Over 800 million people, more than one in 10 worldwide, suffer from undernutrition. Additionally, one-third of all food produced is wasted, while unhealthy diets impose a growing burden on healthcare systems. Greenhouse gas emission from the agricultural sector drive deforestation, species extinction, and deplete marine and freshwater resources. Rising hunger intensifies pressure on an already strained, inefficient, and unsustainable food system, exacerbating climate change and ecological decline.

EAT is a non-profit organization dedicated to transforming the global food system by addressing food-related challenges through science, disruption, and partnerships. As part of this mission, EAT organized global consultations involving stakeholders who either influence or are influenced by the global food system. The data they collected would provide valuable insights into the needs of both global and local communities, shedding light on existing challenges, concerns, opportunities, gaps, and varying stakeholder perspectives.

To facilitate these consultations on a global scale, EAT sought a tool that could accommodate their requirements, leading them to discover Howspace.

Removing barriers with Howspace platform 

Iain Shepherd, Director of Communication and Global Engagement at EAT:

“Howspace became a central tool for our global consultations. It allowed us to gather and connect people from around the world and engage in a meaningful, fun, and interactive way. The user-friendliness of Howspace allowed us to host more than 75+ consultations with over 5000 participants.”

Howspace enables them to keep everything in one place and provides the participants with a seamless, interactive experience. Due to the platform’s adaptability, they could customize widgets and the visual appearance to ensure a positive experience for both the hosts and participants while collecting valuable data. The EAT-Lancet 2.0 Global Coordinator, Madelaine Bereza added:

“Howspace has been a wonderful tool for our online consultations. Its flexibility enabled us to create interactive workspaces, which were visually appealing, user-friendly, and perfectly aligned with our internal requirements for capturing individual responses. The embedded video widget was particularly useful, allowing us to conduct online consultations through Howspace.”

Notable features and widgets that proved especially useful included Superchat and the Live widget, which facilitated both video conversations and asynchronous discussions, along with polls that helped visualizing participants’ responses. The platform’s capability to embed PDFs and images simplified information sharing, keeping all discussions in one secure location. 

“Another advantage of the platform is that we were able to download all the answers from each consultation as an Excel file. In the work we are doing with the consultations this was very important for us.”

EAT’s goal was to reach as many people as possible with their consultations to maximize their findings’ impact. With the newly launched Howspace translation feature, they could offer the workspaces in a range of integrated languages, making it accessible for non-English speakers. The translation feature converts the conversations into a selected language, enabling people to communicate without a common language.

A positive experience for facilitators and users

EAT employed both path-mode and step-mode to create a streamlined space that that was easy for participants to navigate. In path-mode, the participant’s focus is directed to one section of the page at a time, allowing them to move back and forth between sections as they please. Step-mode allows you to build the process beforehand, enabling the facilitator to concentrate fully on the participants during live sessions or meetings. This ensures a distraction-free experience for both facilitator and participants.

“The Howspace Academy was a great resource to have when building and developing our consultation workspaces. The staff at Howspace are also great and have been very helpful and supportive during this process.”

The result was a smooth, interactive experience enjoyed by both the hosts of the consultations and the participants, effectively achieving the goal of collecting feedback and reflections on the state of the global food system.

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Sofigate is a pioneer in business technology leadership and an inspiring example of how involving people in transformation supports success. Sofigate’s top priority is to support clients in a way that increases their own ability to lead transformation while also achieving their business objectives.

Sofigate helps companies and public organizations design, build, and implement technology solutions that support their business. These large-scale projects often span multiple years and require the extensive engagement of people at various stages of the transformation journey.

Sofigate’s experts supporting human-centric design

Sofigate supports their clients in planning and leading the transformation journey, ensuring that individuals affected by the change are involved in various stages of the process. Throughout this journey, tools are deployed to enable the client’s business leadership to comprehensively craft their desired future state. A central goal is always to enhance the client’s own change capabilities.

“No one else can develop another person’s work, which is why it’s crucial for people to be involved from the very beginning.”

“We help our clients build the transformation journey by ensuring that people are involved right from the start. We help shape the narrative and set shared objectives”, Mia Nikula, Business Executive Platform Transformations at Sofigate, explains.

