Guidelines for Session Chairs

Thank you for serving as the chair of a PAA session! The quality and tenor of the session will be impacted by your work; this may be especially the case during this year’s virtual meeting. So, in advance, thank you for reading these guidelines and for trying to facilitate a great session.

Note that your role as chair includes both pre-conference preparation and facilitation during the conference. Please build a good rapport among the presenters in advance (by making introductions/connections among the participants) and to set a positive tone during the session (by ensuring a fair allocation of available time and fostering a collegial and professional exchange). Should challenges arise, you will be looked to for guidance and leadership (and please see the instructions below if you need help). We offer these guidelines to you as the chair of a regular, flash, or invited session.

At least one month before the conference (we suggest by April 1^st), please connect with all of your presenters, including discussants, on the following six points:

1. Please lay out the plan for the session and specify the time to be allocated for each presenter and discussant. If you wish to enforce a slide limit in the interest of time, make sure to tell presenters in advance; one slide per minute is a useful rule of thumb. Be sure to reserve time for audience questions at the end. Important: virtual sessions this year are just 75 minutes long!

 * For a typical four-paper regular session or invited session, a benchmark schedule would be 3 minutes to get going and make introductions, 12 minutes for each presentation, 12 minutes for the discussant, and 12 minutes for audience questions.

2. Please remind presenters in oral sessions that the deadline for participants to upload papers on the PAA Conference website is April 17^th in order to make them available to the session's discussant. (This does not apply to presenters in flash sessions, for which there is no discussant). If your discussant is willing to accept papers after the posted deadline, you can arrange a later deadline with presenters. In any case, we encourage you to make it clear to participants that there is a deadline to upload papers for discussants and that discussants are not required to discuss any paper received after the deadline.
   
   
3. Please encourage presenters to share any materials available in advance of the session with all other members of the session. This allows presenters to build upon on each other's work, identify linkages across presentations, and save time by not repeating the obvious from someone else's presentation.
   
   
4. At the same time, please let members of your session know that all materials received (papers and presentations) should not be circulated to anyone beyond the participants in the session.
   
   
5. Finally, please make a plan with the members of your session regarding screen sharing. We think it will be most effective if each presenter and each discussant share their own screen. Having a plan ahead of time, and sharing that plan with other members of your session, will help you save time during the session. We encourage you to have a ‘practice’ session a week or two before your actual session to introduce participants to each other and to ensure that everyone is comfortable with use of the online technology.

At the Session

1.  With Open Water, PAA’s virtual platform, sessions will take place in Zoom (as a meeting).  As the chair, you will serve as the host of this session and will be responsible for starting the session.  The room will not be open to participants until you start it. You can make your presenting authors co-hosts.
   
   
2. Please arrive early; we suggest arriving into your session 10-15 minutes early. Please welcome your speakers and attendees as they join. Make sure you have the correct pronunciation of participants’ names.
   
   
3. Please make sure to start on time and end on time. This maximizes the time allocated for content and keeps the overall conference on schedule. As is typical for the PAA meetings, we strongly encourage you to defer all audience questions and comments until the end, after all presenters and the discussant have spoken. Please decide in advance if you’d like to use the ‘Chat’ function and receive questions in Chat to be asked at the end.
   
   
4. Please set the stage. Welcome the audience, introduce yourself (name and affiliation) as the Chair, and identify the session title. You may add a brief comment or two to prime the audience for the session, but please limit your remarks to avoid impinging on presenters’ time. Please notify the audience that they should hold questions until the end – and/or let them know if you’ll be receiving questions in Chat during the talks that you will hold until the end.
   
   
5. We encourage you to introduce each presenter and title as one speaker is transitioning to the next. You can thank the previous presenter and introduce the next, noting the name and affiliation of the individual giving the presentation and the title of their paper.
   
   
6. Please keep to the order listed in the program. Some people come to listen to one speaker and may be disappointed if the presentations are not made in order.
   
   
7. Please watch the clock and monitor time. Warn your speakers as their time draws to a close by indicating the time remaining (typically 5 minutes, 2 minutes, and stop); you may need to do this audibly given the Zoom platform. Please be firm. This is simply fair to everyone. This will be far easier if you have clearly communicated to them the ground rules in advance of the session via email and reminded the presenters about your responsibility before the session starts.
   
   
8. Please be sure to allow time for audience discussion at the end, and let audience members know how to ask questions (wave hand or use ‘raise hand’ function and/or use Chat); audience discussion is a crucial element of PAA sessions, and many audience members are disappointed if they don’t have the opportunity to engage the panel. At the same time, please be prepared to facilitate discussion (including interjecting your own questions if audience members do not have questions right away); this will be more important than ever given the virtual format. If you have time, you may want to ask presenters if they want to briefly respond to discussant comments before the audience participation. However, please do not let this interfere with the audience’s opportunity to participate.
   
   
9. During the discussion period, please scan the Zoom audience for hands raised (either actual or electronic), trying to first select people who raised their hand earliest. Please set an expectation for professional, courteous, discourse. If there are many people with questions, please try to avoid letting one person monopolize the discussion.
   
   
10. Please wrap-up and end on time. Clearly define the conclusion of the session by thanking the presenters and the audience and state that the session has ended.
    
    
11. Please troubleshoot if necessary. As the Chair, people will turn to you should problems arise and expect you to manage the session and respond to challenges. Click the “Help” button at the top of the screen if there are technical issues. You can also email PAA staff at paaonsite@popassoc.org. This email will go to all PAA staff who will provide help as soon as possible. Please keep in mind that this email address will only be monitored from the start of the pre-conference workshop until the end of the conference, and staff will only respond to emails concerning technical issues or emergencies.

To access the papers in your session, log into MiraSmart and click Chair/Discussant Home if you are not taken there upon log-in.  There you will see information for any session for which you serve as discussant or chair. In addition to being able to access each submission, you will also be able to email presenters directly from MiraSmart.