How to Run Better Online Classes, Meetings & Webinars

have you found yourself in the situation of having to move offline meetings classes workshops or other events online and are struggling to make that work or is it that a transition you still have to do or you know okay I have to do stuff online somehow remotely that we used to do in-person and you're not sure how that's exactly what we're gonna help you solve in this course hello I'm Shane rot from thrive themes and this is lesson one of a course that we're publishing for free that will walk you through all the steps you need to do the best possible online classes workshops meetings and so on in this first lesson you'll discover what I call the one to one mistake which is the first thing you need to understand about moving something from the offline world to the online world and the first mistake that you need to avoid and we'll talk about the seven tools you need to use and be aware of to do good online events so let's get started right away with the first thing you need to know and you need to avoid which is what I call the one-to-one mistake I'm sure you've taken part in at least a few really terrible and torturous online meetings or online classes or things like that and almost certainly the reason they were difficult to sit through was because the one-to-one mistake was being made so here's what the mistake is it's basically just that we try to take something as it is in the offline world as we're used to doing it and we try to translate it exactly like that translate it online and that simply doesn't work well let me give you two examples to illustrate the first example would be a class right in a class you have a teacher stands in front of the class the students are sitting facing the teacher the teacher does some explaining for a while and then maybe there are some group exercises and activities and so we take that concept we say okay we need to do this online now we want to do the exact same thing as a teacher I want to be sitting here I want to see the students facing me while I'm talking I want to know that everyone's kind of present sitting there paying attention and then when I'm done talking after half an hour or however long then we have the students do some exercises but here's the thing for an offline class maybe that's the best way to do it for an online class is that really useful is it really useful to have a group meeting where everyone is on camera just so that I can see the students faces as they're sitting there doing nothing paying attention to me is it really useful even though yes it gives me kind of the same feeling the same kind of impression of the students facing me as the teacher is it really useful for everyone to be sharing their video feed and possibly also their audio feed and then we have all kinds of problems because someone's dog is barking in the background and someone's connection is dropping it so on and so forth is that really the best way to do it online what we need to do instead of just translating something want to want online we need to ask ourselves what's the purpose of this thing we're doing what's the best way to do it in this new environment the new environment being online so in principle what we want to do is we want to ask ourselves ok the thing that we did in the old environment when we're taking it into a new environment is there a new best way to do it and one question to ask is which parts of what I'm doing can be done asynchronously so in the class example if the class consists of let's say 45 minutes of the teacher lecturing does that need to happen synchronously does everybody need to be present at the same time to watch this 45 minute lecture and deal with like I said before connection issues and problems and people being late and so on or could this just be done asynchronously could I just record a 45 minute video of my lecture upload that to YouTube or Vimeo or wherever send the link to my students and say hey before the next lesson make sure you watch this and just watch it whenever right watch it before the lesson starts but whenever you have time you can watch it on your phone you can watch it at home you can wherever you are in whatever way best suits you make sure you watch this lecture and then we come together and we do the group exercises because maybe that is the group exercises the Q&A and so on that's where it actually makes sense to have an online meeting where everyone's there at the same time so that's the first question to ask in this new online environment what are things that can be done asynchronously and what are things that in fact might be better to do asynchronously here's another example of what the one-to-one steak looks like let's say I've been running workshops and I'm used to presenting and scribbling on a whiteboard to write down text and draw diagrams and so on to explain what I'm talking about now I'm taking this online and I'm thinking I need to do the exact same thing well probably the worst thing I can do is actually bring a whiteboard into the scene with me especially if it's done like a Pixley webcam and scribble on the whiteboard where most people watching in my online workshop will probably not be able to read what I'm scribbling because it's like half the whiteboard is outside the frame maybe there's some light glaring off of it or it's just too pixelated they just cannot see what's going on so while a whiteboard might work great in a group workshop setting where everyone's sitting close together if I'm trying to do it on a webcam it's probably not gonna be great and we can take this mistake further because maybe I say okay I'm not gonna do a physical light board I'm gonna use an online whiteboard but here again the mistake is to look for a whiteboard that basically does exactly what a physical real world whiteboard does as an example