“We ensure that the client has access to all the necessary operating, guiding, and project models to be able to lead successful transformation. No one else can develop another person’s work, which is why it’s crucial for people to be involved from the very beginning,” she continues.

Mia asserts: “We utilize Howspace in our client work, both in the planning phase and in change leadership. Howspace has helped us streamline change communication and engage people in various ways.”.

With Howspace, Sofigate can efficiently facilitate an international group of participants through the planning phase of their transformation journey. Additionally, Howspace contributes to improving the client’s capabilities and fostering communities that play a crucial role in the change process.

For example, Howspace has played a central role in the business transformation of a multinational organization with over 100,000 employees. The objective of this transformation has been to modernize both business practices and technologies. Moreover, this extensive change has involved implementing new ERP systems.

“The client’s main challenge was to engage an international group in the planning of the transformation. Moreover, every participant was urged to embark on a learning journey to accelerate the development of the necessary capabilities for change leadership,” Mia explains.

“Projects of this scale require substantial investments from organizations, and a key factor for success is establishing a unified vision of the future. What kind of change are we undertaking? What goals and expectations have been set? What does the future potentially look like from the perspectives of individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole? It is only after a shared understanding is established that individuals can be prepared to articulate their preferences and needs regarding services, processes, and systems.”

During this specific project, Sofigate helped their client in designing and facilitating transformation sprints, ensuring that participants’ experience with Howspace was seamless and that assigned tasks were easy to grasp. The client was impressed with the work done during the project and the results achieved together, leading them to extensively implement Howspace within their own organization.

In the future, Sofigate intends to continue leveraging Howspace and offer its clients more opportunities to drive effective and lasting change. The goal is to enhance clients’ capabilities so that they recognize the benefits of using Howspace in change and transformation leadership and begin utilizing the platform in their own work.

Sofigate is a partner of Howspace. The partnership aims to develop shared business opportunities and accelerate growth by leveraging Howspace’s inclusive AI-powered engagement platform.

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JHL is Finland’s largest trade union for the public and welfare sectors, with 165 000 members across the country. JHL aims to improve the position of its members in working life and society, as well as to bring together professionals working and studying in municipalities, the state, parishes, and public and private welfare services.

In a large trade union with members and representatives from all over the country, having the right practices and solutions is a prerequisite for smooth operation. JHL uses the Howspace platform for member involvement, training, and meeting management. Moreover, the platform is where the members meet to share best practices and learnings.

Aiming to foster a sense of community and having a view of the sector

“Being able to reach members all over Finland and hear what is happening in the industry is an absolute necessity for my work.”

In the fall of 2022, Sanna Pihakivi, JHL’s expert on professional activities in the field of education and guidance, was looking for an effective way to reach out to members of the education and guidance sector all over Finland. There was also a clear need for closer cooperation between members. Howspace was utilized for creating meeting places for the eight regional educational and guidance forums.

“These forums are a place to network and seek peer support. Members also use it to discuss advocacy and well-being issues as well as share practices that make their day-to-day work more effective.” Pihakivi explains.

In addition to enabling interaction between members, Howspace is also critical to Pihakivi’s own work. 

“Being able to reach members all over Finland and hear what is happening in the industry is an absolute necessity for my work. I need an environment where I can meet and communicate with members remotely. Doing this asynchronously is also very important; we don’t have to be online simultaneously, yet the information still flows and is accessible. In other words, without Howspace, I wouldn’t have easy access to members and activists all over Finland. Howspace is a critical tool for me because I simply can’t run around Finland meeting people,” Pihakivi elaborates further.

Valuable encounters and new forms of participation 

“Howspace has enabled us to have functioning networks all over Finland.”

According to Pihakivi, members have been very pleased about not having to leave their homes to meet other members. JHL has tried similar forums in the past, but the meetings were always in-person, which Pihakivi says discouraged participation.

“Not everyone has the resources or time to go out after work in the evening for a meeting. This kind of arrangement didn’t work. We have a region like Lapland, where the distances are long – people didn’t have the opportunity to travel hundreds of kilometers to these meetings. Howspace has enabled us to have functioning networks all over Finland,” Pihakivi says. 

