How Do You Create Engaging Virtual Professional Development?

Before 2020, almost all of the professional development I facilitated happened in person. Then COVID hit, and like so many facilitators, we suddenly had to figure out how to do this work virtually.

I had spent decades learning how to facilitate adults in a room together. I knew how to read the energy, move people into different configurations, notice when someone looked confused or disengaged, and make adjustments as I went. Suddenly, everyone was a tiny square on my screen, and so many of the moves I relied on weren’t available to me in the same way.

At first, I worried that something essential would be lost. Could people really connect? Could a virtual workshop lead to the kind of reflection, practice, and transformation I wanted from professional development?

What I learned is that the potential for transformation doesn’t change when professional development moves online. The container does.

And that meant I had a lot to learn.

And so the experiments began. I tried things that worked beautifully and things that absolutely did not. I learned how much more intentional I needed to be about instructions, transitions, pacing, breakout rooms, materials, technology, and the many different ways people could participate. Over time, I stopped thinking of virtual professional development as a lesser substitute for being together in person and began to appreciate what was uniquely possible online.

I also learned that engaging virtual PD isn’t about adding more activities or technology. Adults still need meaningful opportunities to think, connect, contribute, and practice. We just have to design those experiences differently online.

Start With the Learning, Not the Technology

When you’re designing virtual professional development, it’s tempting to start with everything the platform allows you to do.

Should we use a poll here? Could this be a breakout room? What if everyone adds a sticky note to a shared board?

But the technology is never the place to start.

Start with the learning: What do we want participants to learn or be able to do differently, and what do they need to experience in order to get there?

That’s the same question I would ask when designing in-person professional development.

Then you can decide what the virtual environment makes possible.

A poll might help you quickly surface what people already think about a topic. A breakout room might give participants a chance to make sense of an idea with colleagues. A shared document might allow a group to build something together. Chat might give everyone a chance to respond to a question at once.

Choose the technology because it supports the learning, not because it’s available to you.

Design for What Adults Need to Learn

The principles of adult learning don’t change when people log onto Zoom. Adults still need purpose, relevance, agency, connection, practice, and feedback.

What changes is how we create those conditions. In a physical room, connection and participation can happen more organically. Online, we need to design for them—through intentional opportunities to connect, reflect, contribute, and talk with others.

The question isn’t, “How do I keep everyone doing something?” It’s “What will help these adults learn in this environment?”

Prepare People Before They Log On

The virtual learning experience begins before people pop up on the screen.

Participants need to know where to go, what they need, what you’re asking them to do beforehand, and why that preparation matters.

This can sound like logistics rather than engagement, but the two are connected.

When people spend the first ten minutes searching for a link, requesting permission to access a document, or trying to figure out which attachment you’re referring to, their attention shifts away from learning. Confusion over materials can quickly erode trust; easy access allows participants to focus their energy where you actually want it.

I like to make the experience as simple as possible. Put materials somewhere participants can easily access them. Test permissions. Tell people what to expect. If there’s prework, keep it reasonable, tell them how long it will take, and make it clear how you’ll use it when you’re together.

The goal is to remove as much unnecessary friction as possible before learning begins.

Make the Technology Almost Disappear

One of the best things technology can do in virtual professional development is to become unremarkable.

Participants know where to click. The link works. The instructions are clear. They understand what they’re supposed to do, and they can focus on the conversation rather than figuring out the tool.

That usually requires more preparation from the facilitator, not more technology.

In our Virtual PD Tech Toolkit, we recommend simplifying the number of tools you use, as each additional platform adds cognitive load. Multiple logins and frequent movement between tools can create frustration and cause participants to get lost along the way.

I’d rather use one simple tool really well than introduce five impressive ones that participants have to learn while they’re also trying to learn the content.

And if you are asking people to use a tool, don’t assume they know how. A quick demonstration can take less than a minute and prevent several minutes of confusion later.

Good virtual facilitation makes it easy for people to participate.

Build Multiple Ways to Participate

One of the advantages of virtual facilitation is that participation doesn’t have to mean speaking to the whole group.

People can reflect privately, respond in chat, use reactions, contribute to a poll, annotate a screen, work in a shared document, talk with one other person, or work in a small breakout group.

That creates opportunities to hear from people who might not raise their hand in a large group.

But again, more participation isn’t automatically better.

