On-Line Workshops are Better Than Face to Face

I decided several years ago to launch on-line research-grant workshops purely as a convenience measure. Over the last few months I have created the materials for a fully on-line workshop. As the on-line workshops launch, I am a little bit surprised to realise that they are better in almost every respect than the face-to-face workshops that I have been delivering for the last five years.

I suspect that on-screen I am less engaging than in real life but I know that in every other respect the on-line workshops are better. The on-line lectures are shorter and clearer. They are supported by well-structured written material. The on-line workshops offer opportunities to get feedback. And they give participants more flexibility and more time.

Better Lectures On-Line

My face-to-face workshops were almost entirely lecture-based, and always received rave reviews. So naturally I assumed that recording a face-to-face workshop would produce excellent lectures. The recorded lectures were fine except for two problems. The picture quality was appalling. And the audio content was dull, repetitive, and full of speech tics and idiosyncrasies. Clearly I had to take a different approach.

The cancellation of all my face-to-face workshops at the end of January created the opportunity I needed. I set up a studio at home and scripted and recorded new lectures. I enjoyed the recording and editing and I am very pleased with the results. The video lectures are clear, crisp and to the point, while retaining enough editing imperfections to create an impression of authenticity. Friends assure me that the appeal definitely comes from the quality of the content rather than the slickness of the production.

Written Material

The lectures are supported by extensive written material, which was originally intended to be published as a book, and may yet be. This has allowed me to resolve a long-standing problem with the face-to-face workshops. Although they were supplemented by slides, handouts, and blog-posts, the material was fairly disorganised. Now each lecture sits on a web-page. The web-page contains text that develops the points made in the lecture. The web pages are organised into three strands that address the main needs of workshop participants.

  1. They need to understand strategy: how to plan grant writing, what to do before starting to write, and what to do after finishing.
  2. They need to understand tactics: the characteristics of a good grant application and what to do to produce one.
  3. They need to develop skill: the ability to write the kind of text needed in a good grant application.

Feedback, flexibility and time

It has always been difficult to work on skill in face-to-face workshops. Skill only comes from practice. People get better at writing by practising their writing, and by getting feedback on what they have written. In a face to face workshop most of the time is taken up explaining tactics so there is little opportunity either for participants to write or for me to give feedback. In the on-line workshop, all the material is pre-recorded, so participants can practise writing and I can give feedback on what they write.

The principal cost of a workshop is determined by the amount of time that I have to spend presenting it. In a face-to-face workshop, the presentation time has to be a continuous block, bracketed by travel time to and from the venue. The need to travel meant that short face-to-face workshops were uneconomic, except very close to home.

In the on-line workshops, I stay at home, and all the material can be presented, for as much time as the client wants, without me. So my involvement can be as little or as much as the client wants and can be recorded, so that participants can choose when they want to engage with the material and with me.

The Fly in the Ointment

One surprise was that I expected that switching to on-line delivery would reduce stress but initially stress increased. I have decades of experience with with face-to-face delivery. I know how it works, I can see when something goes wrong, and I know how to fix it. On-line workshops depend on web-page components that I don’t fully understand and it made me anxious that I definitely can’t deliver a workshop if they fail. However, after more than a year of trouble-free delivery I now have more-or-less the same relationship with on-line delivery as I have with air-travel. I don’t understand the machinery that makes it work, but I do now trust it to work.