“Howspace’s features support the functionality of the networks perfectly. We have many Swedish speakers and people with an immigrant background, for whom the platform’s built-in translation feature offers the possibility to read information and discussions in their native language,” Pihakivi continues. 

Another important thing for Pihakivi is that she now has the opportunity to meet all the members of Howspace and receive valuable information from the field. Another clear benefit is that Pihakivi does not always have to be present at remote meetings but can afterward read what discussions have taken place on the platform.

Building on shared insights and best practices

“Without the voice of the industry, my work would have no basis.”

According to Pihakivi, it is vital that people working in the same sector across Finland meet each other and are able to share best practices and lessons learned.

“How else, for example, would a kindergarten teacher from Lapland find their colleague in the capital region and share experiences with them? Learning from each other, reflecting together, and gaining insights from that is necessary.” Pihakivi says.

Thanks to Howspace, Pihakivi has visibility into the industry and keeps up to date with the challenges each region faces and the solutions that can be found in other regions. “Often in the discussions on the platform, it becomes clear that several regions share a specific challenge. Then we can collaborate and think about different tools to solve the challenges.” she continues. “Without the voice of the industry, my work would have no basis.”

In addition to the regional forums, Pihakivi uses Howspace to organize training for JHL members.

“Howspace is a critical tool for me when I organize professional training. Even though the actual training takes place face-to-face, Howspace plays a huge role in engaging and activating the participants and distributing materials.”

Bringing Union Council’s assembly meetings to 2020

Raisa Musakka serves as a management and administration specialist at JHL, where her work mainly consists of organizing administration meetings and events. There are 120 members in the JHL’s House of Representatives, and the union also has four community member associations, each of which has one representative in the Assembly. In addition, the Executive Committee and a large number of JHL employees also attend the meetings of the Assembly. 

Before 2020, all meetings were held face-to-face, but the unexpected changes in the business environment forced JHL to transition to remote meetings at the beginning of 2020. JHL needed to find a solution that would also allow for easy distribution of materials to members of the JHL.

“The need for a platform like Howspace existed even before the pandemic; we had been thinking about ways to streamline our processes and take steps closer to a greener office. With Howspace, we can make last-minute updates to the materials if necessary, and there is no more need for printing,” Musakka says.

“Even requests to be heard in the in-person meetings are now made through the platform. Before Howspace, requests to be heard were made on paper during the meeting, and the secretary was responsible for going through them, typing them up, and putting them on the agenda. It has made our job so much easier.”

The best remote practices are here to stay

“Before switching to remote working, it was difficult for many people to imagine meetings going entirely virtual, but now there is no wish to return to the old ways. Howspace is definitely here to stay.”

Although the Union has moved back to in-person and hybrid meetings, Howspace continues to play an essential role in the smooth running of meetings. The distribution of meeting materials, the agenda, registration, requests to be heard, and voting is all handled through the platform.

“Before switching to remote working, it was difficult for many people to imagine meetings going entirely virtual, but now there is no wish to return to the old ways. Howspace is definitely here to stay,” Musakka says. In addition to streamlining the meetings, Howspace has brought several benefits to the union. According to Musakka, one of the biggest is achieving a paperless office, which is a significant step forward for JHL.

Howspace has also brought a much-needed change in involvement and inclusivity. The platform allows, for example, parents of young children and people with reduced mobility to participate and contribute from home. “The most significant benefits of the platform have definitely been the involvement of people, the ease of sharing materials, the environmental aspects (paperlessness), and the freeing up of work resources elsewhere,” Musakka sums up.

A smooth change process as a basis for the future

Adopting new technologies and ways of working on a large scale always brings its own challenges. Still, both Pihakivi and Musakka feel that the change has been smooth and the feedback positive.

“When you work with a huge number of people, it’s always a process to take the changes through, but at least I haven’t encountered any major challenges,” Pihakivi describes.

“It’s great to see that everyone has responded positively to the new ways of working and the new tools. Howspace streamlines not only the work of the meeting secretary but also improves the meeting experience for all participants,” Musakka says.

At JHL, Howspace is currently used not only for regional forums and meeting management but also for training and internal strategy work, among other things. However, Musakka foresees that Howspace will be used more and more for participatory activities in the future. 

