This week, America celebrates Independence Day. We come together at barbecues, on the beach, and with family and friends to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

While the United States of America has officially existed since 1776, the virtual classroom has only provided a viable training option for about 20 years.

In honor of this holiday, we urge you to declare your independence from outdated training and embrace the possibilities of modern blended learning.

Whether presenting an informational webinar or facilitating a multi-part virtual learning series that’s part of a larger blend, teaching live online requires pizzazz and purpose.

As more corporate L&D programs move online, a tried-and-true facilitation process can set you up for success (in fact, we offer a comprehensive train-the-trainer program to help practitioners create a comprehensive toolkit).

In the mid-1990s, virtual classrooms (then known as ‘synchronous’ classrooms) were new. (Don’t believe me? Read some history here!) So new, most people had never heard of them.

But the people who HAD heard of virtual training were very excited. Soon, they proclaimed, none of us would ever have to go to a brick and mortar classroom again! All the ingredients were present to disrupt the Training & Development industry: trainers, participants, and PowerPoint slides! What else did we need?

This week, most of us in the United States stop for a single day to eat turkey, watch a famous parade or a football game (or three), and give thanks for the things that make our lives great.

The general feeling of gratefulness got InSync Training’s team thinking: what do we love most about our learning experiences?

When asked, our team of training experts openly and graciously shared the things that bring them joy and gratitude in the modern classroom every day.

What does creativity have to do with corporate training? Jenny Holt answers this question and challenges the idea that serious learning only happens within scholarly activities.

Art may not seem like an obvious thing to introduce into your training sessions, but the benefits are tangible. Companies that foster creativity are three and a half times more likely to achieve revenue growth of 10% or more than their peers, a study by Adobe and Forrester found. When you participate in art-related tasks, dopamine, a feel-good chemical, is released in the brain —  this alone will create happy, motivated learners. Moreover, art has plenty of other mental benefits which can improve your team's’ ability to retain information, concentrate, and solve problems.  

In the modern classroom of today, trainers find themselves in various situations they may not have prepared for. One of common situation is going virtual.

Does this sound familiar? You’re going along training for years and then BOOM your company decides to jump on the virtual classroom train. The big question settles in, “How do I make this virtual classroom space feel like a face-to-face classroom?”

Guest author Jenny Holt revisits the idea of outdoor learning in her newest blog.

Professional trainers must adapt to any learning environment, including those in the great outdoors. And when you consider where our learners work, understanding how to manage mother nature as a fickle classroom host becomes an important skillset for many L&D professionals.

In America, over half of all jobs require working outside, and this means that a large part of the training needs to be outside too. From farming and agriculture to forestry, construction, transportation and the hospitality industry, sitting at a desk in an office certainly isn’t the norm. The problem with working outdoors, however, is that sometimes the weather can be restrictive. For instance, if you are a tree surgeon, you certainly don’t want to be training on days when there are high winds.

So what can you do when the weather interrupts your outdoor training session?

Mobile learning’s on the rise, and for good reason.

Mobile technology, once a luxury, has become commonplace in our lives. We bank, read, socially interact, and more from a device that fits in the palm of our hand.

The Jetsons imagined a similar future, but did corporate training?

Gamification is a term that is frequently thrown around in the training industry. It refers to the application of game elements and principles in learning sessions, and is a popular approach used in eLearning and company training sessions. In fact, the 2016-2021 Global Game-based Learning Market report stated that game-based learning products reached a global revenue of $2.6 billion in 2016.   

What do you call training that connects people remotely into a web session? Within L&D, and even within the same organization, the title for this kind of learning experience varies. Commonly, though, when instructors facilitate to two types of audiences simultaneously, you often hear the term “multi-method delivery.”

In today’s global, mobile, social workplace, training often supports dispersed learners, all of whom have individual learning goals and attendance requirements. When used correctly, multi-method delivery creates an opportunity to support them all.