For the past 16 years it’s been an InSync tradition to offer a free “Holiday* Stressbusters” session in late November. It’s meant to be a helpful, mostly-lighthearted look at ways of coping with things particular to the holidays: too many parties with too much food and, ahem, beverage, the feeling of being overwhelmed by so much planning and buying and wrapping and whatnot, dealing with the tensions of family gatherings, etc.

*We specify that this is nondenominational and nonspecific. I like to note the day in December 2006 I finished graduate Statistics. However, most session conversation does tend to gravitate toward Christmas.

One of the most common questions my team and I receive about virtual learning events boils down to technology: how do you make sure glitches don’t cause learners to disconnect?

I love this question! It means that stakeholders, designers, and facilitators care about the experience learners have in a session. Plus, it also speaks to program success – people who want to prevent technology from derailing training from achieving the bigger goal of improving performance and developing participants’ skills.

The InSync Training team has designed, delivered, produced, and managed live online training events for over 20 years. It’s hard to believe that organizations have had the virtual classroom as a learning environment option for over two decades.

Change underlies this now-commonplace technology. Virtual classrooms from the past look very little like the reality of today, which indicates a radically different future.

So what can we learn from the evolution of the virtual classroom?

When should we record live virtual classroom sessions, and how can we design quality, engaging recordings for on-demand audiences? 

I’ve never been fond of recording all virtual classes and making them available on demand. I’ve always felt that devalues live virtual instruction. After all, if there is no difference in the learner experience for someone to attend a live program versus a recording, then why deliver any live content?

Nevertheless, whether it’s an information-dense webinar or a hands-on, collaborative virtual lesson, most organizations have thousands of hours of recorded sessions in their training libraries.

More organizations than ever have transitioned from traditional face-to-face training to virtual classrooms. And since no training element stands alone, most blends include live online components of some kind.

But, even as technology becomes more ubiquitous in corporate learning, decision makers and practitioners have questions about its efficacy.

My team compiled the questions they most commonly hear in their day-to-day work. When I reviewed them, I recognized that the answers speak to core best practices and the value platforms like Zoom, Webex, and Adobe Connect contribute to enterprise training.