“Whenever we do something new, I first think about how Howspace could be used in this.”

According to Pihakivi, there are a lot of ideas on how Howspace could be utilized in different areas. There are tens of thousands of members scattered all over the country, so the need for the platform is there.

“The setup will always be that I’m physically here, and the members are all over Finland. The key to the success of my work will always be how I can a) get the information out there and b) get people to network. Howspace has been the answer for us.” Pihakivi says. “Whenever we do something new, I first think about how Howspace could be used in this.”

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Established in 2016 and supported by Nine Circles Community Health Centre, the Manitoba HIV-STBBI Collective Impact Network is a network of innovators that works to change the landscape of HIV-STBBIs (Sexually Transmitted and Blood Borne Infections) through system changes. 

The Network runs two large-scale events per year, and the idea is to bring together a diverse number of stakeholders to talk about key topics around HIV and STBBI. Ultimately, the mandate is to reduce  HIV and STBBIS but also try to tackle the complexity of the issues caused by the stigma around them.

Away from a traditional online meeting – Creating an engaging and fun space

In May 2021, the network hosted its tenth large network event, “Opening the Curtain on Stigma: Tackling the ‘isms’ Collectively”. Laurie Ringaert (Change Weavers Consulting) and Paul Nunesdea (Architecting Collaboration) were part of the event production team; Paul served as Lead Facilitator of the event, working in collaboration with Laurie Ringaert as Co-Facilitator. Both of the facilitators lead the planning and development of the event. Laurie also serves as the Program Director and an Internal Evaluator in her consultation services for the CINetwork.  

Collaborative planning of the event and engagement of a team of people in the event was one of the important ingredients to success. The planning team included: Lisa Patrick, Ken Bristow, Linda Larcombe, Rusty Souleymanov, Owen Black, Justin Lys and Mike Payne. Mike is the Co-Strategic Facilitator of the CINetwork and the Executive Director of Nine Circles CHC.

The event in May was the network’s second-ever virtual event.

“Stigma and all the ‘isms’ collectively are what we wanted to bring to the table. The plan was to bring together a number of speakers, and we were trying to think of creative ways to do that virtually, “ Laurie explains. “This was only our second virtual event after the one in the fall, so we brought in Paul as a professional facilitator to help us,” she continues.

In the network’s previous in-person events, a key component was to find creative ways to engage participants and make things fun. People enjoyed participating in these events because they were nothing like a typical meeting or a conference.

“I was involved in the project to make the online event more engaging and fun. Howspace was an obvious choice for the platform because it enabled us to build engaging spaces for the participants and speakers. We also wanted to ensure that all meaningful inputs and discussions were collected and that we could condense those quickly,” Paul adds.

As the event’s topic was opening the curtain on stigma and the ‘isms’, Laurie, Paul, and the team wanted to build an environment around a theatre theme; there was act one, act two, act three and so forth. According to Laurie, one of the winning spaces they built was a backstage room where people could relax and talk to each other.

“There were pictures of costumes and refreshments like in a real theatre backstage, and people liked to just chill out during breakouts,” Laurie explains. 

“Producing this event made me stretch to the limits of all the knowledge I have accumulated on digital facilitation. Howspace enabled us to build the theatre-like setting and create these relaxing, safe spaces for people to connect without being in a crowded Zoom call,” Paul adds.

Creating the recipe for success

According to Laurie and Paul, Howspace enabled them to do several things other platforms wouldn’t have. For example, Paul created a set of pre-engagement questions in the workspace to engage participants before the event. He also utilized AI to aggregate the conversations and inputs of the multiple sessions run during the event. However, one of the most important benefits of using Howspace was that it helped the network to create a sense of community.

“I don’t know any other platforms that can make that possible. It was a fully virtual event, yet people were engaged and had this sense of community. And to add to that, it was really easy for us to use; our designers used different features of Howspace to design a beautiful setup for the event,” Paul says.

Howspace was essential in helping the network team run a successful event. However, as Laurie points out, one needs more than just technology.

“A platform can’t stand alone; you must have a great facilitator to make the platform work, and you need good planning – it’s a recipe.”

