Considerations for Online Tutorials

• Don't use Breakout Rooms during the hands-on, instead stay in the main room and use Breakout Rooms to solve issues or discuss specific subjects.
• Slack vs. Zoom: Quick questions to Zoom (chat or Breakout Rooms) for longer discussions Slack (and threads in slack) is favored.
• We need to present how Zoom works in the beginning of the Tutorial.
• Don't assign suggested time slots for pre-recorded talks. Instead, just add links to the talks they have to watch for each hands-on session in the time slot of the hands-on session. This to avoid any confusion about the starting time of the tutorial.
• Historically we had around 80% average attendance: we can support up to 60 participants (48 net) in each group.
• It is convenient to record the explanations during the hands-on sessions so participants can watch it later.
• Consider pauses, including the possibility of a “break day” to digest (which isn’t difficult due to the virtual format, but AWS could cost a little more though). You can also do a social event for this (see below) but be careful with advertising the social event as part of a break day or only activity, because no one will show (better for a "break afternoon").

Networking and Social interaction

It is important to consider this aspect.

Things that we have tested:

• July 2020: Scientific speed dating?

QUESTIONS:

• After the tutorial ends, we no longer check the slack workspace. But slack can be a nice way for them to continue asking questions as they keep going through the material. Maybe we should have a user questions channel on the aiida slack where we can direct them (and other users) to ask questions?
• People (understandably) didn't like the use of Zoom chat, maybe switch from slack to Zulip.