to accomplish objectives
and achieve the community’s
purpose
• Facilitation also helps to ensure
good community dynamics
Specific facilitator tasks
• Clarify and reinforce the purpose
• Welcome new members
• Assess member needs
• Provide and manage a “structure” by developing a plan for interactions
• Keep the discussion focused, ask questions, provide resources
• Engage members in back channels
• Manage conflicts and acknowledge differences
• Help to build relationships between members
• Help to ensure understanding and encourage trust
Facilitation techniques
• The principal facilitation techniques are:
1. Listening/reading
• What is said, not said and interpreting silence
2. Composing and editing messages
• Clear, concise, to the point
3. Asking and answering questions
• Open ended or closed, or to clarify
4. Summarizing and synthesizing
• Also paraphrasing, restating
5. Clarifying
• Using some, or a combination of the above, illustrating with examples
Facilitation practice in a nutshell (1)
• Focusing purpose: remind regularly
• Connect: get people to introduce
themselves, find others who share
interests or can help each other on a
particular issue
• Integrate: help newcomers learn about
the community
• Being proactive: ask questions, clarify,
provide relevant links, seek opportunities
for action
Facilitation practice in a nutshell (2)
• Guide the interactions: facilitating
discussions includes mediation in
times of conflict, establish norms and
agreements when needed
• Technology stewardship: helping
people technically with Dgroups and
noticing when technical issues come
up
• Cybrarianship: curating or managing
content
Planning your interventions
• All of this takes time: decide
where to focus and when
• If starting out, put more time in
“Connecting”
• Plan around community-relevant
events, for e.g. a discussion to
feed into a face-to-face meeting
• Look for opportunities, for e.g.
providing input to a policy process
• Map out your action plan for a
year
Pause - Interaction time
Do you have any questions on
facilitation?
Some questions for you:
• What are some of your facilitation
challenges?
• What are you doing to meet/solve them?
Furthermore…
• This webinar was developed using the following resources:• The IMARK module “Knowledge Sharing for
Development”: http://www.imarkgroup.org/#/imark/en/course/K
• The IMARK module “Building Electronic Communities and Networks”: http://www.imarkgroup.org/#/imark/en/course/C
• FAO Design Aid: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/knowledge/docs/FAO-NC-DesignAid.docx
• Ask us about the practical webinar on facilitation tips and tricks!