“And to add one more ingredient that will make an event successful; committed participants who give themselves to discussion and who are willing to share their lived experiences and histories. It doesn’t matter how good the platform or the facilitator is; without these participants, the event won’t be a success,” Paul adds.

The event’s purpose was to illustrate the intersectionality of various types of stigma and to change mindsets about the many ‘isms’ associated with HIV and STBBIs. In addition, the goal was to motivate a diverse audience and create an emergence of ideas through the collective thinking of various players to create systems changes.

“Our Collective Impact Network is all about changing the system and tackling its issues to make a change. When planning an event, the premise is that the whole design process involves people’s lived experiences. To run successful events that really ignite change, we need diverse players involved in planning and joining the event. That’s why it’s crucial that our events are not perceived as boring conferences. Using Howspace, that was not a concern,” Laurie explains.

Powering meaningful connections that drive change

A few other tools were used alongside Howspace during the event, and according to Paul, participants enjoyed using a blend of tools in a single event. Having an entire day online networking and participating in workshops can be tiring, but the feedback from the event was very positive. 

As a part of the event, there was an evaluation where participants were asked to use one word to describe their experience. They were also asked how they were feeling after the day. The word clouds below are generated using the Howspace AI. The Word cloud on the left illustrates the answers to the question, “What is one word to describe your feelings/energy leaving the event today?” and the word cloud on the right illustrates the answers to the question, “What was one word that you would like to share about your experience today?”.

“It was rewarding to see participants feeling engaged and enlightened despite being tired after the day,” Paul says.

“It was so great to see these word clouds showing feelings like happiness and validation. We wanted to ensure this experience was engaging and energizing – not just another virtual meeting. And based on the feedback, it seems we succeeded,” Laurie continues.

According to the event feedback, 80% of the participants were very satisfied with the event, and 80% also said the event met their expectations. Moreover, the NPS for the event was 60.

“As our events are all about collaboration and making connections, as a part of the evaluation, we ask participants whether they made connections or found collaborators at the event. According to the evaluation, 85% of the participants made a connection with someone, and 75% spoke with a potential new collaborator,” Laurie elaborates.

Steps towards creating impact

According to Laurie and Paul, measuring the long-term outcomes of one-off events can be challenging as it is difficult to follow everything that happens afterwards.

“Looking at the great feedback, we can see that our event probably made a difference, but whether people actually go and do something after the event – it’s hard to know,” Laurie says.

“There are probably many great things happening afterwards that are partly happening because of the event! And on the other hand, if we look at the fact that we facilitated an engaging, inspiring and energizing event around a very important topic, participants are happy – and we did it all virtually – I think we have really succeeded and created an impact,” Paul concludes.

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Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is an independent think tank producing evidence-based research, publications, and events on defence, security, and international affairs to help build a safer UK and a more secure, equitable, and stable world.

Power of knowledge and collaboration

In late 2021, Grace Evans, Lauren Young, and their team started to work on a Horizon Scan . The aim of the research was to examine the trends and impact of climate change on large-scale illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

“This was a very collaborative project where we brought together 25 assessors – experts in their respective fields. As the project was about IUU fishing, we had a whole range of individuals involved; from former fishermen to American national guards, from officers to academics,fish biologists and to individuals who work in the geopolitics space,” Grace explains.

The project’s biggest challenge was finding a way to have assessors from around the world collaborate as they were analysing and prioritising the list of trends. This process included two rounds of voting, and Howspace was utilized inthe second round of the process.

“We started out with over 100 [trends], and we assigned our experts a certain number of trends to review and revise, giving us new title suggestions, clustering them or combining or breaking them apart,” Grace describes.

“We had two separate rounds of voting. I joined the project during the second round of voting, and that was when we started to use Howspace,” Grace adds.

Making everyone’s voices heard

According to Grace, the first round of voting saw the assessors working individually. It was Grace’s and Lauren’s responsibility to combine the individual reviews at the end. Howspace was involved in the second round, and Grace describes it as being significantly more collaborative.

The Horizon Scan project included five 3-hour long online workshops with the experts involved. Howspace was used to have people comment, share links and information, and have discussions before, during, and after the workshops. The project team needed a platform where the conversation could continue even after the live workshops.

For the second round of voting, the assessors had access to all the information  that was on the platform, including each other’s comments/thoughts unlike in the first round. 

“The participants were able to use the information all other assessors had shared on the trends. So, rather than just being given a list of titles and ranking them one through a hundred, they could click around the workspace and go through all the information, documentation, and conversations about each trend,” Grace explains.

Being able to access all the information and discussions asynchronously was important, especially as not everyone was able to attend the live workshops – there were participants from all time zones around the world.

“We weren’t able to run workshops at times that work for people from all time zones, but we still wanted to have every assessor give input and collaborate as much as possible on as many topics as possible,” Grace adds.

Engagement and impact through collaboration

In addition to enabling conversations and knowledge sharing, RUSI needed a platform that would let them embed documents and link media. Given that the project’s outcome is a research paper, it is extremely important that everything is saved and accessed after the live workshops. And, of course, it was essential that the platform was easy to use.

“From the participants’ side of things, we only heard positive feedback. People complimented how easy it was to navigate and find what they were looking for – it was very straightforward. Everyone who engaged with the platform said it was really easy and fantastic. In projects like this, having everyone participate and engage will always remain a challenge, but that’s a part of running workshops and projects online,” Grace explains.

When talking about the results of using Howspace for the project, Grace lists peoples’ voices being heard as the biggest one. In research projects, it is vital to be able to engage people and have them contribute to the topic. 

“The first round of voting – which was done without Howspace – was quite indicative of where participants’ existing knowledge base was, whereas the second time around, some people ended up voting differently. This makes me think that the discussions and hearing other people’s knowledge and experiences made some participants change their thinking. So, I believe participants were really listening and taking others’ views into careful consideration,” Grace describes.

“It’s difficult to quantify the results, but it did seem that the collaboration made a real impact on how the research ended up looking and what the final results of the project ended up being,” Grace concludes.

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Communities & Associations

Howspace transformed JHL’s member involvement and meeting management for good

Howspace has played an important role in supporting the transformation of JHL’s networking and participation models for its members. Additionally, Howspace has brought much-needed change and new practices to JHL’s meeting management.

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Communities & Associations Workshops & Events

Powering systems change through collaboration and innovation

Manitoba HIV-STBBI CINetwork needed a solution that would enable them to create an engaging and fun online environment where they could bring people together and focus on tackling the stigma and ‘isms’ around HIV and STBBIs.

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The post Powering research through collaboration appeared first on Howspace.

AI know-how and its development have become hot topics in recent years. Yhteiskunta-alan korkeakoulutetut ry, or YKA for short (Social Science Professionals in English), has recognised that there is a special need among its memberships to be able to understand AI. The association’s 12,000 members are employed to support the development of society – and its digitization – which constantly requires new capabilities. Indeed, YKA decided to start training its members for the AI world.

“In the beginning, we organized two workshop evenings for our members, which were real successes. The workshops were sold out at lightning speed, and the waiting lists were long. We received calls from all around the country, with many asking to join virtually. We wanted to scale the social impact and expand the entity into an online course,” explains YKA’s know-how services expert Heini Hult-Miekkavaara.

“We already had experience with Howspace in the use of career services and coaching packages. Therefore, we immediately stated that we could not implement an artificial intelligence course without Howspace.”

The themes of AI training and related tasks were formulated based on what the participants were interested in and what was emphasized in the social debate: labour policy, education and teaching, municipal management and administration, and service design… the content was already taken into account in the content construction.

“A very special outcome was the result. We have received incredible feedback from participants. Our members have really learned from the best in Finland at the forefront of AI training.”

Effectiveness of community learning

From the beginning, YKA has collaborated with Gofore in AI training. With the start of the new online training package, new partners also joined: Lakimiesliitto (The Association of Finnish Lawyers), Kunteko 2020 – Programme for Improving Working Life in Finnish Local Government) and Digi- ja väestötietovirasto (Digital and Population Data Services Agency).

240 enthusiastic social sector experts interested in this topic were enrolled as participants, and they met to discuss the theme six times. Each of the live webinars included experts’ presentations, and personal experiences were discussed and shared. Between meetings, the participants did individual and group assignments.

“With the help of Howspace, we were able to have our members meet other participants within and without YKA. We were hoping to get people to become involved by keeping the threshold low and seeing what this collaboration might produce.