If participants are responding to a poll, immediately typing something into chat, moving into a breakout room, adding sticky notes to a board, and then racing back to the main room for another prompt, they may be very busy without doing much meaningful thinking.

I try to vary participation based on what the learning requires.

Sometimes I want people to hear an idea and sit quietly with it. Sometimes I want everyone to commit to a response before seeing what anyone else thinks, and a chat waterfall works beautifully for that. Sometimes participants need enough time with two or three other people to wrestle with a complicated question. Sometimes we need the whole group together because there’s something important we need to make sense of collectively.

Engagement = meaningful involvement in the learning.

Use Breakout Rooms With Intention

Breakout rooms can be one of the most powerful structures in virtual professional development.

They can also be where learning goes to die.

You send people into rooms, there are five seconds of silence, someone finally says, “So…what are we supposed to be doing?” Another person says, “I think there was a question on the slide?” Someone starts answering, the warning flashes that the room is closing, and everyone returns to the main room, having accomplished very little.

That’s not a breakout-room problem. It’s a design and facilitation problem.

Before participants leave the main room, they should understand what they’re discussing or doing, why they’re doing it, how much time they have, and what—if anything—they’ll need to bring back.

I also like putting the instructions somewhere participants can see them after they enter the breakout room. In the Virtual PD Tech Toolkit, we recommend preparing those instructions in advance, including timing, roles, and prompts, so they can be quickly pasted into the chat.

And give people enough time.

If it takes a minute to enter the room and get oriented, then a four-minute breakout is not meaningful. If you want people to have a meaningful conversation, the amount of time you provide should reflect that.

Pay Attention to Pacing and Energy

Virtual learning requires a different awareness of pace.

Talking nonstop is tiring in any workshop, but it becomes especially brutal on a screen. Silence, on the other hand, can feel uncomfortable to a facilitator even when participants need it.

Don’t be afraid of pauses.

Give people 20 seconds to think before asking for a response. Let them jot something down. Build in breaks during longer sessions. Shift between listening, reflecting, talking, and practicing rather than asking people to engage in the same way for long stretches of time.

Your own presence matters too. How you show up on screen contributes to the learning atmosphere, and small choices—your pacing, facial expressions, gestures, tone, and willingness to allow silence—communicate a tremendous amount.

You don’t need to manufacture endless energy.

Good virtual facilitation simply requires paying attention to the energy in the room and designing a pace that helps people sustain their attention.

Design Slides to Support Attention, Not Compete for It

Slides take up a lot of visual space in a virtual workshop, so what you put on them matters.

Less is almost always more.

If I’m talking while participants are trying to read several paragraphs on a slide, I’m asking them to decide where to put their attention. Usually neither my words nor the slide gets their full attention.

Our Virtual PD Tech Toolkit teaches how to treat slides as visual cues rather than scripts: focus on one idea at a time, use phrases rather than paragraphs, and place prompts or questions on the screen when you want participants to think or respond.

A slide can tell people where you are in the learning, focus their attention on an important idea, or make the directions for an activity easier to follow.

It doesn’t need to contain everything you know.

Prepare the Technology So You Can Focus on the People

Virtual facilitation asks you to manage a lot at once.

You may be watching the chat, advancing slides, opening breakout rooms, dropping links, monitoring time, responding to participants, and trying to remember what comes next.

The more of that you can prepare in advance, the more attention you have available for the people you’re facilitating.

One of the tools we use is a virtual Ops Box: a section of the facilitator agenda that includes links, breakout instructions, chat messages, polls, and other operational materials you’ll need during the session. Instead of searching through tabs while people wait, you have what you need ready to go.

This kind of preparation may not sound like an engagement strategy, but it absolutely is.

Every bit of attention you don’t have to spend managing the technology is attention you can give to the learners.

You can notice that people look confused. You can read what’s emerging in the chat. You can listen carefully to a participant instead of wondering where you saved the breakout-room instructions.

Preparation creates capacity for presence.

Assume Something Will Go Wrong

At some point, a link won’t work.

Your poll won’t load. Someone won’t be able to access the document. Your internet will become unstable. Breakout rooms will refuse to cooperate five minutes after they worked perfectly during your tech check.

What matters is how prepared you are to adapt when it does.

Have a backup version of important materials. Know what you’ll do if a digital activity doesn’t work. If you have a co-facilitator, decide in advance what happens if one of you loses your connection. Keep alternatives simple: a failed poll can become a reaction, hand raise, or chat response; a digital activity can sometimes become a conversation or individual reflection.

