Unit 1  Welcome to the course

Show description|Hide description

A modern conference room setting where a group of six individuals are seated around a rectangular wooden table. They are engaged in a hybrid meeting, combining in-person and virtual participation. On the wall in front of them is a large flat-screen monitor displaying a video call with six participants arranged in a grid layout. Each participant on the screen appears to be actively engaged, some gesturing or speaking.

Welcome to Are you on mute? Best practice in online meetings – a badged online course on how to improve your online meetings.

No doubt, on more than one occasion, you have found yourself sitting in endless meetings with distracted colleagues who appear to be doing their email – and that’s if they’ve even turned on their camera! Or meetings where the chair never lets anyone else speak. And then there are the meetings that become really uncomfortable because someone thinks they’re being funny when actually they’re just not being very nice…

This course is designed for anyone who uses online meetings for work purposes. Everything you will learn here is evidence based. The team who put it together were part of a multinational research project on equitable online meetings. There were researchers in Germany, Iceland, Spain and the UK, which is why the course is available in six different languages too.

The course will take you through a few different topics around online meetings that the team found to be important in making meetings more pleasant and more productive. In this first unit you’ll be introduced to the different units in the course, so you know what to expect as you work through it. The course will take approximately 18 hours to complete, however you can step away and come back at any point to resume where you left off.

Welcome from the course authors

Listen to the course authors introducing the course, themselves and sharing what they enjoyed most about the GEiO research project.

Active content not displayed. This content requires JavaScript to be enabled.

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript

Lisa Lazard and Rose Capdevila

LISA LAZARD

Welcome to ‘Are you on mute? Best practice in online meetings’

This course has been created by a team of researchers in four different countries working with international businesses to study online meetings and how to get them right.

The project was funded by the European Union to investigate how to run inclusive and productive meetings online. It is called gender equitable interactions online project – which we call GEiO

We originally conceived of this during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when everyone had to rapidly get to grips with online meeting platforms and videoconferencing.

ROSE CAPDEVILA

You may remember those early days of bad connections, technical hitches and trying to find somewhere in your home that would help you make the right impression.

In this audio we would like to introduce you to the team that produced the course. First, we’ll start with the UK team that led the project. Then we’ll meet the teams from Germany, Iceland and Spain.

LISA LAZARD

My name is Lisa Lazard. I’m a professor of psychology at The Open University and I’m the project lead for GEiO. My favourite part of the project was discovering how seemingly taken for granted actions, the small things people say and do, can have a huge impact on how useful meetings turn out to be.

ROSE CAPDEVILA

My name is Rose Capdevila, and I am also a professor of psychology at The Open University and UK co-investigator on the project. What I enjoyed most about the project was working with colleagues from different countries and cultures. Learning about the differences and similarities in how we work was particularly fascinating for me.

Irmgard Tischner

IRMGARD TISCHNER

Hello! My name is Irmgard Tischner and I am the project lead for the German research group on GEiO. I am a professor for qualitative health and social research. What I enjoyed the most, apart from working with a great group of fellow researchers, was the mix of methods we employed.

Annadís Gréta Rúdólfsdóttir

ANNADÍS GRÉTA RÚDÓLFSDÓTTIR

Hi, my name is Annadís Gréta Rúdólfsdóttir and I'm a professor at the School of Education. My role in the project was to be the PI [Principle Investigator] in the Icelandic team. What I enjoyed the most was when we reached the stages where we were able to compare findings across countries, seeing similarities and differences.

Gyða Margrét Pétursdóttir

GYÐA MARGRÉT PÉTURSDÓTTIR

Hi, my name is Gyða Margrét Pétursdóttir. I'm a professor in Gender Studies at the University of Iceland and my role in the project is co-Principal Investigator or co-Pilot. I really enjoyed this project and what I found most joyful was disseminating the findings to the participants in the project.

Katrín Ólafsdóttir

KATRÍN ÓLAFSDÓTTIR

Hi, my name is Katrín Ólafsdóttir and I'm an assistant professor at the University of Iceland's School of Education and a co-PI on the Icelandic team for the project. My favourite part of the project was exploring new research methods and the creative process of collecting and interpreting data with my team.

Adriana Gil-Juárez

ADRIANA GIL-JUÁREZ

Hello, my name is Adriana Gil Juárez and I am Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. I'm the Principal Investigator at this university for the project Gender Equitable Interactions Online. What I have enjoyed most about the project has been working with different research partners.

They are an amazing group.

Barbara Biglia

BARBARA BIGLIA

Hi, my name is Barbara Biglia. I am an associate professor at [the] University of Rovira and Virgili in Tarragona, Catalonia where I am the URV Principal Investigator and Working Package 2 Coordinator in this research. Having the opportunity to share our project lessons with all of you and contribute to making videoconferencing a more equitable and safe space is undoubtedly what found most rewarding about this experience.

Jordi Bonet Martí

JORDI BONET MARTÍ

Hey everybody! I am Jordi Bonet Martí, associate professor of Sociology at the University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and Work Package 2 colleague with my colleague Barbara Biglia at the Rovira and Virgili University of Tarragona.

What I value most about GEiO is the opportunity to share knowledge and methods with researchers from different countries and to apply conversational analytic techniques to advance justice in the workplace, including in videoconferencing and other collaborative settings.

End transcript

 

Next, go to 1  The growing importance of online meetings [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .