Happy Virtual Classroom Producer Day!

To celebrate the occasion, we're honoring our own producers - the members of our instructional team who ensure our live online learning events go off without a hitch.

We asked our facilitators, project managers, and operations team what sets our producers apart, and these are just a few of their favorite things. 

In the live online learning environment, instructional teams often struggle to truly connect with learners. We don't have the benefit of greeting our online learners with a smile as they enter our virtual space. So how do we create an inviting, warm, inclusive learning environment? From experience, it really comes down to our tone of voice and our words.

As virtual facilitators and producers, we have to be cognizant of our tone and our words. Our words are often the only part of us that our learners experience. When preparing for a session, ask yourself, “How empathetic and open am I to really hearing what participants have to say?” “Do my learners tune out because my tone of voice seems disinterested or unyielding?” If you answered “yes” to either question, make a conscious effort to inject warmth and authenticity into your voice. It’s a small step that makes a big difference.

We chatted with one of our expert virtual learning producers about the journey that lead her to InSync and how her HR background translates to virtual learning. Each of our producers has their own unique story, and their own perspective to bring to the field of virtual classroom production. Our learners are so lucky to have dedicated producers and facilitators like Brigit!

Passion is what gives meaning to our lives. It's what allows us to achieve success beyond our wildest imagination. Try to find a career path that you have a passion for.  Henry Samueli

This couldn’t be more apt for my path to producing at InSync. With an extensive background in HR and compensation, I worked face-to-face with a lot of people and discovered my passion for training.

After taking eight years off to be a stay-at-home mom, I was looking for my next move and kept coming back to my love of training. I wasn’t sure how to make it fit into my busy life with four children, though. As luck would have it, I had a chance encounter at a party where I met InSync producer Jennifer James and I got goosebumps after hearing what she did for work. I kept thinking to myself, “This is exactly what I am looking for!”

Virtually There Session Recap

The future of learning has arrived!  With virtual reality, gamification, and microlearning, we now have access to a wide variety of strategies, techniques, and technologies when creating our blended learning programs. But how do we make sense of all the options and engage our learners, while also addressing their individual needs?

Jennifer Hofmann explored and defined the future of instructional design during her recent Virtually There learning event. In this blog post, we will explore three key elements: learning hubs, learning campaigns, and learning paths.

Watch the entire recording for additional in-depth information and helpful resources.

In discussing the concept of “blended learning,” we have previously stated that, “modern blended learning is selecting the most appropriate delivery technology based on learning objectives, with consideration of time, place, and space.” So it is, that as we consider how to assess a blended learning solution, we need to look at that statement and look at the objectives that required a training solution in the first place – finis origine pendet – “the end depends upon the beginning”.

When a blended solution is implemented, it is directed at providing learners with the opportunity to master/complete a particular set of individual learning objectives. To assess such a training approach, many will stop there, and seek to assess against the individual objectives, absent any consideration of the delivery method or specific organizational outcome that drove the individual learning objective treatment in time, place, or space.

Blended learning incorporates a variety of ways to deliver learning materials and activities, and selecting delivery approaches is part of the instructional design process.

The approaches you select will depend on who the learners are, what objectives have been developed, what methods of assessing learning you have designed in alignment with those objectives, and whether or not collaboration will enhance the learning experience.

After establishing all of that, we still need to decide where, when, and how this blend of learning is going to be delivered.

With modern blended learning, we strive to build skills beyond the classroom, and support learners in how they work and live. Guest blogger Jenny Holt explores an exciting aspect of the digital age. It's a helpful starting point for learning and development professionals asking, "How can we increase the impact of EdTech?"

Virtual spaces and video games are more than just a fun way to spend the evening after work or school. In recent years, researchers have been looking into virtual reality as a way for people to cope with a number of problems, both mental and physical, including:

• Overcoming eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia, and obesity
• Fixing stuttering and speech problems
• Getting over phobias and irrational fears
• Stopping substance abuse
• Controlling negative behaviors associated with autism
• Sensory stimulation and pain relief

In a recent blog post, we described modern blended learning as the realization of a harmonic balance of instructional, technical, organizational, and delivery components in support of learner engagement and achievement.

In order to find and establish that harmonic balance, we need to start with our learning objectives, consider where, when, and how our learners are learning, and then determine the best way to deliver that learning.

Yes, once again, it all starts with learning objectives.

We know that bells and whistles don’t always improve training experiences. Throwing more EdTech into our learning environments without consideration for its relevance or effectiveness often has a counter-productive effect – learners focus more on the technology than on the content.

The same holds true for leveraging trending instructional design models. If we jump on every “hot new trend” bandwagon, we can easily miss the mark of constructive modern blended learning. Each approach we choose to incorporate into our blends must have a purpose – authentically addressing an individual learning objective.

Modern blended learning is a solution to the challenges and obstacles we face when designing engaging, effective, and applicable learning. But before we go any further, we would like to clear up a few common misconceptions.

To start, modern blended learning is not just the same topic taught multiple ways. It is not always situated within a formal event led by an instructor. And it is not about teaching the same materials through a new form of technology delivery.

What is modern blended learning then?