We were able to get the participants to stay on in the coaching, and we kept internal motivation, our own needs and resources very much to the fore. The tasks were reflective, and they immediately created a connection with one’s daily life, operating environment, and work. Every time we also considered the social impact,” Hult-Miekkavaara says.

“In Howspace,” Hult-Miekkavaara continues, “we also provided the participants with AI functions, and so everyone was able to test in practice the way in which AI analysed the joint discussions. The platform’s AI features provided good overall support.”

Online participation requires trust and courage

In the aftermath of this AI training, Hult-Miekkavaara feels great satisfaction on account of the participant’s commitment and mutual networking. There were a couple of hundred pairs of eyes online each time during the webinars, and some even made recordings for viewing afterwards.

“Howspace served its purpose perfectly. Online participation is demanding and requires courage, but the platform worked very well for us. Even during the last month, almost 70% of the total number of participants were involved in the Howspace work,” Hult-Miekkavaara rejoices.

“Our goal was to make the training look like its users, and this has clearly contributed to our success. Given that the course was carried out at the same time as all the other work was transformed into virtual mode due to the Corona pandemic, we stayed on schedule, and the people did not lose their enthusiasm.

Although members of different levels of know-how took part in this coaching package, each participant was encouraged and coached via Howspace to learn more and also to share experiences with others.

We consciously wanted to support networking, and we kept the names of all participants visible in the discussions so that getting acquainted and peer learning were enabled.”

Coaching and facilitation skills at the core of e-Learning

Hult-Miekkavaara says that the good planning and that the process was connected to the participants’ daily work explained the sense of success. The rules of the game were set out meticulously at the start, and people were encouraged to participate constructively in working together.

“It was important for us that everyone would have the courage to join in the discussion openly and respect the experiences of others. Coaching and facilitation skills were really needed. Long coaching programs must be held so that support is directed at the development of people’s thinking and the creation of an atmosphere of trust.”

Hult-Miekkavaara sees the offering of new types of services and renewal as key challenges for the association’s work. Members need to be offered new, phenomenon-based training packages that fit into their own context. 

“Our members build social systems relevant to every citizen, and so it is wonderful that we can build up knowhow of current relevance. Aha moment experiences and tremendous enthusiasm were in the air throughout this coaching venture. People say that they now understand what AI means.”

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Making learning sticky & social: Plaid builds engagement and virtual experiences

The organizational training & development firm, Plaid, uses Howspace to make learning sticky and social, and to build engagement into virtual experiences.

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The post Finnish Social Science professionals connect and deepen the learning of AI with Howspace appeared first on Howspace.

Plaid LLC is an organizational training and development firm serving higher education institutions, corporations, non-profits, and government agencies, with a focus on US fraternities and sororities. Their ultimate mission is to help individuals, teams, and organizations be the best version of themselves. Plaid does so by creating and facilitating educational programs that help their partners and customers meet their learning outcomes. 

Before COVID-19, Plaid had primarily focused on designing educational curriculums for online courses and large in-person programs. “We needed to find a tool very quickly to help our partners adjust to the changing landscape,” says Chris Woods, Managing Partner at Plaid. 

Plaid began using Howspace to move their partners’ and clients’ events from in-person to virtual without compromising the experience. Through this digital transition, they discovered the additional training and development benefits that a learning experience platform brings.  

An LMS alone isn’t enough to engage participants in a virtual experience 

While Plaid uses their in-house learning management system (LMS) to provide clients with standard online education courses, they weren’t able to engage participants in virtual experiences through this platform. Many of Plaid’s clients tried replicating in-person events using Zoom and mobile event apps, but fell short.

When Plaid first started looking for a new platform to host virtual experiences, they couldn’t find anything comprehensive enough for their needs that could mimic in-person interactions. Most tools only allowed for one-way communication and content delivery—none were sticky or social enough. 

“Take the social aspects of Facebook, blend it with the community aspect and topical information of Reddit, put them together into a format where you’re controlling it as a facilitator, and that’s Howspace.”

After discovering Howspace through another consulting firm, Plaid decided to give it a try and was impressed by how Howspace enabled social learning. Pretty soon, they began transitioning all their digital experiences to Howspace, using it in tandem with their LMS. 

