5 essential ‘E’s to help you ace hybrid meetings

5 essential ‘E’s to help you ace hybrid meetings
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Hybrid meetings are a feature of life in the pandemic, but they can be a challenge for managers new to the format. I taught my first hybrid class last month, at the Ahmedabad-based Anant National University, dedicated to the study of design, sustainability and the built environment. The two-and-a-half-hour class was part of a module titled Netflix and the Art of Design Writing, which is part of a year-long, post-graduate, multidisciplinary Anant Fellowship diploma programme.

Five students attended the class offline, and twelve attended virtually, from ten cities in India and around the world, including Lagos, Kabul, Dhaka, Sao Paulo and Accra. Based on my experience, here are five essential ‘E’s for any hybrid meeting, workshop or class.

Experience. Design the room to deliver a holistic experience. Audio quality is as important as camera. Our classroom had a large smart screen. The camera easily rotated to focus on different parts of the class. But the audio was less malleable. Despite the trials we ran before the class, our online students experienced some echoes, detracting from the overall experience. Room design is vital. A large room full of hard surfaces will echo. Movable furniture helped us get closer to the microphones while staying within the camera frame.

Equity. Pay equal attention to offline and online participants. It is much easier to focus on those in front of you, but be sure to face both sets of participants during a session, and call on both groups at least somewhat equally.

Energy. An offline class is much more dynamic than its virtual equivalent. But one of the best parts of teaching a class in person, after two years, was that it allowed me to use the classroom furniture and layout to add more dimension for the virtual students too. I stood and spoke, moved my chair out from behind its desk. My offline students moved closer to the camera to make their points, instead of raising a virtual hand. This energy translated to the screen too.

Empathy. This is one of the hardest qualities to transmit online. Virtual and physical personas can be so different. I took five virtual sessions before this hybrid class, so I had some idea of my students’ personalities. One in particular persisted in keeping his camera off, and remained quiet during class interactions. A hybrid meeting allows one to grasp individual personalities in greater depth. When I met the quiet student in person, I realised that this was a fundamental personality trait. Much of the content was new to him; he was simply trying to absorb it, rather than trying to subvert my efforts to get him to participate in class discussions. This realisation made me more committed to understanding my online students better.

Engagement. With so many students from the Global South, internet connectivity was a problem. Class participation is much higher in person. So my fifth suggestion for hybrid working, if one is looking to maximise engagement, is to go back to in-person classrooms and in-person meetings as soon as possible.

(Aparna Piramal Raje is visiting faculty at Anant National University and serves on the Board of Studies for the Anant Fellowship)

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