Hosting Hybrid/Held-with Meetings

Owned by Trevor Bain
Last updated: Jun 20, 2022
2 min read

Benefits

  • Increased attendance as off-site attendees can attend more readily due to reduced time commitment (travel) and scheduling (back-to-back meetings)

  • Opportunity to bring in guest speakers

Challenges

  • Online attendees may miss out on in-room activities/discussions

  • Technical issues with remote attendees can be disruptive

Best practices

  • Communicate expectations to participants - both online and in the room. At the outset, lay out the ground rules. Inform participants what is expected from them before, during and after the meeting.

  • How do online participants raise questions? Options might include: typing the question into the chat, indicate in the chat that they have a question (then unmute to ask when prompted), raise their virtual hand. 

  • Online participants remain muted unless active in the conversation. Video cameras off unless an active participant in the conversation.  

  • For meetings, consider having those meeting in person gather 5-10 minutes prior to the start to get caught up with each other and say hello remembering that those joining online will be generally unable to participate in this common pre-meeting activity.

  • Mute the in-room microphone until the start of the meeting so that the online audience doesn't experience the confusion of hearing simultaneous in-room conversations.

  • Have a meeting leader/chair who will conduct/lead the meeting. 

  • For larger meetings or classes, designate an in-room representative for the online participants. This person will join the online meeting from within the room, monitor the chat and let the chair/presenter know what is happening with the online participants (requesting to speak, raising their hand, indicating that the in-room microphone is muted). Also ensures that the video is appropriately located to capture the in-room experience. To prevent audio feedback, this person must have their microphone muted and laptop speaker off (usually turns their video off too). To monitor audio quality, this person should have earphones or a USB headset connected and audio set to go there (not the laptop speakers).

  • If in-room presenters are wearing face masks, online participants might want to enable live closed-captioning:

    • Zoom: enable live transcript with the auto transcription option (once the host sets, everyone has access (optional); participants can send request to host to activate)

    • Teams: Turn on live captions (Set by each attendee - not available if joining over web browser). If you choose the option to Start Transcription, will record the proceedings and be available for all attendees.

    • Webex: click on the small CC icon in the lower left of the video screen

Sources:
https://uwaterloo.ca/keep-learning/strategies-concurrent-or-held-teaching
https://krisp.ai/blog/hybrid-meetings/
https://newxel.com/blog/hybrid-meetings-best-practices-for-engagement-and-efficient-outcome/