Sustainable and engaging online meetings and conferences

Abstract:

The current covid-19 crisis has pushed online meeting platforms and tools into the mainstream and stimulated new approaches for increasing online engagement and interaction. This development is especially important from a sustainability and inclusiveness perspective since, even after the current crisis has passed, there is still an urgent need to minimise the carbon footprint of the scientific community, in particular from science collaboration activities such as meetings, symposia and large-scale international conferences. This session will highlight new methods, tools and platforms that facilitate active online collaboration and redefine the concept of online meetings beyond the standard talking heads format.

Traditional virtual formats often reproduce the lecture hall model of one-way communication and a pedagogy of learning as consumption. In recent months we have seen widespread use of more collaborative solutions such as breakout groups, collaborative online documents, work spaces, mind maps and storyboards in order to refocus on active participation and co-creation. Using 4G mobile connectivity the webinar can extend into the field offering participants guided tours of sites, labs and environments that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. Even drones can be easily incorporated into a webinar format. Virtual formats further offer great opportunities to include underrepresented research communities. However to fully embrace the power of virtual communication other challenges such as language barriers, internet accessibility and local cultural backgrounds have to be taken into account. Thus also stable low-bandwidth and live-translation solutions will be discussed and the importance of co-design.

This session is an overview of current practice, developing technologies and possible future applications, based on the practical experience within the educational technology community in higher education of planning and running online conferences and webinars over the last ten years. This experience can benefit the scientific community in its move towards meaningful online collaboration and climate-smart meetings. The aim of the session is to stimulate creative discussion on how to create truly collaborative online learning arenas.