Virtual Learning Best Practices, Part One: Tips for Synchronous Virtual Training

Vir­tual real­ity sounded like such cool, futur­is­tic thing at the end of the last cen­tury. Today we live in a vir­tual soci­ety and “vir­tual” ­is our real­ity. From social net­work­ing to uni­ver­sity and cor­po­rate train­ing, we’ve become accus­tomed to accom­plish­ing much of what we need to do via vir­tual meet­ing places.

This pro­lif­er­a­tion has been so exten­sive that the mer­its of learn­ing via the vir­tual class­room ver­sus the tra­di­tional class­room are sel­dom dis­cussed any­more. The con­ver­sa­tion has shifted from which type of train­ing is bet­ter to how to make vir­tual learn­ing as effec­tive as pos­si­ble once it’s cho­sen as the deliv­ery platform.

What can you do to improve the effec­tive­ness of your train­ing for vir­tual learn­ers? The first part of this two part series explores some of the indus­try best prac­tices for real time, or syn­chro­nous, vir­tual train­ing. The sec­ond part of this series will explore the best prac­tices for asyn­chro­nous vir­tual training.

Tips for Syn­chro­nous Vir­tual Training

Pre­sen­ta­tion: Many live, web-based train­ing pro­grams are deliv­ered as a series of Pow­er­Point slides which all par­tic­i­pants are view­ing con­cur­rently. One of the biggest mis­takes made in these pre­sen­ta­tions is the clut­ter of infor­ma­tion on the screen at any given time. To keep the screen as clean and clutter-free as possible:

• Make sure there is plenty of white space on each slide. Text and graph­ics should never com­prise more than one-third of the total space on the screen.
• Make text as easy to read as pos­si­ble. Choose a font size small enough to allow plenty of space between bul­let points. Remem­ber that par­tic­i­pants can always increase the view­ing size on their side, so it’s not nec­es­sary to use a giant font to make text legible.
• When instruc­tions or a list of bul­let points need to be viewed on a sin­gle slide, uti­lize the program’s ani­ma­tion fea­tures to reveal only the con­tent under dis­cus­sion. This helps par­tic­i­pants focus on the cur­rent topic and min­i­mizes distractions.
• Avoid the use of fancy, serif type­styles. Use of a san serif font like Arial, Cal­ibri, Gill Sans or Tahoma helps the online reader focus on the con­tent and not on the design.
• Pro­vide con­sis­tency by employ­ing graph­ics of the same media file type. If incor­po­rat­ing illus­tra­tions, avoid using highly detailed pic­tures along with very basic or cartoon-like draw­ings. If using pho­tos, avoid mix­ing them with illus­tra­tions wher­ever possible.
• Use mark-up tools to cir­cle, under­score or high­light infor­ma­tion. Add on-screen text to bring addi­tional, just-discussed con­tent to the screen. The greater the num­ber of on-screen events (some­thing that causes the screen to change for the par­tic­i­pant), the more visu­ally engag­ing the pro­gram becomes.
• Notwith­stand­ing the above sug­ges­tion, avoid the overuse of ani­ma­tion which can quickly become dis­tract­ing. Use ani­ma­tion only when it helps to under­score the focus, and not sim­ply to impress par­tic­i­pants with the appli­ca­tion tal­ents of the facilitator.

Pre­sen­ter: Many of the same rules apply to the vir­tual and class­room presenters.

Enthu­si­asm: Nobody attends vir­tual train­ing as a form of enter­tain­ment, so it’s up to the pre­sen­ter to main­tain the par­tic­i­pants’ inter­est in the pro­gram. Hav­ing enthu­si­asm for the topic and a desire to facil­i­tate con­ver­sa­tion between the par­tic­i­pants should be reflected in the presenter’s voice.

Vocals: Vary the vol­ume, pace and pitch of the vocals to hold the inter­est of the par­tic­i­pants (and to make it more inter­est­ing for the pre­sen­ter as well). Remem­ber that speak­ing in a lower pitch increases the per­cep­tion of the speaker’s authority.

Inter­ac­tiv­ity: It’s a given that par­tic­i­pants will be multi-tasking dur­ing a web-delivered pre­sen­ta­tion, so it’s essen­tial for the facil­i­ta­tor to engage the par­tic­i­pants as fully as possible.

• Call­ing on peo­ple ran­domly and using open-ended ques­tions to facil­i­tate dis­cus­sion are effec­tive ways of ensur­ing peo­ple are pay­ing atten­tion.* Keep track of who has answered a ques­tion and who has already par­tic­i­pated to bring as many peo­ple into the con­ver­sa­tion as possible.
• Encour­age ques­tions through the use of com­ments like “Good ques­tion” or “Thanks for bring­ing that up.” Always acknowl­edge com­ments and ques­tions that con­tribute to the qual­ity of the discussion.
• To the extent allowed by the pre­sen­ta­tion plat­form, encour­age small group break­outs where par­tic­i­pants can work together on a task before rejoin­ing the entire class. While imper­fect, this helps sim­u­late the social inter­ac­tion of a phys­i­cal class­room which is often con­sid­ered by par­tic­i­pants to be the most valu­able part of the training.
• Uti­lize the polls and sur­veys offered by the web plat­form, but don’t rely on these tools as the only forms of engage­ment. Think of them as punc­tu­a­tion to the ver­bal and visual con­ver­sa­tions, a kines­thetic oppor­tu­nity for par­tic­i­pants to inter­act with the program.

Think about how some of these best prac­tices can be incor­po­rated into your vir­tual train­ing. Part Two of this series will explore some of the indus­try best prac­tices for asyn­chro­nous vir­tual train­ing where par­tic­i­pants access con­tent on demand accord­ing to their own schedules.

Best of luck going forward!

* Be care­ful to observe cul­tural pro­to­cols about call­ing on spe­cific par­tic­i­pants to speak. Par­tic­i­pants from some Asian cul­tures will be reluc­tant to do or say any­thing “pub­licly” that could cause them to lose face with the group.