“For many years, learning management systems have been the primary tool for digital learning. Now we’re starting to see the shift towards learning experience platforms, which is where Howspace comes in. When you put these two together, you’ve got a really comprehensive solution for digital learning,” says Chris. 

Chris describes Howspace in a nutshell: “Take the social aspects of Facebook, blend it with the community aspect and topical information of Reddit, put them together into a format where you’re controlling it as a facilitator, and that’s Howspace.” 

Promoting deep engagement at every stage of the learning process

Switching to virtual experiences during a global pandemic wasn’t Plaid’s only challenge. Prior to COVID-19, they struggled to engage participants before and after in-person conferences. While they had some techniques in place for after the conference, they had nothing engaging enough to bring participants back to the education so that they could understand and share how they were applying it after leaving the conference. 

“With Howspace, you’re able to build momentum. You’re able to create excitement around an event or experience because you can engage with them on a deeper level […] So from hereon into the future, we’ll be using Howspace in all our programs—whether virtual or in-person—to engage the participants on a deeper level and stay connected to them after the experience is over,” explains Chris.  

“From hereon into the future, we’ll be using Howspace in all our programs—whether virtual or in-person—to engage with the participants on a deeper level and stay connected to them after the experience is over.”

Before using Howspace, Plaid also experienced challenges with obtaining participant responses when measuring learning outcomes. “Howspace gives us much more control and oversight over the participants to understand how they’re using the information and applying it to their roles and responsibilities,” says Chris.

Plaid’s clients now use Howspace for a range of virtual programs—from one-day events to month-long learning experiences. For these longitudinal experiences, Plaid starts off with developmental learning to get participants ready to engage in a two-day capstone event. They then facilitate follow-up trainings with all participants to ensure they can practice what they’ve learned in their roles. 

Participants can have authentic conversations within Howspace, and Plaid can guide the conversations and adjust participants’ paths as needed. In doing so, Plaid helps to avoid misinformation from spreading and ensures participants feel connected to their organization.

“Participants that are accustomed to in-person experiences don’t feel like they’re missing anything” 

While many of Plaid’s partners miss the in-person conferences they’ve held for the past decades, they’ve found that the best aspects of in-person events—like networking, socializing, and engaging with people in the same space—are possible to mimic with Howspace. 

“Participants that are accustomed to in-person experiences don’t feel like they’re missing anything because they’re able to engage with other participants online. The great thing about Howspace is that it checks the most boxes for what we can still do. We can provide the networking, the room where everybody’s collaborating together, and the social hour you might want after the conference,” says Chris. 

Since Plaid works with a lot of non-profit organizations that don’t have big budgets, cost was also an important factor—especially now that many organizations are no longer charging participants at events. “Howspace has been great because they provide not only a better but also a more affordable solution for our partners,” says Chris. 

Chris adds that designing and facilitating programs is easy with Howspace: “You don’t have to be a computer genius to use Howspace. I can design how I want the participants to engage with this education, just like we would in person. But now I can control it through my computer so that they are participating in activities and interacting with different topics when I want them to.” 

Mimicking the in-person conference—and beyond

Plaid hasn’t simply moved their in-person events online—they’ve added immense value for participants by engaging them in a social community. 

“Howspace builds a virtual community with your participants where you can engage and provide education in a format that mimics in-person learning, but in my opinion, is a lot better in many respects. Nothing’s going to replace face-to-face interactions, but Howspace allows you to keep tabs on the education that you want to provide.” 

“Howspace builds a virtual community with your participants where you can engage and provide education in a format that mimics in-person learning.”

Plaid’s partners especially love Howspace AI features, which allow them to analyze discussions, understand how participants move through a workspace, and see what they engage with.   

The future of events is hybrid 

While Plaid has been focusing on fully virtual events since Covid, their clients will start venturing into the world of hybrid events, which combine in-person and virtual elements. 

Whether an event is in-person, virtual, or a mix of both, Plaid will continue bringing value to their partners and clients by engaging participants at all steps of the learning process and empowering them to connect with one another. 

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The post Making learning sticky & social: Plaid builds engagement and virtual experiences appeared first on Howspace.