Pre-work

Tasks done beforehand & used in session

Pre-work is more important online than in a physical room, because you cannot do a quick catch-up at the door when the call starts.

Pre-work is any task participants complete before the live session: reading a brief, watching a short video, filling in a survey, making something, or reflecting on a question. Done well, it raises the quality of what happens on the call and shortens the time you need for the live session itself.

Online, the gap between who has prepared and who has not is more visible and more disruptive. In a room you can sense it and adjust. On a screen, unprepared participants create drag for everyone else, because there is less slack in the format to absorb it.

Pre-work also gives participants a reason to feel invested before the call starts. That investment matters online, where the pull of other tabs is always present.

Online, specificallyOnline participants arrive cold unless you warm them up beforehand, so pre-work is not optional polish but the thing that makes the live session worth the hour.

In a remote session

The same building block as it plays out online: how experienced facilitators tend to handle it when the room is a screen. Illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

Keep it short and clear

Experienced facilitators set pre-work that takes fifteen to thirty minutes at most, with a specific deliverable: a sentence, a photo, three words. Open-ended requests get skipped.

Connect it to the session

They tell participants exactly how the pre-work will be used in the live session. 'We will share these in breakout groups' means people do it. 'Please have a think about X' means most will not.

Send it with enough lead time

Three to five days before the session is the window where people actually do it. The day before is too late for anything that requires real thought; two weeks before is too early to stay in mind.

Follow up once

A short reminder one or two days before the session, restating what to do and how long it takes, doubles completion rates without being pushy.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

What would participants knowing or having done beforehand make the live session meaningfully better?
How much time are you realistically asking participants to give before the call, and is that reasonable?
How will you tell participants exactly how their pre-work will be used in the session?
What happens in the live session if some participants have not done the pre-work?
When will the pre-work go out, and when will you send the reminder?

What trips people up online

Pre-work that is too long or too vague gets skipped, and then the live session has to start from zero anyway.
Not linking the pre-work explicitly to a moment in the session makes it feel optional, so participants treat it as such.
Assuming all participants have equal time and access to complete pre-work can create inequity in who arrives prepared.