What does it take to move a highly successful face-to-face workshop into the online world? This was the question that I was challenged with earlier this year. Like most face-to-face trainers and facilitators, when COVID-19 caused the U.K. to enter lockdown, all my workshops were canceled. Some clients had experience with online learning and transitioned relatively easily. However, most clients and organizations had no experience, and consequentially canceled all their workshops.
Like many other organizations, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) moved quickly to tackle the online world. I have run workshops for ALPSP for a few years. They had all been face-to-face, and the participants loved the interaction with lots of breakout sessions and opportunities for experiential learning and sharing ideas. But could the same course be delivered online? Would we still be able to provide the same type of experience with 20 participants? How would the workshop be delivered?
Moving the date of the first workshop wasn't an option, neither was canceling. This workshop had been booked months in advance and no one knew when the lockdown would end. So, I met virtually with the ALPSP training team and a few of the other ALPSP facilitators to work out what we could deliver in four weeks.
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