Are you looking for new ways to engage with the community during these challenging times?
Participate Melbourne has a variety of tools that can be substituted for workshops, roundtables and drop-in sessions, used to deliver face-to-face consultations.
It could be for targeted stakeholder engagement, understanding sentiment on an issue or contributing feedback to a city shaping initiative.
We've outlined some tools and examples that can substitute the following event formats:
- Workshops
- Open forums
- Drop-in sessions
- Evaluation
Workshops
A space for the host to present information to an audience, take questions and have the community provide their ideas.
What are we replicating and what are the equivalent online tools?
This is a digital post-it board where participants can respond to your question/s with text, photos and video card responses. Participants can also vote and comment on the cards, which can be filtered dynamically by the admin.
Example: Skate park Redesign and Future Melbourne 2026
A simplified gather tool, participants can post short text responses to a call to action. Participants can up and down vote responses that can be arranged by the admin.
Example: Transport Strategy
Similar to the Gather tool but with the ability to prioritise cards based on a dollar or points system. This could be used instead of dot voting process to help identify which ideas are most important to a group.
The video tool enables you to embed a YouTube live stream.
It is advised to keep video content directly to the point and to utilise slides or ways to present information in a visual manner as people’s attention spans on digital devices is much more limited than in-person.
A video can be used (just as with a face-to-face workshop) to set the context around what your consultation is about, direct people how to participate (e.g. “join the live chat on this page”) as well as present complex information that may be harder to digest in a document (with a combination of visual information and voice).
Example: Affordable Housing Strategy
Webinars
Webinars are live events that are then uploaded to the website once the event is finished. Webinars allow a large number of people to watch you present, and participate by asking questions or providing comment (like in a face-to-face workshop).
At this stage there is no native webinar support on Participate Melbourne (tool currently in development), however recorded webinars can be uploaded as Youtube videos.
Popular webinar services used by the City of Melbourne include Skype and Zoom. Please talk to your Branch to determine what webinar services are available.
Open forums (e.g. roundtables/world-café)
To clarify and to create a space for diverse views on a topic.
What are we replicating and what are the equivalent online tools?
Conversation and Forum
The Conversation tool is used for real-time dialogue as it allows participants to create a new comment thread or respond in-thread. The Forum tool provides the ability to post multiple conversations that link- off to individual sub-pages, and is perfect for a multi-question discussion.
These tools are particularly useful for live chat discussions, just as you would have at an open forum.
As with an event, you should notify participants when you will be online (e.g. Monday 3-5pm) and ensure it is staffed to respond and moderate in real-time. We recommend post-moderation (after it is posted) to enable dynamic responses.
Example: Smoke Free Causeway
Case study: Victoria on-demand workforce
Drop-in sessions
A space for the community to see information about a project and ask questions.
What are we replicating and what are the equivalent online tools?
The Q&A tool allows participants to ask questions in a structured way and have other users vote on the questions that are of interest to them.
Representatives can then respond under an official profile that can include your department logo or a profile picture. This allows you to create a space for considered responses to the main questions the community may have in relation to your project.
Example: Open Innovation Competition
The Social Map tool makes it easy for the community to leave spatially-based, qualitative feedback including questions via an interactive map – perfect for infrastructure and place-based change projects.
Users are asked to pinpoint their comments on the map, and can optionally view other users' comments. You have the ability to customise the map by adding boundaries and markers as well as by uploading your own base map style using existing services like Carto and Mapbox.
Example: Hoddle Grid and North Melbourne Heritage Review
At most face to face events, there will be a PowerPoint or slideshow of some sort. To replicate this online, we recommend using the image slider tool which allows your users to click through various slides that are uploaded as images. The content will also be accessible with the option to add it as ‘alternative text’ for those with screen readers.
Example: Birrarung Strategy
The Hotspot tool allows you to annotate images with animated 'hotspots' - glowing circles that can be clicked for more information, images, videos and galleries. You can customise the colour and size of each spot and choose from a library of over 1000 icons to better illustrate the category or purpose of each annotation.
This tool can be useful for illustrating plans, artist's impressions and any other image where annotation or additional information could be added to enhance and illustrate your project's story further.
Example: Holland Park
Evaluation
What are we replicating and what are the equivalent online tools?
The form tool can be used to collect evaluation feedback as well as project registrations. Choose from three different templates, 15 different question types, and add logic to ask follow-up questions and create more 'conversational' forms.
The form tool has a range of question types you can ask such as multiple choice, radio buttons, long text, file upload, and Likert scale and rating options.
Example: Affordable Housing Strategy and Startup Melbourne
The Quick Poll tool allows you to poll your audience with a single, multiple choice question that is easy to respond to. Results can optionally be made visible to the user either before or after voting.
Example: to come.
