The ATF meeting you’re facilitating has been called to order, and the Chair is ready to start working through the agenda.  No one volunteered to be the notetaker of the meeting.  The attendees seem disengaged and disinterested.  Those who are attending virtually have their cameras turned off.  Those who are attending in person are distracted with their electronic devices.  In both modalities, body language suggests that no one is open to accepting this assignment.  The Chair is annoyed and wants to proceed.  Identify the components of concern in this scenario.  What should you do?  What could have been done to prevent this situation?

Running Zoom for the ATF meetings makes you nervous, and you aren’t confident in your skills to troubleshoot technology mishaps.  Last year, it was impossible to open the meeting link, and ultimately you ended up emailing your group’s listserv a link generated from the open-sourced version of Zoom.  After everyone successfully connected, when you tried to share the Executive Director’s Update, no one who attended via Zoom could hear it.  You spent several minutes trying to trouble shoot the sound, but in the end, participants were frustrated with the situation.  So, you sent the link to the video in the Chat and asked attendees to watch the video on their own time.  The meeting continued, but after 40 minutes, Zoom kicked everyone out and ended the meeting.  Identify the components of concern in this scenario.  What can be done?  What will you do differently to prepare for this challenge this year?

Last year your institution was marked as absent for several ATF meetings.  You didn’t realize that your faculty wasn’t represented until you saw the Attendance Report at the end of the season, going into holiday break.  When you returned from the break, you contacted the missing faculty members who said they had attended virtually.  You contacted the meeting facilitator, who said they had no record of your faculty member attending.  You tried to explain to the meeting facilitator that your representative really did attend the meeting, but it became a “her word against theirs” kind of a thing.  Identify the components of concern in this scenario.  How will you prepare differently to get a different result this season?  What proactive measures can be taken?

During the ATF meeting you are facilitating, faculty members identify several changes to the CCM and EEG that need to be made.  They’ve requested a major overhaul to how the CCM is organized, including the column headings, asterisk annotations, ATF title, and equivalency data.  Someone makes the remark, “We’ve been asking for this stuff to be changed for the last three years, and it still isn’t changed!  Why do we even come to these meetings?”  Now the meeting is coming to an end.  Next up in the agenda is the institutional updates section.  The report from one institution crossed into unprofessional territory when they referred to decision-makers at their institution in a negative way and criticized AZTransfer practices.  It is clear that tensions are rising in the room.  Identify the areas of concern in this case study.  What should you do?

The virtual meeting you are facilitating, which was scheduled for a four-hour block of time, is about to end after 30 minutes.  The group seemed to operate efficiently, but in the end, the meeting yielded almost no work product -- no updates to any of the tracking tools were identified as necessary.  The group is discussing arrangements for next year’s meeting.  They want to hold the meeting in person, but no one will step up and offer to chair or host the 2024 meeting.  The current Chair is quickly bringing the meeting to a close without these issues being resolved, saying that you (as the facilitator) will follow up with the group later, after they’ve had a chance to think about their potential involvement.  Identify areas of concern in this case study.  How can this situation be improved?  How could this situation have been prevented?

You are scheduled to facilitate a meeting that will take place 1 month from today.  The person who volunteered to be Chair for the ATF meeting just quit.  The person who agreed to be the host for the meeting just took a new job at another institution and is no longer able to host.  Identify the areas of concern for this situation.  What aspects of the meeting will this lack of leadership impact?  What are some possible solutions?  What changes if the meeting takes place in 2 days from now, instead of 1 month from now?

You are facilitating a hybrid meeting.  You have found that the very nature of hybrid meetings creates unique challenges.  Today, most of the virtual attendees have their cameras turned off, but a few are eating on camera.  One person took a phone call while on camera and didn’t mute themselves.  A few attendees use the hand raising feature at appropriate times, but those attending in-person ignore them and talk at will.  But the virtual attendees can’t hear them because the microphone isn’t catching and amplifying the voices of those who are in-person.  The online contingency utilizes the chat feature, but the in-person attendees aren’t aware of things said in the chat.  At one point, one of the virtual participants forgot that his camera was on, resulting in an embarrassing situation.  Identify the areas of concern in this case study.  What are some solutions?  What are the ramifications of poor meeting management?

You are facilitating an ATF meeting, and the equivalency value of a new community college course offering is being discussed.  A few comments are made by members of the ATF that imply that ultimately, the equivalency value will depend on course rigor and the credentials of the faculty member teaching the course, citing that both will affect outcomes.  After all, according to some of the faculty, a course is only considered direct equivalencies if the learning is of college level and it aligns with a specific class in a specific department.  You perceive contention and discomfort.  Identify some of the areas of concern in this case study.  What can you do to de-escalate the situation?  What AZTransfer policy/ policies can be cited that will help educate those who are in attendance?

You are prepared to facilitate a hybrid meeting, which will take place tomorrow morning.  The host is a new member of AZTransfer and “high maintenance”, meaning that onboarding them has taken you a great deal of time.  The meeting will be held in a new building, and the host is proud of their good fortune and very excited to show off their new space.  The host has taken great care to ensure that everything will be perfect tomorrow – the meeting space, the lunchtime food selection, and is even providing a morning snack.  Before you leave the office for the day, you check the RSVP record one last time, and see that at the last minute, several have changed their in-person attendance and will now participate virtually.  This means that the only people who will be there in person is the chair, the host, 1 other person, and you.  Identify the areas of concern.  What are the ramifications of this situation?  What are some solutions?  What should you do?