Facilitating for a shared understanding

This paper explores a number of variations to facilitation protocols that are effective when using technology to support the brain storming processes such as in nominal group technique. Electronic brainstorming can produce many ideas, and sometimes too many for a group to handle effectively. In an environment where a shared understanding is important to task outcome, the ability to group, summarize or otherwise process the ideas generated is important. This paper describes a number of different ways of achieving this outcome, and includes examples drawn from commercial practice using the Zing Team Room™ GSS. It draws upon reflection on practice and combines it with the issues of group effectiveness and

team building to describe useful facilitation techniques.