Conducting Virtual Facilitated Discussions

Virtual technology is now routinely used for meetings of large, multi-location organizations (Vandenburg and Reese, 2011), and shows great promise for bringing together geographically dispersed participants in facilitated discussions, as long as participants are familiar with the technology and comfortable using it. In most instances, it makes sense to conduct facilitated sessions in a face-to-face setting, where the facilitator can pick up on visual cues and possibly move people around to break down barriers to communication. Still, in our electronic era, tools for holding discussions via the internet are becoming increasingly user-friendly, access to broadband is increasing, and a broader base of the population is comfortable with web interactions. A web-based discussion can be a natural strategy to cope with time or travel cost constraints.