Best Practices for Virtual Participation in Meetings: Experiences from Synthesis Centers

Abstract

The earth environment is a complex system, in which collaborative scientific approaches can provide major benefits by bringing together diverse perspectives, methods, and data, to achieve robust, synthetic understanding (Fig. 1). Face-to-face scientific meetings remain extremely valuable because of the opportunity to build deep mutual trust and understanding, and develop new collaborations and sometimes even lifelong friendships (Alberts 2013, Cooke and Hilton 2015). However, it has been argued that ecologists should be particularly sensitive to the environmental footprint of travel (Fox et al. 2009); such concerns, along with the time demands for travel, particularly for multi-national working groups, provide strong motivation for exploring virtual attendance. While not replacing the richness of face-to-face interactions entirely, it is now feasible to virtually participate in meetings through services that allow video, audio, and file sharing, as well as other Web-enabled communication. In addition to reducing the environmental impacts of travel, remote participation can also increase social inclusivity, creating a more level playing field for a wider variety of collaborators than might be possible if relying solely on face-to-face meetings (Fraser et al. 2016). Travel is time-intensive and expensive, and even in countries or sectors where financial support for science is comparatively good, funding is declining. Moreover, the complexity of the environmental challenges we face, which often cross borders, demands connecting people from around the world. For some, remote participation may be the only option, particularly when visa complications create significant transactional costs. For others, virtual attendance can allow for navigating complex professional or personal commitments (such as the care of children or elders). An extensive study on the use of virtual meetings across agencies in Sweden showed that nearly three-quarters of participants reported increased work productivity as well as reduced stress levels (Arnfalk et al. 2016). Although technology now exists to enable high-quality virtual participation in meetings, participants frequently encounter technological and sociocultural obstacles. For instance, virtual participants sometimes become peripheral collaborators during face-to-face meetings due to inattention on either side or audio-visual difficulties. Meeting organizers and participants are often unfamiliar with techniques that can help minimize these difficulties. Modest changes in our behaviors, communication techniques, and use of technology can vastly improve virtual participation and help to create more positive experiences for virtual and in-person participants. A central function of synthesis centers is organizing meetings of participants from disparate disciplines and locations (Rodrigo et al. 2013, Lynch et al. 2015). The more diverse the participants are disciplinarily or culturally, the greater the communication challenges and the more important it is to focus on facilitating meetings (Crowston et al. 2015). These challenges become even greater when there are virtual participants in meetings, so careful attention to practices that minimize poor communication can dramatically enhance meeting effectiveness and the quality of the experience. Our goal in this study is, from our considerable experience, to share some lessons learned that promote a higher-quality experience working with communication technologies, and that can move our community toward more inclusive and lower environmental impact modes of collaboration. Specific suggestions are as follows: For the meeting organizers: For the virtual attendees: For all participants: New technologies have clearly transformed the conduct and social organization of scientific collaboration (Olson and Olson 2000, Cummings et al. 2008, Olson and Zimmerman 2008), particularly as the size of scientific teams and the spatial distribution of their participants continue to grow (Wuchty et al. 2007). Technologies devoted to virtual forms of collaboration are becoming more sophisticated but have yet to achieve the richness and depth of face-to-face interactions in terms of efficiency of communication, transmitting tacit forms of scientific knowledge, and establishing trust, cohesion, continuity of purpose, and clear working roles (Cooke and Hilton 2015). Virtual collaborations are not a panacea and these technologies are a long way from entirely replacing face-to-face intellectual engagement, but properly used and aided and abetted by co-located meetings, they can provide a solid foundation for a more productive and inclusive scientific teamwork.