Making virtual learning effective and engaging for all participants can be challenging, especially without the right systems and processes in place (and adequate prep and training). It’s tough to replicate a traditional, in-person learning experience for your teams. Highlighted below are some of the best strategies you can adapt and implement to set up an effective virtual learning environment for your participants and clients.
- Narrow the Focus: As we know, the approach taken with virtual learning is different. Virtual learning ensures employee development continues when it’s not possible to be in the same room. However, with transition time to breakouts and other platforms, virtual learning takes more time to complete. Participants also tend to have a shorter attention span in an online setting. With this in mind, virtual learning needs to focus on the key critical topics that must be addressed in a learning session. This takes effort from the program designer to truly understand the needs of the learner, their manager and the organization. Recognizing the behaviours you are trying to change will drive the design.
- Provide Robust Learning: Now that you know exactly what you need to teach in a virtual session, you need to find creative ways to make the learning engaging, interactive and enjoyable. Research tells us that people learn more when they are having fun. Consider:
- slide layout – gone are the days of bullets on slides. We need interesting yet simple models, templates and colours to keep participants focused. Keep information on each slide to a minimum
- music – what can you add in during breakout times or individual work?
- activities – consider new ways to teach content, such as team debates, mystery problem solving, round robins to discuss topics, using Google Docs to answer questions or share information, or using photos to share reflections on a topic.
- Focus On the Value of Participant Interactions: Many facilitators have successfully re-created the small-group participant learning structures by using breakout rooms. This feature helps to support collaborative and higher-level learning. Be sure what you are asking participants to do in the breakout has the appropriate time allocation. In larger online groups, plan to reengage participants with something they need to do every 5-8 minutes. This might be a quick survey, typing something into a chat box feature, raising a hand, interacting with stamp features, etc.
- Prepare & Practice: Before sessions begin, ensure you have the technical capability to access your software(s), needed websites and tools. Take the time to practice navigating your virtual learning systems and processes so that you’ll be prepared for your session. You will be prepared for potential issues ahead of time. You can also hire a producer to handle the tech side of the learning. This way you can focus on facilitating instead of answering tech questions or managing technical glitches when trying to access specific tools. You can remain focused on participants.
- Ensure Learning Evaluation Plan is Established: Knowing how you will measure success is a key piece to ensuring behaviour change. Be certain to have an evaluation strategy as part of your design process to confirm the right content is being taught and measured. Set up feedback surveys and establish learning transfer best practices to ensure learning is applied to the job after the session. Effective virtual facilitators focus on acquiring and utilizing feedback for future coursework and reporting back to the organization.
Virtual learning should never be an excuse to assign busy work but should rather address clear engaging learning objectives. Here are four key principles to provide a robust learning experience:
- Create micro-learning options & break sessions into smaller chunks. Keep them wanting more.
- Offer immediate (or at least frequent) feedback & knowledge checks. An example would be sharing comments on collaborative documents or in chat boxes to keep participants motivated and moving forward. This also serves as a test for understanding.
- Provide clear expectations for virtual participation. Establish ground rules the group agrees to and stick to these.
- Include virtual platforms that will spice up your learning, live chats with guest speakers or videos to maintain a human connection. It may be a little harder for participants to follow instructions when sessions are not face to face. With this in mind, try to keep instructions short, simple and clear. Have visual and audio information to help with the understanding. Consider making video instructions instead of text for something more complex.
Choose The Right Tools: A wide variety of software and tools are available to help. VirtualGlass™ is a good option for exciting, fun, interactive and experiential activities that are all on one platform. Select from over 20 activities that help your participants learn in an experiential way. The VirtualGlass™ platform is easy for participants and facilitators to use and many activities can be modified to suit your client’s needs.
Looking for ways to bring more engagement to your virtual sessions? Click the link below to see a list of over 20 virtual activities that keep our virtual learning experiences fun and engaging.
