*Running a meeting - before, during and after
In this course, you will hold several online meetings. Before each meeting, you must clarify the purpose of the meeting. You can do this by reading the team meeting instructions in Moodle.
Within the team, you will decide who the chair and the secretary for each meeting will be. The role of a chairperson is to help meetings run smoothly and efficiently, while ensuring the agenda is followed. It is their responsibility to lead the meeting, maintain order and ensure everyone gets to have their say. The task of the secretary will be to write the meeting reports and minutes. We recommend taking turns in chairing and writing the meeting minutes.
Meeting minutes are a formal written record of the discussions, decisions, and actions taken during a meeting. Key components typically included in meeting minutes are:
- Date, time, and location
- Attendees
- Agenda items
- Discussion summaries
- Decisions made
- Action items
- Follow-up tasks
- Next steps
Meeting minutes should be accurate, objective, and concise, capturing the essence of the meeting without including unnecessary detail. They are usually distributed to all attendees and relevant stakeholders after the meeting for review and reference.
Before you schedule your first meeting, complete the following three tasks:
1) Study the tips for taking meeting minutes/notes in one or both of the links below.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/meeting-minutes/ (text)
2) Review useful English phrases and vocabulary for meetings
https://www.thoughtco.com/phrases-for-running-a-business-meeting-1209021
https://www.englishclub.com/business-english/meetings-vocabulary.htm
3) Review a list of action-focused verbs that you can try to use when writing the meeting minutes.
https://exceptionalea.com/about-exceptional-ea/minutes/elevating-your-minutes-action-focused-verbs/