Wait a minute...

With the unexpected arrival (at least at a much greater level) of teleworking and online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many trainers and facilitators have struggled to find the most suitable solution to deliver their classes to their students.

This boom in live remote learning has caused much debate about whether or not platforms help facilitators meet the expectations of their own students (and themselves) or whether online teaching is less stellar and effective than face-to-face classes.

A few years back, InSync producer Jakob Hofmann wrote some fun producer haiku.

I don’t remember what prompted this tweet in January, 2012, but I feel it even more strongly now than I did then. Since the onset of COVID, we have seen 3 phases of its effects on training and training delivery:

Years ago when I was teaching virtual facilitation skills, there was a section called “disaster recovery”. I poked fun at this, saying it seemed a bit too dramatic and asking if there had ever really been a Code Blue in a breakout room. Truth is, though, sometimes things do go wrong, and great staff with a great plan can keep hiccups from turning into full-blown failures.

While researching evidence-based practices for the virtual classroom, I was looking for specific examples of activities that supported proven approaches like retrieval practice and feedback. What I found mostly were hundreds -- literally hundreds -- of sites and blog posts and articles promising ideas for “engagement and interaction” that were usually nothing more than lists of “icebreakers”, often just the same ones repeated from site to site and post to post. And y’all: I remember doing “2 Truths and a Lie” at a trainers meeting in 1996, and it wasn’t new then.

A critical element to learning is retrieval practice; the opportunity to revisit and apply new material. Such practice, coupled with meaningful feedback, can help ensure that learners understand material correctly, that they can find it - retrieve it - when needed, even after time has passed, and that they can apply it to real-world situations. Offering meaningful practice opportunities and providing good feedback can also contribute to a sense of social presence, discussed in my last post, Facilitation Tips Series, Part 1: Presence.

In the recent rush to move so much training from face-to-face to the virtual setting, there’s a great deal of conversation about the technology: which platform, dealing with security settings, how to create backgrounds. There’s less conversation, though, about the role of the facilitator and the skills needed to bring the energy and feeling of connectedness of the live event to the live online one.

Social presence refers to the collection of behaviors that help participants in a virtual environment see the facilitator -- and each other -- as human. Is this a ‘real’ person? Do I feel that they are really there, now?

We often encounter some version of the following story when working with corporate teams and individual learners: “Well, my organization has made the leap to the virtual classroom. I’m now supporting live online sessions, but I don’t know how to use my existing skills while managing the technology.”

This kind of quandary results in the accidental virtual classroom producer. Trainers or learning professionals used to working face-to-face now have to support subject matter experts or experienced virtual facilitators in a completely different, though very dynamic, environment. So. what can you do if you find yourself, whether by circumstance or choice, working as a producer in the virtual classroom?

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.

Moving great face-to-face learning to the virtual classroom includes a multi-step process. The first step involves making an effort to understand the value of the learning environment. Next, facilitators and instructional designers have to adapt their approach to maximize engagement and effectiveness.

Underlying these positive attitudes, dazzling designs, and enthralling facilitation approaches lies an important question that requires an answer: who are our key players?

Those leading and managing the change to live online learning have to get to the bottom of this question, as well as the consequences of the resulting answer. Think about three main categories: Learners, Facilitators, and Designers.