Seven New Year’s Resolutions for Virtual Trainers

In the News

There's no better time than now to start becoming a more effective virtual trainer. And, here are seven New Year's resolutions you can make to help you become one. They'll be particularly useful for trainers whose background has focused on traditional classroom training and are now being asked to lead more learning programs virtually.

Keep training sessions short

You can't hold the attention of a virtual audience for as long as you can engage learners in a traditional classroom. That's because virtual learning participants are more easily distracted. The ideal length of time for a virtual session turns out to be 35 to 40 minutes of instruction and about 15 minutes for questions and answers. Don't get wedded to this schedule, though, because the time should be determined by how complex the curriculum is and the makeup of the audience.

The session should be long enough to justify the time the instructors spends scheduling it and the participants spend logging on, or a minimum of perhaps 20 minutes. In most cases, it shouldn't exceed 90 minutes because the longer the program the more you risk having the learners divert their attention to their email and lose track of what's being taught.

It's been understood for years now that shorter sessions are more effective. More recently, it's been shown that downtime between learning sessions improves learning efficiency because the brain commits learning to long-term memory not as an instant process, like computer storage, but over hours and days instead.

Keeping the sessions short will increase the number of sessions you’ll need. This means more time will be needed for the training to produce a performance result. You'll also find yourself spending more effort scheduling lessons. But, you’ll increase the effectiveness of the learning, which is, after all, your bottom-line goal.

Limit number of participants

Don't let yourself be pushed into accommodating too many participants. Limit most training classes to 10 participants. You can't give the learners the attention they need if you spread yourself too thin.

If you absolutely have to go to a bigger class, consider having an additional instructor help you deliver the training. The second person might be a subject matter expert who can help answer participants’ questions or someone who can help resolve technical problems. Having a new voice come on occasionally during the program will instantly command the attention of any of the learners whose attention has begun to flag.

Keep sessions active

There are many ways to keep the learners engaged. One way is by keeping each unit in the program short, perhaps between three and five minutes. Build in interactivity every two to three minutes. Encourage participants who have knowledge of the topic to share it.

Use more visuals than you would in a traditional classroom. You shouldn’t let the same screen appear for more than two minutes. Programs provided by companies such as Logical Operations, average 38 slides. Make the slides interesting with highlighting, text tools, circling or arrows that point out critical information or steps. Think about using short embedded videos, images and audio clips.

Keep asking questions

Constantly asking questions will do more than encourage interactivity. Once the participants understand they might be called upon to answer a question they're more likely to stay involved. Call on people you haven't heard from in a while. It's usually better to use true-or-false and multiple-choice questions than open-ended questions because these can generate a rambling answer that slows down the lesson. Make it clear to the participants how they can give you feedback.

Take polls, using voting buttons. Set up games. Build stories into the learning. Try to find stories that evoke an emotional response while they reinforce the learning. Use humor. Speak a bit louder than you would in a physical classroom. Keep the session upbeat.

Keep learning relevant

Be certain that the curriculum relates to each participant’s needs. You must have a clear understanding of the learners' job functions and their level of expertise on the subject before you plan the session. There’s nothing more off-putting than instruction that's off-topic, over the heads of the learners or appears to them to be dumbed-down. If you aren't certain about the participants' level of knowledge about the subject, begin the session with polling that helps you learn it.

As with any training program you conduct, the learning must be practical rather than theoretical. Be certain you adhere to the expectations adults have for workplace learning. They don’t want to be told it’s important to learn the skills being taught; they want to hear evidence that persuades them it’s important. They don’t want training that’s aimed at helping them master the subject. They want to learn processes they can use to do their work better.

Help students transfer learning to the workplace

Make it easy for the learners to access their materials for reference after the training. Use the cloud, multimedia and social media to help the participants share information and collaborate. Email the participants hyperlinks and additional information. Let them know they can email you with questions. Logical Operations' classes allow the learners to access lab environments as long as six months after the class and course materials for life.

In some of the most successful training programs the learners' managers encourage use of the new skills after the training by rewarding uses of the skills. These programs use workshops or individual meetings in which the learners describe how their new skills have improved their performance.

Programs that reinforce the training and ease its application on the job make employee learning a driver of ongoing performance improvement rather than simply an event.

Encourage use of personal devices

Let the employees use their tablets or smart phones for the training so they can access it wherever they may be. Employees strongly prefer working with their own devices than with company-issued technology. Indeed, many of them, particularly younger ones, consider using their personal devices at work a right rather than a privilege.

Joining the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) revolution will let you get to the curriculum faster because you won't have to teach the class how to use technology that's unfamiliar. You’ll keep the sessions much more active because the learners will be able access external materials much more quickly and easily.

Test technology before every session

Establish an alternate way to connect in case of a problem. Ask the learners to test their connectivity before the class. In its training programs Logical Operations sends out a reminder document to the learners two weeks prior to class to allow them to test connectivity, join a test session and test their hardware.

You won’t be able to avoid every possible technology glitch. When one crops up try to resolve it quickly and with a minimum of disruption. Some successful instructors use humor in these situations.

And what if you don’t make New Year’s resolutions?

You don’t have to pledge yourself to using these seven tactics for 2014. Use the set of resolutions instead as a planning device for your next virtual training program. You can sum it all up as: keep the session short, the class small, the training lively, the curriculum relevant, the learning transferable, the access BYOD-friendly and the technology pre-tested.

Bill Rosenthal is CEO of Logical Operations, Inc., a provider of next-generation, expert-facilitated multi-platform learning curricula. Its 4,000-plus courses are offered in 23 languages and are designed for use in any training environment.