Intro

For over 10 years I’ve given workshops, seminars and courses in various settings - teaching kids, teenager and adults.

For the last …

Now I’ve given my first ever 3-day fully remote programming workshop. I experimented with different learning methods to see which one would prove most effective in a remote context. I carefully observed the effects and collected feedback after the workshop.

Here are a few effective methods I discovered:

Ten tips for truely interactive remote workshops

Online/remote etiquette

In March 2020 we were all forced to subsitute in-person meetings with remote video calls. As in personal encounters, certain forms of behavior are perceived as proper in an online context.

We’re learning to deal with “Can you hear me?”, “Hello” in a call with 50 participants, “Baby sounds”… etc.

Clear instructions and rules

• Clear instruction: “Mic off, camera on”
• Especially when starting.

Tech space vs. physical space

• How does tech work?

• Where to find things?

  • You find sticky notes to the left and right of the board.

Chat

• Distraction via chat > Less interaction

  Encourage workshop participants to interact in chat

• Read chat messages out loud
• Mention name of person asking.
• Read messages not too late.

Zoom view

• Ask participants to set gallery view.
• Zoom view -> enable gallery view.
• In bigger group, give instruction: “When you speak up, mention your name.” - especially if one screen is pinned / presentation is shared.

Generous breaks

Especially in a remote context, you need biological breaks because things like coffee machine banter is gone.

• Rule of thumb: 1 hour - 1 break.

Openers

Emoji Board

• Emotions get lost. Kids suffer most when homeschooled. No breaks to play with friends, no sports classes, no Schullandheim.
• Copy an emoji 😀 which expresses how you feel on a MIRO board.
• Nice ice breaker in the morning to get a nice feeling of how everyone is feeling.

Question screen/camera on/off

Ask questions. If you can answer it with yes, keep your screen on or hold your finger to camera to hid yourself (creates nice colors). Or hold object into camera to hide yourself.

Did you have more than three coffees today?

• Meta skill training: Ability to turn screen and mic on/off.

Introductions

• Take some object around you in your room and tell us why it represents you well.

Show, Guide, Do, Showcase

A three-step pattern to interactively explain a new procedure and to gradually get the participants more involved.

Step 1: Show

Demonstrate the procedure step by step.

Step 2: Guide

Let the participants guide you through the procedure. As trainer you pretend to know nothing and let others guide you through each and every step.

Step 3: Do

Give the participants very similar tasks

Step 4: Showcase

Participants present / share their results.

• With or without competition.

  • Competition triggers some people to be especially engaged.
  • Important part is that every result should be acknowledged/mentioned by the creator -> “My work will be mentioned! It’s not done for nothing. I get a pad on my back.”
  • Learn and get inspired by other solutions.
  • Instructor can ask follow up questions and creator gets chance to add comment/note to solution or run through it with others.

• Examples:

  • CSS styles
  • redux flow

Share solutions

Solutions should be shared with as little friction as possible

Discuss different solutions

• Interactive comparison of different solutions.

Showcase solutions in miro/mural

Proudly showcase your solution. We all learn.

• CSS style manipulation.

Meta: What did I do?

• Showcase of Solutions

  • Positive Feedback
  • Accomplishment and Proudness
  • See how others also struggled

• Visiting rooms

  • Facilitation
  • Getting to know the participants in a smaller environment.

Divide and conquer

Split into small groups to increase the chances of raised questions and interactions.

• Split participants into breakout rooms

  • In MS Teams use random group generator
• Move from room to room and pro-actively offer help
• Get people together and highlight most frequently asked and most important questions.

Small group discussions

Here it’s important to give a concrete task and to visit the break-out rooms to check on the participants. From Bogdan … I learned that as a workshop leader you are the show master! You jump into the room and energize the people.

Frequent Feedback

• Every single day!
• People need to be asked for feedback.
• Ask for feedback on used methods.
• One size does not fit all.
• Use Miro/Mural for visual feedback which is instantly shared.

General tipps

Give Options

You can do it either this or that way! Give an demonstrate the different options!

CSS in JS vs. styled-components

Let participants help each other

If a question is raised, open it up to the group before giving the answer away!

Review

Review helps. They can then follow more

• Encourage them to review after and before
• Do a joint review at beginning of each day

Intermediate solutions

GitHub repo with intermediate solutions to hop on the train again

Remote energizers vs. live energizers

See improv list in explain-programming!

(Code) Show dynamic changes

• Use Quoka for dynamic results!
• Idea: Slides as MDX?

Example App

Show the nice finished LeapYear App at the beginning!

Additional material:

• Participants have to get feeling of how a finished polished React Native App might look like.
• Oh, wow, it looks and feels like a native app!
• Show example of code of a bigger app.

TODO:

• Add tiny code examples
• -

Be a bit crazy

Similar to the “Wow-factor” in the jury description of Hack Zurich. It’s hard to explain, but everyone knows what it is.

-

Methods

• Use Lavalier microphone
• Move in the room
• Use different forms of voice.
• Sit at different positions.
• Change clothes.
• Show emotions while teaching
• React to reactions of audience - of students.

Energizer

Energizers are …

When?

• At beginning
• After breaks

Examples

• Crazy chicken
• -

Links

• Kent C. Dodds made a video about his remote workshop setup.

OUT

I judge the findings by level of participation I saw, the feedback I got at the end of the workshop and the knowledge and skill I saw the participants to develop.