Sharing Our Best Practices
FOR LIVE ONLINE TRAINING (VILT)
Living in this new world, and many of us working from home, we’re hearing from many of our partners struggling with converting on-site training classes into a live online format.
And we know how important it still is to keep employees engaged and continue to help grow their companies. You and your staff need to remain prepared.
We’ve been delivering on-site and online training since 2005. So, we’d like to help you and share our best practices. Come join Jeff Moore, our VP of Delivery, as he hosts this informal office hours. We’ll share our best practices and allow all attendees to ask any questions as well.
We currently us Zoom for our online (VILT) training deliveries. At the bottom of this page, we’ve also included some Zoom specific tips as well. We also compiled additional general resources to help those companies working from home.
Office Hours
As part of our commitment to the learning tech community, we’d like to open our offices virtually to help you better prepare for delivering online training.
Next Date Coming Soon!
Office Hours Replay – 4/1/20
Below is the recording from our second office hours. Stay tuned for our next live office hours soon!
Office Hours Replay – 3/25/20
Below is the recording from our first office hours. Stay tuned for our next live office hours soon!
Best Practices For Online Deliveries
PREPARE AND PRACTICE:
This is the MOST important part of a virtual delivery and requires more time than a face-to-face delivery. Create objectives, a detailed agenda, activities, time allotment for each topic, polls you want to ask during the training, etc. Once the materials are created, take time to practice walking through the training, checking the time allotment, creating questions to ask, and ensuring you are incorporating a variety of experiences for your participants (e.g. discussion, activities, breakouts, individual work, lab work, etc.).
JOIN EARLY & BEGIN INTERACTING:
Join at least fifteen (15) minutes prior to the scheduled course start time. When students start arriving at the meeting, interact with them. Feel free to ask them questions and have them ask YOU questions. This is a good time to ask a poll question and/or provide a slide with directions on how to log in, use their mute buttons, etc.
BUDDY SYSTEM:
The Project Manager is your “buddy” and he/she is available to help ensure a smooth start to the course. Students may experience technical difficulties while attempting to log-in. In this scenario, please use your Project Manager to assist with trouble-shooting, as to not delay the start of your course.
SET GROUND RULES:
Participants should agree on the ground rules, especially if this is a multi-day training, to ensure they hold one another accountable for a great virtual classroom experience. Some examples include: Be on time, 100% participation, minimize background noises, 1 person speaking at a time.
EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY:
You are already at a disadvantage in a virtual environment where you can’t easily see what the participants are doing, how they’re feeling, etc., so it’s important to use all the tools Zoom has to offer. Practice sharing your screen, annotating, having your participants annotate, chat, and use breakout rooms. Using video can help improve engagement and interaction, allowing everyone to see what’s happening, and at the same time making it harder for someone to multitask or “tune out”.
DUAL MONITORS:
If a second monitor is available to you, we highly recommend using it as a value-added tool. We suggest hosting the screen share on your primary display, while utilizing the second monitor to display the participant list, chat, videos, and polling. This enables you to have a higher level of engagement with students, while having easy access to the Zoom tools.
KEEP IT INTERESTING AND INTERACTIVE:
The beauty of our VILTs is that it is a synchronous experience for you and your audience. Treat it as you would an in-person presentation by mixing it up every 5-10 minutes (discussions, polling, labs, breakout groups, chat, individual work, etc.). This will drive engagement and interest in your topic and keep participants involved and learning.
LOCATION/SETTING:
Select your location in advance and make sure your internet access is stable. Ensure that your devices are plugged in and that chargers are easily accessible. The location background should be interesting, but not distracting. It is important that your face is clearly visible, and that there is not a glare from any nearby windows. And make sure you have a clean space.
Remote Work Recommended Resources
A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers
In response to the uncertainties presented by Covid-19, many companies and universities have asked their employees to work remotely. While close to a quarter of the U.S. workforce already works from home at least part of the time, the new policies leave many employees — and their managers — working out of the office and separated from each other for the first time.
Read More
Working from home: Cybersecurity tips for remote workers
Switching to remote working because of the coronavirus can create cybersecurity problems for employers and employees. Here are some things to watch.
Read More
I’ve worked from home for almost 20 years. These 6 tips make it awesome
If you’re being forced to work remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic, take heart: You might find that you love it.So you’ve suddenly found yourself working from home—theoretically temporarily, perhaps not willingly, and all thanks to coronavirus.