there's a tool called limb noon that seems to do that it's basically an online a virtual whiteboard that looks and feels exactly like a whiteboard so the lines you draw and so on look like you're drawing marker lines on a whiteboard but that is basically missing the point the good thing about a whiteboard in a classroom or in a workshop is not that it looks like this the good thing is that it helps me quickly illustrate things and write down notes and so on to help the people in the workshop understand make better sense of what I'm talking about and so if that's the purpose of the whiteboard we should ask ourselves what's the best possible version of that virtually online and it's not about the aesthetic it's not about looking at the surface level what does this thing look like it's what does it do and is there a better way to do that online now to be fair to the limb no tool that I mentioned it does have many features that you don't have on a physical whiteboard there are virtual whiteboard features only such as letting you draw arrows and shapes and so on quickly and letting you write text so you don't have to like write it out especially if you only have a mouse cursor to write not your handwriting is going to be horrible but if you can actually just tie and have very crisp legible text well that's much better than scribbling on a whiteboard not a physical whiteboard in a workshop in other words we want to embrace what's different about teaching online and think about well what can I actually do better here yes maybe I lose some of the spontaneity of being able to write with markers on a whiteboard but it becomes much easier to do some other types of illustrations I can draw shapes I can drop in pre-made icons and shapes I can easily rearrange and restructure things which all would be quite difficult or time-consuming using a physical whiteboard so let's embrace what's better about it and a result of that can be that online whiteboarding tools such as Miro or Meyer or not sure how to pronounce it can look nothing like a physical whiteboard because they're all about thinking well what's the purpose what are the things people use white boards for and what does that look like translated into an online environment so the two rules for avoiding the one-to-one mistake or number one be aware of the purpose of how you're doing things offline and replicate that purpose not the appearance and number two embrace what's different about being online and embrace what's better about being online next let's talk about these seven tools you need to be aware of and use correctly in order to do good online events the seven tools are your meeting tool or platform your internet connection your audio hardware your camera hardware lighting your presentation tool and collaborative tools let's quickly run through all of these seven tools and the way to work with them and the things to be aware of to avoid the kind of painful online meeting or online class experience that I'm sure you have been part of as well and the first is your meeting tool or platform and that's platforms like hangouts Skype meetings zoom webinar jam live webinar and literally dozens of other tools how many of these tools are made for different purposes so some of them are made more for informal meetings or a classroom setting or for sales webinars or whatever and so different tools are suitable for different purpose but that's the first thing you need is you need a tool that you can reliably use that everybody else can use to take part in your online event they are the main thing to be aware of is the purpose of your type of online event and to find a tool that matches that purpose in other words if you're trying to use a sales webinar marketing tool to do an online class you probably won't have a great time the second tool is your internet connection and of course if that isn't well set up then it is painful for everyone we've all seen examples of choppy video and audio lock keeps dropping out and basically meetings and things that take way way longer than they have to because it just takes 15 minutes for everyone to sort out their connection issues now as the person being the admin or the teacher or the tutor in an online event here's what's important you need to make sure that you get the most out of whatever internet connection you have here are a couple of tips for doing that number one I highly recommend getting an Ethernet cable and plugging your device in via ethernet even with a great router and even if you're sitting close to the router your Wi-Fi connection is going to be significantly slower than your Ethernet connection so get a cabled connection if you can number two if you don't have a cable connection get close to your router and make sure that you test what areas have good connections I've seen this in some places I've worked from where just the difference between you know sitting in the kitchen or sitting in the living room can can double my internet speed and it's it's really important to know like which areas in the house which areas in this space actually get a fast connection number three don't block up your bandwidth with other stuff so while you're doing an online class or a webinar make sure that you don't have any uploads or downloads running make sure that nothing else is running in the background so that your bandwidth really is free for this event that also means that if you're sharing your connection with other people make sure that they know when you are doing your event so that they're not spending time you know watching Netflix or downloading something or playing games or anything like that make sure that basically everyone knows this is a period of time where we need to keep the internet fast for the person doing an online class next the speed that you get on your mobile data connection especially if you have an