Delving into the World of Virtual Learning
Like many small businesses, the last few months have been a rollercoaster for the Delvers with a mix of uncertainty and worry as well as the opportunity to think differently about the future of our business. We’ve had to quickly adapt to using technology to facilitate learning which has stretched us out of our comfort zone into new territory.
We’ve spent hours researching good practice in online facilitation, watching how others do it and signing up for ironically disengaging webinars titled ‘How to engage learners virtually’. This has helped us to find our style and combine what we instinctively know will work with how not to do it.
Our first virtual session was with a new customer who wanted to look at how they design a strategy to commercialise one of their business functions. Despite our feelings of trepidation and our journey through a very steep digital learning curve that had us tearing our hair out at times, we successfully delivered two short sessions and the feedback was that the group felt engaged throughout, were impressed with how we enabled them to work virtually at a pace that suited them and that it was as though we were actually in the room with them. Suddenly all the stress of our digital learning journey seemed worth it!
So what have we learned about what works well?
– Keep it engaging. The Delvers normally pride ourselves on using minimum PowerPoint and engaging people through involvement and discussion. However, we’ve quickly discovered that for virtual delivery, we need more visual aids to keep people’s interest going with a mix of animated slides, group discussion and opportunities to get involved through polls and chat functions.
– Make sure everything works! There is nothing worse than watching someone mess about with the tech or things going wrong at the start of the session. To avoid this, have a practice run with some trusted people to test out all the functionality, check your slides work effectively and that your internet connection is all good. We’ve learned the hard way that despite having super-fast broadband and WiFi, the connection is always better if you are plugged in!
-It helps enormously for 2 people to facilitate. This way, one person can be focused on the technology, ensuring people are accessing the platform in the right way (each one works very differently from MS Teams to Zoom) and that people can access breakout rooms as well as capturing key notes and keeping an eye on the chat function. The other person can then concentrate on facilitating the session and engaging with the group effectively without techy distractions.
-Walk people through the technology. Ensure that people understand the functionality of the platform you are using from the start – how to use chat, how to raise your hand, how to access breakout rooms are all anxieties people may have if they’re not used to learning in this way. We always get online 20 minutes before the session to support anyone that needs it.
-Three hours is absolute maximum to keep people engaged. And even then you need regular breaks to break up sitting in front of the screen for so long. It’s impossible to turn a session you’d normally deliver in a day into the same timeframes online so you need to think differently about how you encourage a more self-directed approach for some of the content and only deliver what you absolutely need to on virtual groups. Your face to face content will take more than a few tweaks to deliver it virtually.
-Acknowledge everyone’s current reality. A lot of people are working from home but with the added distractions of children, partners, pets, caring responsibilities, deliveries, and it’s important that people feel comfortable to engage in their learning. Acknowledging that it’s okay for distractions and that if people need to disappear, how they can mute themselves and then return when they can.
We are now testing our virtual learning skills even further delivering a 6 month leadership programme online with some key offline missions mixed in so there will be more opportunities for us to share our learning with you as this progresses.
If you are sitting here thinking, well this is only short term and classroom learning will be back soon, it is likely to be a while before this happens and the flexibility and benefits of virtual delivery could far outweigh the cost of face-to-face delivery as we move into a different future of learning.
If you are looking to move into the virtual world of learning, get in touch at [email protected] and we can support you to deliver programmes that inspire and engage people.