Read More
Enabling Productive Remote Work: Expert Tips For Staying Connected And Engaged
Two weeks ago, we did a quick web search to find out how many companies were moving to remote work in response to the fast-moving novel coronavirus. We found only a handful of examples, mostly related to possible exposure.
Read More
8 Tips To Make Working From Home Work For You
Updated Monday at 2 p.m. ET to reflect new guidance on play dates during school closures. This is an evolving story and guidance from health authorities is evolving quickly.
Read More
10 Tips to Work From Home in a Coronavirus-Plagued World
The COVID-19 outbreak has changed the lives of billions of people worldwide. Many businesses both large and small have closed their doors, urging their employees to work remotely to avoid potential infection.
Read More
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Our Data on Virtual Training
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Additional Tips And Tricks for Zoom
SCREEN SHARE
Zoom allows for screen sharing on desktop, tablet and mobile devices running Zoom. When running a VILT, it is important to share your screen at all times.
Note: If you are using slides during your delivery, please make an opening slide with the “WELCOME TO COURSE NAME” text and utilize the DI Instructor Slide Deck
How to Screen Share:
- Click > Share Screen Icon (the host or attendee can execute this tool)
- The host does not need to “pass the ball” or “make someone else a presenter” to screen share
- The host can choose to “Lock Screen Share” to block an attendee from sharing his/her screen
WHITEBOARD AND ANNOTATION
The whiteboard feature allows the host to share a whiteboard with other participants. If allowed, other participants can annotate on the whiteboard.
How to Share a Whiteboard:
- Click > Share Screen Button > Located in the Meeting Controls
- Click > Whiteboard
- Click > Share Screen
Note: The annotation tools will appear automatically. Choose the Whiteboard option in the meeting controls to show and/or hide the tools.
POLLING
The polling feature allows the Instructor to assess knowledge and increase participant engagement. The feature allows the host to create single choice or multiple-choice polling questions. We recommend you create the polls prior to the session and can then launch the poll during the course to gather the responses from the attendees. You also have the ability to download a polling report, after the meeting.
The polling feature is a great tool to gauge learning, or for initiating an ICE-BREAKER, such as:
Which superpower would you like to have?
- A. Mind Reading
- B. Invisibility
- C. Teleportation
- D. Flying
- E. I Already Have a Superpower
In 2030, who will people trust more with their babies? Robots or human baby-sitters?
- A. Robots
- B. Human Baby-Sitters
Note: Zoom allows up to twenty-five (25) polls per scheduled meeting/course.
BREAKOUT ROOMS
The purpose of breakout rooms is to allow the participants to meet in smaller groups to continue a brainstorming session, conduct an activity, or practice something that was just learned. Breakout Rooms allow the host to split the Zoom meeting into numerous groups (called sessions), with a varying number of participants per session. The meeting host can choose to split the participants of the meeting into these separate sessions automatically or manually and can switch between sessions at any time.
How to Start a Break-Out Room:
- Start a Meeting
- Select > Breakout Rooms ( Located on the Taskbar on the Bottom of the Screen)
- Select the Number of Rooms Desired
- a. For example, if there are 10 participants and you want them each in their own room so you can consult with them individually, select 10 rooms. If you are asking them to break into teams to brainstorm, then you might choose 3 rooms and the app will automatically break them into pairs. If you want to assign the participants yourself, click ‘assign’ and it will allow you to choose which room each participant goes to.
- Select > Create Breakout Rooms
- As the HOST, you can now visit each room by clicking ‘Join’
- When you are ready to end the breakout session and have everyone back in the same ‘room’, click Stop All Sessions.
Note: The host can create up to 50 breakout rooms. There is a maximum of two-hundred (200) participants in a breakout room. Breakout room participants have full audio, video and screen sharing capabilities
ATTENTION TRACKER
This feature will show the meeting host if an attendee has minimized the Zoom screen. This tool helps to identify those students who may be distracted by showing when they are “away” from the Zoom screen for more than 30 seconds. However, this can be misleading because if they are using multiple screens they might be paying attention but the tracker will show them as “away”.
Note: The default is set to ON. The clock icon will show next to any participants name who has not had the Zoom screen in focus for more than 30 seconds.