unlimited data plan then having a hotspot on your phone it can be a great backup in some cases actually your phone's hotspot might even be faster than your local internet and you can just use that but it's also great to have as a backup so in case your main connection fails so you know you can fire up a hotspot and get back in without having to go and restart your router and whatnot the third tool is audio now this is very important because bad audio is really difficult to bear it is one thing to be on an online class where the video is pretty pixelated but it's an entirely other thing and much harder to bear if the audio is scratchy and noisy so you have to make sure that you have clean high quality audio here is the Golden Rule for audio the closer you are to the microphone the better the quality tends to be this here is what it sounds like when I'm recording just using the internal microphone on my laptop and it's about an arm's length away and it's set up so that the webcam frames me properly this is basically how it be working now right now this might sound passable but another thing to consider is that with this setup it will pick up a lot of background noise so right now I'm in a quiet room you can probably hear the laptop fans going but even if this sounds passable right now it is still far from the best option this is an example of what it sounds like when I'm using a headset microphone and this is a cheap headset it is probably not a very good microphone but just because it's so much closer to the source of the sound I wanted to pick up this sounds much clearer now even if the audio quality isn't particularly pleasing we do have a much better clarity here which means that if I'm in a noisy environment this is gonna sound much better and for example right now my laptop is making the same amount of fan noise as before but because the microphone is right here instead of right there next to the fans you can't hear it as clearly as before so this brings out my voice and gives clarity now the head said it's also worth testing different positions of this microphone to make sure that you're not like breathing directly into the microphone or making other unpleasant sounding noises into the microphone as you're speaking this is an example of what it sounds like when I'm using an external disc microphone in my case I'm using the zoom h2 which is an external recorder but this can be a stand-in for any kind of external microphone like a blue Yeti or a rode NT USB or zoom h1 or whatever any had a microphone that you plug in and that you can bring closer to your face as you're speaking in general the sound quality you will get out of a microphone like this is gonna be far better than the sound quality you get out of your internal microphones but there are a few things to note first of all often there's a lot of handling noise so if you're actually touching it and moving it around while you're speaking or presenting that can be very unpleasant and the other thing is that if the microphone is placed on the desk on the same surface where you're typing or moving a mouse around that can translate and bring a lot of loud noise into the microphone which again you as a presenter are not going to hear that you're not gonna realize that people are hearing a thunderstorm every time you are typing so make sure the test thought beforehand this is what it sounds like when I'm using a lavalier mic so I've simply plugged the lavalier mic into the external recorder that I showed before and this is what it sounds like in general lavalier microphone also has the advantage of being close to the audio source and it has the great advantage of its keeps my hands-free if I'm moving around if I turn away from the camera if I'm typing and so on that won't interfere with the sound coming in to the lavalier microphone so if you have it this can often be one of the most convenient audio setups one thing to note though is you have to avoid friction noises against the microphone so don't have it in between two layers of clothing where the clothing can rub against the microphone and again produce unpleasant sounds that you won't notice but everyone in your audience will hear tool number four is your camera now in most cases you'll probably just use a built in camera on your laptop however there are still things to consider although you can't change that camera you can still make it look better or worse and one thing is prop up your laptop if possible to get back camera more or less on I level because it's not very pleasant when people are basically staring up your nostrils the entire time because the camera is low if you do have an external webcam then that is definitely worth testing out is definitely worth seeing if that is basically delivering better quality than the built-in webcam which is quite likely to be the case so if you do have an external camera make sure to test that and use it if it's better and also if you're going for something really high quality you can also consider connecting a DSLR or mirrorless camera to your computer and we'll talk about that in a later lesson to get a really high quality picture however the most important thing here is you have to test you have to test because you are not hearing your own audio so you might be talking away completely oblivious while everyone else is cringing because they hear you know heavy breathing noises because the microphone is right next to your nostril or they hear the upstairs neighbors more than what you need to do is you need to create your setup before you have your actual class and test so that you can see and hear what that's actually like and you can just use your camera app to record yourself or depending on what meeting tool to use you can also do a test run and watch the recording of that and make sure that you have at least a few minutes of yourself talking