Roles within the team Project teams involved in digital projects should be as diverse as possible in terms of their composition. Suffi- cient resources thus need to be budgeted for. The vari- ous roles in an educational team involved in digital pro- jects can include the following:
» teaching content/inputs,
» chat monitoring.
The roles do not need to be fixed for the entire project term, but can, for example, differ from session to ses- sion. However, it is important to coordinate and make a note of these roles ahead of each session so that work is divided up evenly among the experts and none of them ends up with too heavy a workload. Since these roles can quickly overlap in a digital setting, it is recommended that project teams agree in writing who is responsible for what and which tasks. Participants can also take on various roles and responsibilities in digital exchanges de- pending on their interests and skills set, thus enabling them to contribute more to shaping a project.
» moderation,
» technical organisation/support (e.g. setting up break- out rooms, using external tools, assisting when prob- lems arise with cameras and microphones, setting up the digital environment),
» Language Animation and/or translation & interpreting,
Group Dynamics in Digital Exchanges Christoph Schneider-Laris | Freelance coach, including for the German-Polish Youth Office
In International Youth Work, the term “group dynamics” describes how group processes develop across the various phases of an exchange. Generally speaking, there are five phases in an international youth exchange (although these cannot be adopted like for like in digital formats): the getting-to-know-you phase, the orientation phase, the creative phase, the dif - ferentiation phase and, finally, the saying-goodbye phase. Experts working in a digital setting face the major challenge of having to find new ways of Identifying and handling group dynam - ic processes and phases. 6
Group dynamic processes in digital exchanges It’s OK if things take a bit longer Since you need to make sure to include informal time in digital exchanges, shared digital project time will end up being shorter. Sharing a meal and breaks, evening activi- ties and time spent physically in the same room are not au- tomatically part of an activity, but may have to be planned in addition. And three digital days are not the same as three in-person days. Both the content and structure of an in-person exchange are hard to transfer wholesale to an online project. In addition, shared screen time has its limits in terms of participants’ attention span. A week-long exchange with several hours of screen time every day can be tough. Participants and team leaders need a change of pace and activities that get them up off their seats and
moving around. A rule of thumb to apply to digital for- mats is that you should start a new activity around every 15 minutes. For example, an interactive whole-group ac- tivity can be followed by a 15-minute input block and then pair work. Try experimenting with what works for a group and suits a particular activity. If you’re planning to have several hours of screen time, then it is recommended that you do this on a maximum of only two or three consecu- tive days. To kick off with, it is good to plan shorter units of around two hours. That means less planning time, a lower thresh- old to participation and less risk of people dropping out. It gives participants the opportunity to spend time together, to talk and try things out, which can lead to them coming up with ideas for subsequent units.
6 Regarding group dynamics online, see also various IJAB documents on the DIY2 Labs entitled Online group dynamics using the 5 Rhythms (available at https://ijab.de/bestellservice/online-group-dynamics-using-the-5-rhythms) and Group dynamics online (available at https://ijab.de/bestellservice/group-dynamics-online).
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