"Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

"Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Bodo Zeschke -
Number of replies: 11

Activity 3a is now available. This is the first of three activities that I will be posting

Here we examine techniques that have been employed by staff of the Australian VLab Centre of Excellence to engage stakeholders during our remote and blended remote / classroom training sessions.

For Activity 3a, please download and listen and watch the recording CALMET2014part1. This is a .wmv file and I hope that this will not cause any problems. Please let me know.

Also, please download the PowerPoint presentation "Exercise 1" and attempt this.

Altogether there are three questions for you to consider for Activity 3a. We would value your feedback to these questions

In reply to Bodo Zeschke

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Larissa Timofeyeva -

Hi Bodo

I am writing about Act. 3a, Question 2, Ex. 1. I have downloaded the .ppt file, but there are no animations on the first slide, only 2 images, which seem to be absolutely the same (

???

Larissa

In reply to Larissa Timofeyeva

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Vesa Nietosvaara -

Hi, Larissa and thanks for pointing out your problem,

I made a quick fix for you and recorded the animation from PPT into a screenr page. Please find it at

https://www.screenr.com/6NcN

Vesa

In reply to Larissa Timofeyeva

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Maja Kuna -

Hi Larissa,

Did you try to play the PowerPoint in the slideshow mode? The animations are static in a "normal" PowerPoint editing view. If the problem persist, you may use the Screenr version added by Vesa.

Cheers,

Maja

In reply to Maja Kuna

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Izolda Marcinonienė -

Yes, Maja, you are absolutely right. If you look as slide show, animation appears:)

 

Izolda

In reply to Izolda Marcinonienė

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Larissa Timofeyeva -

Yes, that is OK now (2 ways)

Thank you Vesa, Maja,

everybody )

In reply to Bodo Zeschke

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Izolda Marcinonienė -

Hello, Bodo,

I put  3a) answers as doc format.I enjoyed video presentation-short and clear content and perfect speech!Sometimes we say more in short version than in prolonged talks:)

Need to think about 2c) -it is still not finished yet:(

Izolda

In reply to Izolda Marcinonienė

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Bodo Zeschke -
Thanks Vesa for fixing up the issue with the PowerPoint presentation. Sorry Larissa, I should have given more specific instructions in the Activity preramble pertaining to the playing of the PowerPoint presentation.
In reply to Bodo Zeschke

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Bodo Zeschke -
Thank you for your positive response and feedback to the exercises, Izolda. I think that a maximum of 10 minutes for a video presentation is good. I have also spent some time beforehand to write a script for each slide in my favorite café in the evenings :-). This ensures that the conversation is concise. In answer to question one, if there is only one contact per country what would happen if they are on vacation, or they are having a break between shifts (as a forecaster) when you are making the important VLab announcement ?. Another issue of is if the contact is a senior executive in that country. Perhaps they are so busy with high level activities at the time of your VLab announcement, that the message does not filter through to the "coalface" (ie the Forecasters and similar stakeholders). Thanks for your answer to Exercise 1. I have posted Activity 2 so you have a chance to go through the exercise. In response to your answer to question three - yes, too much reading material can be a "disincentive" for remote learning. Our upcoming "National Himawari Training Campaign" web page will have lots of short video's and accompanying PowerPoint slides for the case studies. Just as you like it Izolda....! I will advertise this web page widely once it is ready....
In reply to Bodo Zeschke

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Roro Yuliana Purwanti -

Hello Everybody

Nice to see the discussion going. I join Izolda in impression of clear content and perfect speech. That's no wonder, with his clear-steady voice, Bodo becomes a favourite for BMKG staff who participate in RFG since as non-native speaker, as they could easily understand the information delivered during the session.

And more than agree with IZolda that video/ppt file in this case is easier and more possible to digest and remember, especially for online session that has a broad participation. Providing ,materials in the site will be useful for participant who need to go deeper into the topic. 

Another point that I found crucial is the trial session. By conducting it, we will have description how the session will be going. For an instance, the duration of presentation. In  my trial session before August 2014, I remember that I spend 40 minutes to deliver my presentation! Then adjustment been made prior to the real session (wrote down my sentence, and practice it until the time is fit) and finally it worked :-)

Cheers,

Roro

In reply to Bodo Zeschke

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Patrick Parrish -

Hi Bodo (and Roger),

I have viewed all the questions and presentations at once, so I am just responding to all in a single post. Sorry if it becomes jumbled and overly long. 

