Like us, you may think online meeting rooms, for therapeutic support groups or otherwise, are a great idea. But who is involved?

In this blog we will briefly explain exactly who you need to run an online meeting room and what their different roles are.

Three Categories

The online meeting room is used by 3 categories of people each with different access to areas of the site.

1. Administrator
2. Facilitator, or Chairperson (whoever is in charge of running the group or meeting)
3. Participants/Users

Administrator

Like traditional face-to-face support, online groups require the services of an efficient administrator to ensure the smooth running of groups and meetings.

You can assign the responsibility for certain tasks to one person. The administrator will have access to all areas of the site.

The online meeting room software has been designed with simple navigation so very high levels of computer literacy are not required and anyone, with just a little training and familiarity with the software can undertake this role.

Simple responsibilities may include:

• Processing of new users of the system
• Scheduling meetings, groups, and training and supervision sessions as required and notifying people of such.
• Checking the rota to make sure that all groups have required numbers of facilitators.
• Maintenance of existing users’ accounts for example, making changes as requested i.e. to email addresses, checking for suspended or banned users etc.
• Responding to user queries
• Processing appeals or complaints
• Creating and maintaining any necessary filing systems.
• Opening new rooms as required.
• Dissemination relevant information for discussion as required etc to relevant people prior to meetings.
• Organisation of special meetings such as question and answer sessions.

Some of these responsibilities could also be assigned to the facilitator is deemed more appropriate.

Facilitator

The Facilitator (or Chairperson) is responsible for the running of the meetings. You can chose to have any number of facilitators run a group, and for large meetings it is often best to have two per session.

Facilitation and chairing skills are largely the same as for face-to-face groups but with some obvious differences due to the nature of online meetings*.

Responsibilities may include:

• Opening the meeting room for participants to enter and closing it after the meeting is over.
• Checking the messages left in the diary.
• Keeping order and ensuring the meeting runs smoothly.
• Being responsible for creating and maintaining boundaries within the group.
• Leaving messages for other facilitators as appropriate.

(For more detailed instructions on online therapeutic support groups facilitation we have a training manual available. Please ask us about it)

Users/Participants

These are the people who attend the meeting.

After registration they:

• Will have access to the meeting room area only.
• Can logon at the appropriate time and access the meeting room only after it has been opened by the facilitator.
• Are free to take part in the meeting until the facilitator closes the room. When the room is closed each user/participant will be automatically logged out and redirected to a new page.