Now it is safe to meet up again, can we expect a surge of interest and pent-up demand for live in-person face-to-face classroom style training?
After more than a year of needing to adapt and transform working processes, moving away from the traditional office environment and towards remote working, many companies are now thinking about a hybrid way of working. What does this mean for training and workforce development?
As a business, Fudgelearn already offered a blended learning solution that combined live instructor-led classes, webinars, videos, demos and job-aides. Covid-19 meant we had to quickly pivot towards digital-only training as a safe solution for delivering our customers training needs. We’ve had brilliant success with digital training, it can be more efficient and given its flexibility for businesses whose participants will continue to be based in different locations, we strongly believe it is here to stay!
With this in mind here are our top tips for delivering successful digital training that is motivating and keeps everyone engaged:-
Number of Delegates
If more than 10-12 people attend a virtual training session, not all of them will get the chance to contribute or have one-to-one attention from the trainer. That means the session will be dominated by those who like to speak up, while the more shy (or less enthusiastic) participants may find a more fulfilling way to pass their time – perhaps surreptitiously reading their emails instead of focussing on the training.
Length of the Session
Deliver the training in bite-sized chunks if necessary. Sessions should last no longer that 2-3 hours, most people cannot maintain focus in front of a laptop for longer than this. Plus, we all need natural breaks, therefore, please consider this when scheduling online training sessions.
Make it interactive
Introductions and ice-breakers make it easier for everyone to speak-up and contribute later in the session to they wish to. Our instructors want to see everyone’s faces and build trust and rapport. We recommend using Poll’s and Online Survey’s to ensure engagement, as well as validating learning.
Provide practice exercises
Following a demonstration, practice is vital. We strongly recommend building exercises to allow delegates to have some trial and error on the theory they’ve just learnt and make the skills their own.
Follow-up sessions
Offering follow-up sessions, a few days and weeks after the initial training, can give learners the opportunity to absorb skills more throughly and ask questions based on their experiences of using the system. Running issues workshops or drop-in sessions for specific topics can be very beneficial. Particularly if you are able to collate questions or issue in advance of the sessions and be more prepared.
Explore new online training tools
Fudge Learn are investing in new tools such as Hurdle, which is an online, live platform built to mimic the traditional classroom. With Hurdle trainers can see every learners screen, just as if they were at “the back of the training room”. Then the instructor can support individual learners from an “over the shoulder view” so they can provide support and encouragement to learners and take control of the desktop should this be needed. Hurdle has the ability to present, demonstrate and practice within the one tool – removing the need for additional sessions to validate learning.
We also urge employers to consider Guided-learning for Oracle ERP. Enterprise systems are complicated and often not used regularly for some processes. We recommend guided learning, or an ‘in-application’ guidance tool, which can be highly effective for enterprise systems adoption.
We would love to talk to you about the solutions we can offer your business to meet your learners needs. CONTACT US HERE.
