Online learning is no more an alternative to traditional classroom training. In a post-pandemic world that requires us to maintain social distancing, online classes have become the new norm. Several schools and universities in the US have made the decision to remain closed till 2021.
The case of corporate training is also expected to be the same. While most businesses may not be able to follow the absolute work from home policy that giants like Twitter and Shopify have adopted, most would want to avoid conducting classroom style training sessions.
Hence, whether you are a teacher of a corporate instructor, you must be prepared to deliver training sessions on the web.
While even the free video conferencing software offer some great tools and features that facilitate training, some effort is also needed from the instructors to ensure their online sessions are impactful.
In this article, we will share some actionable tips that you can try, in order to improve your online training sessions.
Let us begin:
Go In With Absolute Clarity
Planning is perhaps the most critical part of delivering an online training session. This means, before every session, you must have a clear road map of how the session would be conducted, when the questions will be asked, what topics will be discussed, and everything in between.
Similarly, unlike physical classrooms, surprises don’t work well in an online classroom. If you are a teacher, you may be used to coming up with pop quizzes for your students. However, dedicating a class to a pop quiz and sending one on email with a midnight deadline are completely different things.
Your students may have other engagements during the day. Hence, if you are planning a quiz, inform your students beforehand so they can fit the quiz in their schedule.
Bonus Tip: All your students may or may not have access to a laptop/desktop computer at the same time. Hence, it is important to ensure your training experience can be delivered on mobile devices as well.
Early And Prepare The Technology
It is a great idea to be present online well before your session is scheduled. You can utilize this time to ensure all your tools like the web conferencing software, the learning management system, and any others that you may be using, are working perfectly. This way, you can ensure you don’t waste any of your teaching time struggling with technological issues.
Bonus Tip: It is also a good idea to master the tools that you are using. This way, you can support your students/learners if they face any issues.
Encourage Participation
Online training sessions can easily feel mechanical and video-like. However, without enough engagement, you cannot ensure that your students are able to grasp the concepts that you are teaching to them.
Hence, it is important that you encourage your students to ask questions and interact with the rest of the online class. In fact, it is a great idea to motivate them to have conversations and group discussions with their peers. You can even create dedicated instant messaging groups for different topics. This way, the record of the discussion can be accessed by any student whenever they want a revision.
Bonus Tip: Speaking of revisions, it is a wise decision to record your live streamed sessions and share them with your batches after the session is complete. This way you can ensure that even the students that weren’t available for the live session don’t miss out on an important lesson. Moreover, the recorded lessons can be great for referencing when it is time to prepare for assessments!
Conclusion
Online training sessions can be just as effective as traditional classroom sessions. However, this is only true when you are prepared to put in the little bit of extra effort required.
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