Over the past month, our Endurance Learning team has offered several free webinars on basic ways to put together an engaging virtual session and the importance of the “producer” role. If you missed either session, you can access a recording with the following links:
During each session, we shared some data and several job aids, which I also shared on LinkedIn and received a lot of positive feedback. Instead of having to search through the webinars or my old LinkedIn posts, I thought I’d collect all of those job aids and put them in one place.
What features does your platform offer?
Before you can design an engaging virtual session, you need to know what features your platform offers in order to determine the tools you have available to engage your participants. The following chart is something our team put together based upon a series of free trials of all of the following platforms. Please keep in mind that each platform is constantly updating the features they offer, so you’ll want to verify the information in this chart against the latest release of the platform you’re using.
How can you leverage your platform’s features for maximum engagement?
This next job aid offers some ideas of how to integrate the features of your platform with a variety of traditional training activities such as brainstorming, checking for prior knowledge and small group discussions. As you can see, regardless of whether your platform has limited functionality or whether you have a premium subscription, there are generally more than one way to facilitate an activity.
Which features align with your learning objectives?
Any good training designer knows that you don’t just do an activity for the activity’s sake. To make sure you’re respecting everyone’s time, your activities need to align with your learning objectives. The following job aid offers some ideas on how to connect some typical learning objectives with popular features in virtual platforms.
Are you ready for your session?
Taking some time in advance of your session to ensure you’re ready can be a very good investment of your time. The following job aid offers a simple checklist to make sure your technology is ready for you and your session will go as smoothly as possible.
“Why can’t I get into the breakout room?”
Perhaps the biggest anxiety people have about virtual training revolves around the idea that some part of the technology will get fussy at the absolute worst time. While we haven’t studied each platform in-depth (yet), we have had a chance to explore Zoom in more details, with a variety of devices and realized that some features work better than others based upon the kind of device you’re using. The last job aid in this post offers an at-a-glance table that may be useful in trouble shooting issues if your participants are struggling with one of the features in your session.
