How to Move Your Training Program Online: A Global Shift in Training Best Practices

How to Move Your Training Program Online

Reach More Trainees with the Same Resources In a survey conducted for Citrix Online by 1080 Group, survey respondents were asked to rank a long list

of potential benefits of using live online training.

The top three benefits of online training they chose were:

• Reaching more trainees with the same headcount

• Presenting ourselves as thought leaders in our industry

• Being more effective with our budget

The message is clear: it is important to be perceived as utilizing new training technology, but it is even

more important to use online training to help get more accomplished with every training dollar.

How to Move Your Training Program Online A Global Shift in Training Best Practices

In today’s global business environment, organizations must continually seek ways to improve productivity, respond nimbly to changes and optimize their budgets. Trainers in particular need to reach more customers and employees more quickly – and in more places. And they risk missing opportunities or losing a competitive edge if they don’t keep up. Easy-‐to-‐use technologies now make moving some or all of your training programs online quick and effective, increasing both the reach and frequency of key training messages. Without adding headcount, trainers can reach broader audiences using techniques similar to their offline training efforts – and add some new ones unique to the online environment.


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Best Practices: Planning, Promoting, Presenting, Recording

Determine the Appropriate Content Obviously if your instruction includes learners engaging a physical task, that activity can’t occur online.

But what about the foundational knowledge transfer that precedes the exercise? How about the

assessment afterwards to determine the retention of key concepts?

Online training is appropriate for any type of content that can be shared, shown, or demonstrated from

a computer desktop. A growing trend among trainers is determining what portions of content can be

delivered online and moving at least some of that activity online to increase their reach and the

frequency of connecting with learners.

Hone the Training’s Focus Using Registration Because of the lengthy lead time between registration and the event, a common practice with in-‐person

seminars is to query seminar registrants about their greatest needs and wants. The goal is to better

understand the audience in advance so the seminar content can be tailored for optimum effectiveness.

With online training there is usually less lead time necessary since registrants don’t need to plan as far

in advance to attend a session. In addition to benefitting from a shortened delivery cycle, online trainers

also benefit from on-‐demand registration analysis – giving them the same opportunity to serve learners’

needs with precision.

Tag-‐team with Other Luminaries and Subject Matter Experts Most learning environments would be enhanced by the appearance of additional presenters who are

relevant to the topic. Comments by an industry analyst, a great story from a customer, or a motivational

welcome from the national vice president are often deemed implausible due to time, distance and

expense.

With online training trainers can easily enhance the value of their training sessions by inviting other

presenters to join remotely. Just like learners can attend the training session from their computer

desktop, luminaries or subject-‐matter experts of all kinds can easily be engaged to improve your online

training sessions.

Deliver Interactive Openers Great openers take many forms, such as shocking statements, revealing statistics, or powerful what-‐

you-‐will-‐learn benefit statements.

Sometimes they are simply a quick exercise

that gets an audience engaged by saying

something such as, “Raise your hand if you

traveled more than two hours to get here

today.”

Likewise, online trainers can easily present a

poll, prompt a virtual “hand up,” or ask

learners to type in a response to a question, instantly engaging them in a memorable and measurable

way.

Figure 1 -‐ Virtual "Hand Up"


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Keep an Eye on Attentiveness Not all audiences respond the same way to any given subject or trainer. Experienced trainers observe the

attentiveness of their learners, though this gets more

difficult with larger audiences.

Moving your training online does not have to mean that

you lose this connection with your audience. Online

training dashboards put trainers and panelists in touch

with learner attentiveness at a glance, enabling them to

keep an eye on – and respond to – changing audience

needs.

Use Dialogue to Increase Engagement The bad news is that “death by slide show” is a bad

practice that some presenters will inflict on audiences

regardless of the venue – online or offline. The good

news is that easy-‐to-‐use presenter controls enable

trainers to move training initiatives online without

checking their good sense at the door.

