By Maha Bali, George Station and Mia Zamora
2. George Station (biography)
3. Mia Zamora (biography)
What options are there for developing effective online replacements for face-to-face conferences? How can these options promote better access for those without funds or freedom to travel? How can they contribute to climate justice?
We share our experience in co-organising (with others) Equity Unbound’s inaugural Mid-Year Festival 2022, aka #MYFest22 (referred to throughout as MYFest), a virtual event that sought to center community and support, and avoid the many pitfalls of online, in-person and hybrid events.
Equity Unbound is an equity-focused, connected intercultural learning network that co-creates diverse, open learning experiences. MYFest was not a conference per se, but was designed to be a three-month-long “recharge and renewal experience” with a “choose-your-own-learning journey” approach, exploring a variety of themes, in our case around equitable learning. In addition, two themes intentionally addressed isolation: “well-being and joy” and “community building and community reflection.”
More than 300 participants from five continents joined us.
We offer eight ideas for what organizers of other online events can learn from MYFest.
1. Have a diverse community of organizers
To capture a diverse audience, design with diverse organizers. MYFest built on relationships among 14 organizers from four different countries (Canada, Egypt, South Africa and the United States), many of whom have built trust and collegial friendship online as part of a thriving, intersecting long-term personal learning network with community values of mutual support.
2. Aspire toward participant agency and reflection
MYFest was a “buffet approach,” where participants chose sessions of interest, could change selections at any time and could attend as much or as little as suited them.
Scheduling the event over three months, rather than two to three days, gave participants time to build community and relationships synchronously and asynchronously, and opened up room for reflection and cumulative transformative learning. Individual and collective reflection was the glue of the MYFest experience.
3. Foster global connections and community with Intentionally Equitable Hospitality
We sought to foster global online conversations through skillful facilitation, designing sessions to ensure everyone participated as fully as possible in the ways they felt most comfortable, and inviting the most marginalized voices.
Participants had various modes of participation, synchronous or asynchronous, available. There was never an expectation of cameras on or of oral participation. Slides were provided ahead of time where possible. Automated live transcription was enabled in live sessions.
Chats were lively in most sessions, and there were opportunities to participate anonymously via Google docs, Google Jamboard or polling tools. Sessions were recorded, unless precluded by the nature of the conversations requiring a safe space.
4. Co-create and experience community and joy throughout
The MYFest participants did not meet to talk about community and well-being. Rather, we met to experience and co-create community and well-being. MYFest facilitators used approaches that quickly fostered lively participation. These were drawn from our own community building resource site (OneHE) and from liberating structures.
Ahead of the main three-month long event, we laid the foundation for MYFest with at least one weekly community building engagement, making time for people to get to know one another in small groups with creative prompts.
5. Schedule wisely. Resist Zoom fatigue and decision fatigue
We spread our offerings out over three months, avoided overlapping sessions and had no more than three 1-2 hour events per day. Some MYFest events were threaded as “tracks,” where one could attend multiple sessions and do some asynchronous work around the same topic, an approach that opened up the potential of “cohort” congeniality. In our Slack channel, MYFest participants could discover, connect and share with new colleagues at any time across multiple themes and tracks. Having down time between sessions for reflections supported cumulative transformative learning.
6. Embrace emergence: welcome and leverage participant expertise
Every session in MYFest encouraged participants to bring and share their expertise. Additionally, there were special sessions within MYFest inviting participants to contribute to the OneHE/Equity Unbound community-building resource site mentioned earlier, so these sessions built on participant expertise while also contributing to an open resource that is available to all on the open web.
7. Make it family-friendly
Another unique aspect of the MYFest experience was the intuitive involvement of family and friends. By focusing on well-being and joy, as well as critical discussions, we intentionally designed and advertised programming for the entire family (saying “for all ages”). MYFest participants brought both (grand)parents and children to certain threads, embracing the power of intergenerational learning and connection.
8. Go beyond access and focus on accessibility
MYFest was awarded a Hewlett Foundation grant that covered the labor of the main facilitators and some of the invited guest facilitators, as well as the technology needed to run the event. There were multiple discounts available for participants, and also the possibility to attend for free via a waiver.
Nevertheless, online is still not entirely accessible, especially for those with limited availability of internet or electricity. Differences in time zones meant that some sessions were inconvenient for some. We intentionally looked for “time zone sweet spots” that might work on all continents.
We focused on ensuring that when people joined, they felt included, they felt they could access learning and learn in ways that reached them where they are. We sought to ensure that people with different abilities could learn comfortably without constantly needing to ask for special accommodations, that people from across the globe could find relevance in the work and that organizers were always open to feedback and suggestions.
Closing questions
How can we best develop equitable, accessible professional learning environments that can bring us joy in community and promote the transformative learning we hunger for? Does the example we have presented resonate with you? Can you see ways of reorganising the conferences you are involved with along these lines? Is there anything you would add or change?
Acknowledgements:
The authors acknowledge the entire MYFest organizing team, as well as the guest facilitators and participants, who all enriched the MYFest experience.
To find out more:
This i2Insights contribution is a shortened version of Bali, M., Station, G. and Zamora, M. (2022). Online does not mean isolated. Inside Higher Education. (Online): https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/08/24/building-community-online-conferences-events-opinion
For more information about #MYFest22 see: https://myfest.equityunbound.org/
Biography: Maha Bali PhD is a professor of practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She is co-facilitator of Equity Unbound.
Biography: George Station MA is a lecturer in the first-year seminar program and faculty associate in the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment at California State University, Monterey Bay, USA.
Biography: Mia Zamora PhD is a professor of English, director of the M.A. in writing studies program and director of the Kean University Writing Project at Kean University in New Jersey, USA. She is co-facilitator of Equity Unbound.