Virtual workshops make it easy to look present while being somewhere else entirely. Email, Teams messages, notifications and actual work all sit one click away, competing for attention.
The answer isn’t to force cameras on or add another poll every few minutes. Visible activity isn’t the same as meaningful participation.
The Virtual Attention Check helps you review a workshop before you deliver it, spot where attention or participation may drift, and choose one or two useful changes.
What Will the Virtual Attention Check Help You Notice?
Use it to take a fresh look at:
- whether the relevance of the workshop is clear from the start
- where people are being asked to think, decide, discuss, practise or apply
- where attention could drift, including your own attention as the facilitator
It also prompts you to consider whether people have different ways to contribute and whether they’re clear about what they should do differently afterwards.
This isn’t a scorecard and there’s no pass mark. It’s a practical sense-check for a workshop you already know, particularly when it contains a lot of content, relies on the same few confident contributors or feels technically interactive without involving very many people.
Want to Explore the Thinking Behind It?
Read How to Design a Virtual Workshop People Actually Participate In for Catherine Nicholson’s practical lessons from over 15 years of virtual facilitation, including the Five-Minute Disappearance Test.
If the challenge goes beyond one workshop, VTT’s Flagship Train the Trainer programme helps experienced trainers strengthen how they design and deliver learning that creates meaningful participation and behaviour change.
