7.1 Facilitating a digital dialogue

Our role

We will take on most of the facilitation in Digital Dialogue events. We will:

• Manage the technology and ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible.
• Support the politician, briefing them beforehand and ensuring they know what is expected of them during the session.
• Manage the session timings, and make sure that we get through as many questions as possible.
• Facilitate the conversation.  We encourage politicians to ask the learners questions and to prompt them when appropriate. We also will clarify politician questions if we feel the learners need support in understanding what they are being asked.
  We have been facilitating online discussions since 2015 and are experts on making the online experience as engaging as possible.

Your role

In a Digital Dialogue your main role is to support your learners to get the most out of the session. 
Plan the session with the learners
Work with the learners beforehand to come up with a running order for the questions - that way you can ensure you have a good mix of questions, that there is a good ‘flow’ of questions, with relationship questions sprinkled throughout. You can also make sure that you don’t get any questions that are essentially asking the same thing. 
We would also advise you to make sure the learners have their questions written down. Nerves can get the better of learners sometimes, and even the most confident will forget their questions if they don’t have it in front of them.
Prepare an introduction and thank you
We suggest coaching one or two of your learners to introduce the group and school to the politician at the beginning of the event and to say thank you to the politician at the end. You can see an example here.

Support all learners to engage
From feedback, the more the learners feel involved and part of the Dialogue, the bigger and better the impact it has on them. 
Encourage as many learners as possible to ask questions. All questions should come from the learners. Share out the introduction and thank you duties. 
When politicians do ask questions, sometimes the learners need some time to think and discuss before answering. Facilitate those discussions and help learners come up with their own answers.