Most importantly, don’t let a minor technology problem derail you. Always be prepared to say, “That’s not working. Let’s do this instead,” and keep going.

Don’t Let the Technology Distract You From Facilitation

This is the mistake I most want virtual facilitators to avoid.

It’s easy to become so focused on mastering the technology that we forget the skills that matter most.

You still need to establish a meaningful purpose. You still need to build trust and psychological safety. You still need to understand how adults learn, engage emotions, navigate power, design intentionally, communicate clearly, and adapt when something unexpected happens. Those are the same habits that shape strong facilitation in a physical room.

The virtual environment simply changes some of the ways you enact them.

Technology can expand participation. It can help people connect across geography. It can create ways for many voices to contribute simultaneously. Used thoughtlessly, it can also distract, frustrate, and increase cognitive load. Used intentionally, it can foster connection and promote equity.

The goal isn’t to become a Zoom expert. It’s to become a great facilitator in a virtual environment.

Key Takeaways

Engaging virtual professional development begins with the same question as engaging in person: What do participants need to experience to learn and change their practice? Technology should support that experience rather than determine it.

Strong virtual facilitation reduces unnecessary friction, gives adults multiple meaningful ways to participate, uses breakout rooms intentionally, varies pacing, and prepares operational details in advance so the facilitator can focus on the people rather than the platform.

Engagement also doesn’t require constant activity. Adults need opportunities to talk and interact, but they also need time to think, reflect, make connections, practice, and receive feedback. The goal is meaningful participation, not simply keeping everyone busy.

And something will eventually go wrong. Preparing backup plans and becoming comfortable adapting allows you to keep a technology problem from becoming a learning problem.

Questions I Hear Most Often

How do you make virtual professional development engaging?

Start with the learning rather than the technology. Give participants meaningful reasons to think, contribute, discuss, and practice, and then choose virtual structures that support those goals. Vary participation across reflection, chat, polls, small groups, whole-group conversation, and practice rather than relying on one form of interaction throughout the session.

How often should participants interact during virtual professional development?

There isn’t a formula for how many minutes should pass before participants interact. Instead, ask what participants need to be doing at each point in the learning. Sometimes they need to listen. Sometimes they need quiet processing time. Sometimes they need to discuss, practice, or make sense of an idea with someone else. Interaction should serve learning rather than simply be added to keep people active.

How do you make breakout rooms more effective?

Give participants clear instructions before they enter the breakout room, including what they’re doing, how much time they have, and what they’ll do when they return. Make the directions available inside the breakout room, provide enough time for a meaningful conversation, and only use a breakout when working in a smaller group actually improves the learning.

What technology should I use for virtual professional development?

Use the least amount of technology necessary to accomplish your learning goals. Too many tools increase cognitive load and can distract from the content. Choose a small number of tools you know well, test them beforehand, make access simple, and have lower-tech alternatives available if something fails.

How do you keep people energized during long virtual workshops?

Vary what you ask people to do and build in genuine breaks. Move between listening, reflecting, discussing, practicing, and contributing in different ways. Pay attention to the energy in the room rather than assuming you need to continually increase it with activities or technology.

Should participants be required to keep their cameras on during virtual professional development?

Rather than treating cameras as proof of engagement, consider what conditions enable people to participate meaningfully. Camera use can be influenced by bandwidth, environment, accessibility, comfort, and other factors. Design multiple ways for participants to demonstrate their thinking and contribute to learning, rather than relying on visual presence as your primary measure of engagement.

Keep Learning

Want more support designing virtual learning? The Virtual PD Tech Toolkit is a practical, grab-and-go resource for facilitating smoother, more engaging online professional development. It includes guidance for preparing participants, designing materials and slides, managing breakout rooms, simplifying technology, creating backup plans, and improving your virtual facilitation over time.

Continue Reading

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• How to Facilitate Adult Learning That Leads to Lasting Change
• How Do Adult Learning Principles Influence Workshop Design?
• How Do You Make Meetings More Engaging?
• What Makes Effective Facilitator Training?

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• The Art of Virtual Facilitation: Learn how to translate strong facilitation into the virtual environment and design online learning experiences that are engaging, human, and grounded in how adults learn.
• PD That Changes Practice: Learn how to design and facilitate professional learning that results in meaningful changes in practice.
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