With many church services starting to run remotely, video conferencing is becoming increasingly popular for Sunday School classes, bible studies, servants meetings, youth/family meetings, and many more services.
This guide aims to assist participants in video conferences to have a smoother online experience therefore maximise their benefit from the content presented and discussed.
Setup
1. Arrange your working space to minimise distractions
Sit in a quiet area that is well lit to avoid distractions and noise during the video calls and be ready to turn on your camera
2. Use your headsets for better audio quality
Connect your earphones or headsets so that the microphone is close to your mouth and external noise is not picked up. This also ensures its less noisy to the people around you
3. Test your connection before the meeting starts
Join the call early and ensure your internet connection is strong (tip: consider moving closer to the Wi-Fi router) by testing your audio and video. If you’re the meeting host, then test the recording functionality, and prepare your desktop to share the content (tip: turn-off notifications on your device to avoid distractions when sharing your screen)
4. Send the link to join the online meeting early and send reminders before the meeting starts
People forget where to go, especially when they receive multiple messages about online meetings, so best to prepare them early and send reminders closer to the start time
5. Ensure everyone knows how to use the tool
Run training sessions with participants or send guides before day 1 to ensure participants are able to join the meeting online and participate in the discussions effectively
During the meeting
6. Turn on your camera
55% of communication is through body language, 38% is through tone of voice and only 7% is through words. So be ready to turn on the camera to have a richer communication and ensure people are engaged
7. Mute participants as they join
Avoid distractions and noise by muting participants be default when they join. Use chat for feedback when you have too many participants
8. Engage people to increase their participation
People get easily distracted and lose attention in online meetings, so present a mix of words, graphs, videos, and activities to keep them engaged (tip: free tools like mentimeter.com and sli.do are great for polling and interactive facilitation)
9. Be on time
Start and stop the meetings on time and limit to less than 1 hour to maintain engagement throughout
Post the meeting
10. Share the recording and materials presented
Thank the participants and share recording of meeting (if available) and any materials presented for their future reference (tip: if the video and materials are too big, consider saving them on a shared drive or an e-learning platform then send the links)
Do you have more tips that you’d like to share? Feel free to write them in the comments box below!
Thanks and God bless!