We had some difficulty getting full participation in the online components. The partial participation presented problems in the classroom sessions. We could not build on work that was not done. We discussed many ways of encouraging participation and are interested to hear more from others.
Possibilities to encourage participation as a central part of the course and make it essential for course completion. Possible consideration of clarifying the expectation when they come in to drop off deposit. Also when registering on the site and on the phone call.
The idea of doing something to a short deadline (the Thursday before the first session) and then reinforced by responses and comments by others.
Possible follow-up email to anyone who has not done the short term task (all in the week ahead of the first session) telling them that they need to do it to proceed with the course.
Once we get input from particiapnts we need to use it and incorporate it. Again this becomes challenging when only some did the work.
Here is what we did in our last ISW, where we had great participation:
1- Prepared the Day 1 modules well ahead of time and included the link in the introductory ‘Welcome to ISW’ e-mail (before calling them); [1 week before the first day]
2- Discussed it on the phone, emphasizing that in counts towards the 24 hour workshop time; [a day or two after the e-mail]
* The Thursday before Day 1 was set as deadline and mentioned both in e-mail and the call.
3- Sent a second reminder a day before the deadline (Wednesday), where we:
3-1- reminded them the content of F2F lessons will greatly depend on their comments,
3-2- encouraged them to comment on one another’s comments as well as providing their own insights,
3-3- provided a summary of all Day 1 modules along with the time they would take + hyperlinks to the module webpages.
4- Used an excel spreadsheet comprising participant list and module titles, to closely follow the participation and directly e-mailed the inactive participants a few hours before the deadline.
also apart from those logistics, I think a key factor in increasing engagement is to demonstrate the engagement on the part of the facilitators. This can be shown through engaged interaction on the Virtual Coffee module by all of the facilitators and frequent participation in the specific modules by at least one of the facilitators.