Top Ten Habits of Highly
Effective CCC Confer Moderators

As the moderator, you play a key role to ensure all participants have a great experience, one that facilitates engagement, discussion, interaction, and collaboration. Whether teaching a class or meeting with colleagues, it’s time to get in the habit of being a highly effective moderator with our Top Ten Tips:

1. Practice, Practice, Practice.

Fine-tune your moderator skills by practicing with two computers side-by-side or invite a friend or colleague to join you. We recommend you visit our website at www.cccconfer.com and attend a live online training session, view a recorded training or study the self paced training slides and quickly learn about the dynamic moderator tools available in every meeting room.

2. Facilitate Participant Orientation to the Technology.

Ensure your participants have a great first experience with CCC Confer. Make sure they have the resources they need to configure their computers prior your session. Simply direct your participants to our website www.cccconfer.org where they can test their computer readiness. At the beginning of each session show a slide that reviews housekeeping rules for your meeting.

3. Engage Participants. Experts say that there should be interaction every 6 minutes, so start off with an ice breaker, such as displaying a map on the whiteboard and having each participant indicate where they are located. Ask questions that require participants to raise their virtual hand, click an emoticon, respond to a poll, type in the chat window, or even type or draw on the whiteboard.

4. Check Frequently for Understanding.

Use instant polling, and publish the results to stimulate discussion. Plan activities using the whiteboard and breakout rooms where everyone participates. Have each group from a breakout exercise present the results of their work. Use application or desktop sharing to have participants demonstrate what you’ve been teaching.

5. Prepare Content Ahead of Time.
Create presentation slides and instructor notes; include multimedia and application sharing to help reinforce content. Don’t just expect interaction to happen, design it into your meetings or lesson plans. Your moderator notes should include what you want to say and do on each screen. Include suggested questions to promote discussion and interaction.

6. Have a ‘Producer’ in Your Session.
Teachers can extend the hours they are available to their students with Office Hours. Meet one-on-one or with groups of students. Offer the flexibility of evening and weekend virtual office hours.

7. Smile and Your Participants Will Smile With You.
Be positive and energetic, and participants will catch your enthusiasm. Your voice is critical to setting the tone. Some moderators even stand up and walk around a bit during a session. Consider using your webcam to introduce yourself at the beginning of a session. And be sure to have a user profile with photo and contact information for participants to view. Encourage them to create their own profiles as well.

8. Record the Session.
CCC Confer recordings are almost like being there. And they are a great way to build reusable content. Your notes should include a reminder to start the recording at the beginning of every session. Recordings are posted in the Archives section of the CCC Confer website, or make your recording private to share at your discretion. Archives are great for students to review the class, especially if they missed a session. You can even add indices during the live session to mark key sections in the recording. Consider creating additional recordings as tutorials to supplement your live sessions. Recordings are a great way to document the history of events in business meetings.

9. Using VOIP?
Run the Audio Wizard as soon as you join your session, and have your participants do the same. The audio wizard ensures your audio is working and the levels are correct. Include instructions on locating the Wizard on your welcome slide.

10. Join Early.
Get in the habit of joining your sessions early. Give yourself ample time to load content, set up breakout rooms, and test your webcam. You will be ready to greet your participants as they log into the session. When you are at a location where others are present, such as your office, consider putting up a sign: Do not Disturb: CCC Confering!