First, to both of you, have you developed any similar remote training approaches to teach radar techniques for nowcasting applications? If so, would you ever be interested in offering such training to RTCs in your neighbouring regions? (We can talk separately on this, but I suspect there is a great need)

Bodo, I am impressed with the work you have done on this. I can't remember the question numbers, but first, I think you were right in evolving toward the approach you used to teach to remote participants (keeping the instructor in the classroom). First, if you or the students or their organizations already made the significant investment to come to a common location, you might as well take full advantage of being collocated with the instructor. You are right however that this requires some uncommon skills from a teacher to not become too focused only on the local students. There is a great danger here, but with establish processes and tactics for regular engagement of the remote students, it can be overcome as you seem to have done. 

Due to travel costs and the wide distribution of the meteorological workforce internationally, I think we are in even greater need for establishing good point-multi-point (without a classroom) or asynchronous strategies, but when a critical mass of students can gather in one place and there is an instructor available, what you are learning from experience and proposing needs to be shared as a best practice. Thanks for starting that process with this session. I see your approaches and more specifically the one Roger described earlier about presenting to Eumetcal as perfect examples of a distance approach to the "roving seminar" strategy for reaching more students around the world. I think we and you should develop these techniques further. 

Some specifics answers to questions:

  • I liked the opening slide interaction. It sets the stage for deeper learning and involvement and establishes what can be learned in the session. I hope that you continue to use such interactive techniques throughout the lesson. You did not share examples of that, but it might be good to see sometime (next CALMet :)
  • I like that you force a pause for students to reflect and ask questions. If you meet with silence, are you prepared with questions of your own to stimulate useful reflection. As was pointed out in another CALMet Online session, sometimes students are hesitant to ask their own questions due to shyness or concerns about looking unintelligent. I suspect that instructors should be prepare to get students to think more deeply and reflect by asking questions they probably know students already have. Questions can stimulate more questions sometimes as well.
  • Your opening slide is a multiple choice that already provides the answers about the advantages. At first, I thought that maybe it would work better as an open ended question like: "What advantages do you see for rapid scan loops in this loop? (or circle specific regions for hints). But I do think this multiple choice question is complicated enough to encourage deep thinking (and careful analysis of the imagery), so kudos to you. As a completely open question it may have taken much more time to get to the point. Other openings might be better as open-answer, but that needs to be judged on a case by case basis I guess. 
  • As for evaluating the Regional Focus Group meetings, the statistics are a good start, but it would also be good to get some qualitative data about impacts on participants forecasting practice. How many of them have developed new forecasting techniques as a result of attending a RFG? Questions like this would demonstrate the long term value even more, but numbers of participation certainly demonstrate perceived value. 

Thanks again for a great session, both of you. I know this kind of session takes time to facilitate. We appreciate your inviting us to be a part. 

Patrick

In reply to Patrick Parrish

Re: "Activity 3 - Techniques used to engage stakeholders" is now available

by Bodo Zeschke -

Thanks to Roro and Pat for your positive and insightful feedback

Actually, credit for my clear voice must go to my mum who encouraged me to speak clearly and not to mumble when I was a wee lad. My mum did some training in acting during her postgraduate studies so she also emphasized the importance of modulating the voice to express excitement, suspense etc.. I think presenters could learn a lot from studying good acting techniques - a great excuse for Trainers / Facilitators to watch the great movies of the present and the past !!!

One thing that has helped my group organization / presentation skills for blended classroom / remote sessions a lot is being the eldest in a big family with 7 brothers and 4 sisters. I was forever organizing the family excursions. It was important to enthusiastically advertise the latest excursion and to act as a motivated and well organized "tour guide". This was often in the face of some opposition from family members who wanted to watch TV (The Simpsons etc.) instead. So it motivated me to develop techniques that were "inclusive" - always thinking about what activities the individual family members could enjoy during the excursion

In reply to more specific comments;

Yes, sometimes when I make pauses for questions a lingering silence follows. In traditional classroom settings this is easily solved. I simply say to the class: "Time is ticking away, and if you don't respond to the question then the session will go into your lunchbreak. I REALLY don't want this to happen ....". That works wonders !. For remote and classroom audience it is important to gently prompt the audience with hints in presenting a reasonable answer. If this does not work then I will present the solution, with the reasoning supporting the answer. This reinforces the learning, as it may be possible that I did not explain the topic sufficiently earlier on in the presentation

Multiple choice questions are great for encouraging "shy" students, as well as students from cultures where teacher-student classroom interaction is not so prominent. It permits a student to express him/herself in perfect anonymity, and that is a big help.

Thanks Pat for your recommendations regarding "evaluation of Regional Focus Group meetings". Thanks Roro for your feedback pertaining to the usefulness of providing video/ppt "pre-course resources"