so you can listen back to that and hear if there are any audio issues because like I said it's one of the worst things is having to deal with bad audio so make sure you test that in advance so you don't end up inadvertently torturing your audience tool number 5 is light how light is the thing that most people forget about you just set up your laptop you turn on the webcam and whatever lighting is in that moment that's what we're gonna contend with now lighting generally makes a bigger difference than the camera itself so before upgrading to an external webcam or different camera upgrade your lighting now that doesn't mean that you need something like a studio light to light yourself you just need to be deliberate about how you are placing yourself relative to the light so here's an example of recording on a webcam when there is just not enough light and as you can see the picture is horrible and grainy and this is before I even try to stream it online so by the time someone watches this on a live call it's gonna be even worse than this here's another common example of bad lighting which is all the light is behind me and basically people can barely see my face I just appear as a silhouette now if all I do is if I basically turn myself around I'll just go to the other corner of the table here so that the light is coming in my direction rather than from behind me immediately we have a much nicer looking image another aspect of light to pay attention to is the placement of any kind of lamps on artificial light in the room that you're sitting in so what we have here for example is a light that is shining very brightly on one side of my face even worse is if there's a light source in the image with me that can really disturb the image and the simplest thing to do is again just like with the sunlight I just want to be deliberate about the placement of this light and if I just place it in such a way that it is directing light towards me pretty much frontally that gives the viewers the clearest and nicest looking image that we can get out of whatever camera we're working with tool number six is your presentation tool so here that can be anything like PowerPoint keynote Google slides Prezi and again dozens of other tools and you basically just want to be aware of what is it that I need to be able to present and what is the best tool to use now that I'm doing this online so like we talked about before with the one to one mistake don't think I simply have to do the exact same thing I would do offline instead think what's the purpose what am I trying to present and online what is the best way to do that that might mean that even though you usually just scribble on a whiteboard maybe now you want to prepare a slide deck to go through another important presentation tool can be screen sharing so you simply share what is happening on your screen and there again make sure that you test that beforehand because as you're running an online class usually you'll have your screen covered with whatever webinar or meeting platform you're using so then you have to know how do I switch out of that switch to my screen to show people what's going on there and then switch back to go back to moderating the meeting and make sure that you're not learning that on the fly right make sure that you test that out beforehand if you're going to be doing a lot of screen sharing and presenting I also recommend if possible that you get a two screen setup so that you can have one screen where you have your meeting and your moderation and so on and the separate screen which is purely for presentation finally the last tool is any kind of collaboration tool so depending on what kind of online event you're running we need to ask yourself do we need to be collaborating are there periods where we want to have people working together in groups or do we are we collaborating during the entire time do we want to use something like a shared Google document where everybody can make notes and see notes other people are taking do we want to have something like a Trello board where again people can add tasks and do project management stuff collaboratively where you can see what everyone else is doing on the board or do we want to have something like a shared brainstorming mind-mapping or whiteboard collaboration tool and again this really depends on the purpose of your online event there's no right or wrong answer here so the takeaway from all this is to be aware of all these seven tools and to use them deliberately because a bad online meeting happens when these things are just kind of haphazardly fall into place the main thing is to understand these seven tools are the things that will most directly affect like the quality and usefulness of what you do online and if you're very deliberate about choosing the tools and preparing beforehand your online events will be world's better than before in the following lessons we will be going through several specific scenarios such as how to do an online meeting how to do an online class and so on and for each of these scenarios will give you very specific recommendations of what tools to use and how to prepare and how to run these kinds of events so stay tuned for those lessons and of course if you have questions or specific scenarios that you would like us to keep you advise on go ahead and leave a comment below also if you found this conduct useful be sure to give it a like because that helps spread it around helps it reach more people and right now I think a lot of people can use this kind of advice so let's see for lesson one thank you for watching and I'll see you next [Music]

Channel: Thrive Themes

Views: 9,220

Keywords: online class, workshop, meeting, remote work, tutorial, Shane Melaugh, Thrive Themes

Id: kLy8KVvCTrA

Length: 22min 30sec (1350 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020