Online training is uniquely valuable because it provides the ability to engage learners with true,

instructor-‐led dialogue, but without the constraints of distance and travel. And engaged learners means

higher retention and influence of your key training messages.

Leverage Recordings for Increased Reach Producing a usable artifact of an in-‐person event has long been an expensive and time-‐consuming

proposition, often requiring production crews to

operate cameras, do post-‐production editing and

finally duplicate and distribute. The activity is

often classified as “would be valuable,” but gets

cut because it doesn’t make business sense.

Recording online training, however, only requires

the trainer to push a button. All audio and visual

elements are captured, including screen

demonstrations, and the recording file is easily

published to a Web site for learners who may

have missed the live session. Further, your

content will be available on demand for anyone,

anywhere, extending your reach almost immediately.

Best Practice: Instead of simply instructing an audience that they can submit questions using the questions/answer tool, demonstrate it with an ice-‐breaking opener such as, “Type in what city you are participating from today?” As answers come in, show the audience you are “listening” by your own response such as, “Julia, from Sydney -‐ Welcome!”

Figure 3 -‐ Start Recording Button

Figure 2 -‐ Trainer Dashboard


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Next Steps Companies considering an online training solution should significantly weigh the following factors in

their decision:

• Is it easy to use? Learners, trainers and administrators are all negatively time-‐impacted if the

technology gets in the way of effectively managing and delivering great training programs.

• Will it flexibly meet different learning and meeting needs? Trainers moving training online

quickly find new opportunities to serve different audiences. A smart tool will accommodate small

and large audiences alike.

• Is it quick to deploy? Good opportunities often fail due to “analysis paralysis.” Consider how

quickly you can get started, try out your most obvious opportunities to move training online and

then prove the value.

Bottom Line Moving your training online shouldn’t be an all-‐or-‐nothing proposition. Live, online training fills a unique

place in how to reach customers and employees quickly and effectively. The opportunity to increase the

reach of your key training messages is large. The cost is small. And the future belongs to those who move

forward one step at a time.

About Roger Courville and 1080 Group, LLC Roger is the author of The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook and Principal of 1080 Group, LLC, an independent training and research firm that helps executives and organizations master web seminar presentations and programs. An eleven-‐year veteran of the web communications business, Roger has presented live to tens of thousands worldwide, and he’s reached tens of thousands more with guest writing appearances for SpeakingAboutPresenting.com, Training Australia Magazine, PlannerWire, eLearningGuild, and more. His 2008 white paper “Five Keys to Moving Training Online” won TrainingZone.co.uk’s Reader’s Choice Award for “Top Download of the Year.” The 1080 Group team has a collective experience that includes hundreds of clients, thousands of web seminars, and more than a million web seminar attendees. Contact them at www.1080group.com, [email protected], +1.503.476.1080, or subscribe to their newsletter at www.1080group.com/offers/bullets-‐to-‐visuals. About GoToTraining®

GoToTraining is an easy-‐to-‐use online training service that allows you to move your entire training program online for more efficient customer and employee training. Hold unlimited online training sessions with up to 200 attendees from around the world – right from your Mac® or PC. Reach more trainees, collect real-‐time feedback, record and store your training sessions and more – all while slashing travel costs. About Citrix Online Citrix Online provides secure, easy-‐to-‐use online solutions that enable people to work from anywhere with anyone. Whether using GoToMyPC® to access and work on a remote PC, GoToAssist® to support customers or GoToMeeting® to hold online meetings, GoToWebinar® for larger Web events and GoToTraining® for interactive online training, our customers – more than 35,000 businesses and hundreds of thousands of individuals – are increasing productivity, decreasing travel costs and improving sales, training and service on a global basis. A division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the company is based in Santa Barbara, California. For more information, visit www.citrixonline.com or call +1-‐805-‐690-‐6400.

© 2009, 2010 1080 Group, LLC. All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced in any manner either wholly or in part for any use whatsoever without express written consent from 1080 Group, LLC.

How to Move Your Training Program Online: A Global Shift in Training Best Practices

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