To maximise the potential of your virtual instructor-led training session, you need to know:
The number of learners in your virtual classroom. Sessions designed for the wrong group size can lack impact and leave your learners floundering. It’s important to think carefully about the types of interactions you can employ for the number of attendees you have.
The makeup of your group of learners. One of the benefits of virtual classrooms is that a wider variety of learners can join. This variety can lead to larger disparities in the learners’ existing knowledge than you may have in person.
The most important parts of VILT, or at least the parts you can control, are your teaching materials. You can use teaching materials before, during, and after your virtual training session. At each stage, careful planning and design can make sure that your learners are fully engaged with your material. Think of the virtual instructor-led training as a performance. The actual performance itself is just the tip of the iceberg – it’s supported by lots of other work and materials to make the show an impactful and engaging experience.
Before any performance starts, the audience need phone code uae to be engaged. Theatre shows create beautiful posters and adverts and write detailed articles to lay the groundwork for what their audience can expect.
You should take the same approach for a VILT. A great way to kick start learner engagement before the session begins is to send out pre-work materials. Pre-work or information booklets can help to equalise the knowledge levels of your learners. Not only that, but if learner complete pre-reading or more basic activities outside of the session, it allows you to maximise the time within the session to focus on difficult concepts that need more explanation, or on interactive activities rather than lecturing.
One way you can do this is send out a short quiz before your session. This could be a simple online quiz, or even a branching interactive quiz made using hyperlinks in PowerPoint! You can check out this blog post to learn all about using hyperlinks in PowerPoint: How to make interactive PowerPoint slides for eLearning. These quick activities also make great icebreakers for your participants.
You can also use pre-work to measure your learners’ knowledge level, that information can inform how you deliver the rest of the training. For example, asking all your learners to fill in an online form about their previous experience might tell you that they all have a background in the VILT content. So, you now know you can spend less time on the basic concepts. This can also give you a useful baseline measure when you come to evaluate your learners’ progress after the session.