In August, we celebrate virtual classroom facilitators. And this year, you all REALLY deserve applause. You’ve been teaching marathon sessions that weren’t designed for the virtual environment, often in platforms you haven’t used before.

So, KUDOS to you, and thanks for all you have been doing. I know it hasn’t been easy.

When I wrote this blog back in January 2020, none of us had any idea how the world was about to change.  Virtual facilitation isn’t a ‘nice to know’ skill anymore – it’s critical! InSync’s clients tell us they expect near 100% of their training to be conducted virtually for the foreseeable future.  So, with thousands of hours of Zoom, Webex, Adobe Connect, and MS Teams training on the horizon, it seems a good time to revisit the basics.

No - virtual facilitation is NOT the same as face to face training. Own it. Embrace it. Your learners are depending on you.

In 2020, we are sharing the lessons we’ve learned about the virtual classroom over the last twenty years, and we’ll link back to our more detailed content around these topics, in case you want to learn more!  Take a peek at the entire Lessons Learned series by clicking here.

For decades, the virtual classroom has been used to simply present information in a webinar-type format. Because of this, there is some debate around the concept of the virtual classroom being a space where true learning can occur.  

The InSync Training team congratulates Chip Dye, Lead Researcher and Director of Client Relations, on the defense of his dissertation and completion of his PhD program at the University of Connecticut. As part of our 20 Modern Learning Lessons Learned in 20 Years series, Chip highlights the purpose and value of his research into learner engagement. 

A casual review of current literature in academic research finds more than 300 scholarly articles and more than 2,000 trade articles in 2019 alone that use the term “learner engagement,” but few commentators define learner engagement. It is perhaps the ubiquity of the usage that allows researchers and commentators to continue the practice without a strict definition – it is assumed everyone knows what is meant by the term. Most practitioners in the learning and development industry, be it K-12 public education, post-secondary instruction, or industry professional training, can easily distinguish an “engaged” learner from one that is not engaged, in many cases simply on sight. 

Anecdotally, it is easy to “see” when someone is not engaged, but much more difficult to articulate what is meant by “learner engagement.” In the industry, learner engagement has developed into a short-hand term that loosely represents an amalgam of learner subject-matter interest/expertise, attitude, motivation, mastery, and self efficacy. Moreover, it is often explicitly or implicitly assumed that an engaged learner will achieve better outcomes against measurable rubrics than one who is not engaged.

In 2020, we are sharing the lessons we’ve learned about the virtual classroom over the last twenty years, and we’ll link back to our more detailed content around these topics, in case you want to learn more!  Take a peek at the entire Lessons Learned series by clicking here.

In 1998, I envisioned that the role of the producer in the virtual classroom would be to “make the talent look good.” My reasoning was, the virtual classroom facilitator lost the ability to take the pulse of the class using body language and eye contact, so the producer added a second set of hands that help manage learner engagement and increase the quality of virtual lessons. 

In 2020, we’ll be sharing the lessons we’ve learned about the virtual classroom over the last twenty years, and we’ll link back to our more detailed content around these topics, in case you want to learn more! 

When organizations started to adopt the virtual classroom in the 1990s, the focus was on the technology-driven benefits it could provide - Reduction in travel cost, less disruption to learner schedules, and the ability to share subject matter expertise in a much more immediate and relevant way.

We could train everyone, when they needed it, and save money at the same time.

On January 3, 2000, I created a company named InSync Training. To answer a commonly asked question, the name WASN’T a play on the name of a popular boy band of the time - back then, virtual classrooms were called ‘synchronous classrooms,’ so I felt the name would be compelling. 

At that time, the U.S. economy was coming out of the Dotcom era, and organizations were investing heavily in web-based technologies in all aspects of their operations (including learning and development) without any real understanding of what all this new tech would do for them. It was just assumed that the virtual classroom was the right choice for all modern training. I entered the marketplace with the vision of providing foundational, proven practices for training professionals to use and maximize virtual live instructional technologies in delivering training programs.

Like every year before it, 2019 proved game-changing, awe-inspiring, and insightful.

With only a few weeks left until a new decade, our team felt nostalgic.

What did we learn in the last 365 days? Quite a bit, and we’re sure you did too.

Workflow learning is something we're starting to hear a lot about. It's the concept of embedding content into the flow of work at each moment of learning need.

I think this is a great idea. But it’s not really new. Our children are already doing this.

And, as is typical, they can't believe we haven't been taking advantage of all of the technology available to us to support our workflow all along. (Admittedly, they aren’t using these words.)

I’ll share a personal example.

This weekend I had the luxury to catch up on some reading. Well, not just reading. There was a podcast, a whitepaper, the (digital) newspaper… in other words, it was a good weekend.

Some of the media I consumed was related to the learning and development industry, some was not. I was trying to give myself a break from work by engaging what intellectual bandwidth I had left at the end of the week in less heady content.

But, as is often the case, even the non-work-related content came back to learning and educational technology.

Another year has come and gone. This time of year encourages reflection, both personal and professional, causing the InSync Team to ask questions such as:

• What did I learn this year?
• How did training evolve?
• Which developments resonated with modern learners?
• Where did learning provide innovative value to our companies?

For us, 2018 marked a widespread shift towards truly blended learning. Organizations, learners, and practitioners alike began to embrace the possibility of building skills outside of formal events. Complex, purposeful, and at times frustrating, the evolution to the new blended reality required us all to consider a handful of key elements: modern learners, engaging facilitation, comprehensive instructional design, and planning for the unexpected.