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Up Next: Part 2 of our Designing and Delivering Virtual Training series which focuses on how to adapt your training to improve the virtual learning experience.In the 21st century, shortly after the colonization of our Solar System had begun, a huge dark object appeared beyond the orbit of Pluto. L&D practitioners should look at this obstacle as an opportunity to reinvent their courses to maximize the learner experience for a virtual training format. While the return to “normal” is still unclear, we do know for certain that virtual training is here to stay. Training organizations and departments were stretched thin and did their best to quickly shift to virtual training to maintain some resemblance of training. Even the most prepared organizations struggled to keep up with the amount of rapid change we all endured. Just as participants in a face-to-face ILT can track the topics and flow of the day in their agenda, participants engaged in a multisession virtual program should always know where they are in the progression of the course.Ĭertainly, no one wants a repeat of 2020. While this shift is certainly helpful from a logistical standpoint (and financial if you need to reserve rooms or book flights for ILT), it does make it harder to reengage participants if it has been a week since the last session. An eight-hour ILT that is typically delivered in one day can be redesigned as four or five 60-minute virtual sessions. One of the many benefits of virtual training is the flexibility to deliver the sessions over an extended period of time. In a virtual classroom, partners need to be assigned to breakout rooms, conduct the activity and then be brought back together in the main room for a debrief. For example, participants seated at table groups can quickly turn to a partner for a peer coaching activity. When working through your agenda, remember that the timing for activities during a face-to-face session will not always translate the same way in a virtual session. While the content should be your guide, try to cap a single session at no more than 90 minutes. Can you convert a lecture segment into a video or discussion-based case study?.Can any of the content be transformed into a post-training sustainment microlearning or job aid?.Can any of the content be consumed as prework?.This is the perfect opportunity to look at the program through a new lens to ensure that the content is organized and delivered in a way that is engaging, logical and digestible. Once you have identified which course (or courses) need to be converted, begin by mapping the learning objectives back to the content. Assess the critical skill gaps and training needs that must be addressed for your organization and your learners, and then make some decisions-starting with the most critical needs first. The first step you need to take is to prioritize the content. While there is a high demand for virtual training, it’s not realistic to convert too many courses at once. With that in mind, here are four tips to adapting your content for virtual training.
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Adapting your content for virtual training is not about trying to deliver the ILT content via a webinar-it’s about maximizing the learning experience and achieving the outcomes within the virtual environment. You need to embrace the reality that the virtual learning experience should be different from face-to-face ILT. The way you approach the content, design and delivery for virtual training requires a shift in mindset. “Getting by” would no longer cut it and programs and content needed to be reimagined and designed to ensure they were optimized for a virtual training environment. Programs and content that were designed for in-person training had subtle flaws when conducted online however, stopping training all together was not an option.Īs the year progressed, it became evident that virtual training was going to be an integral part of training for the foreseeable future. This was not a pivot or a long-term solution-it was a Band-Aid. While many training organizations and L&D departments were already offering blended learning or e-learning modules on a regular basis, most of the training, content and workshop activities focused on face-to-face ILT.ĭue to the rapid shift, most organizations quickly transitioned all training to Microsoft Teams, Zoom or other various platforms to ensure that critical learning continued. Last year, COVID-19 forced the training world shift to virtual training almost overnight. For Part 1 of this series, we will provide four tips to help maximize your content for virtual training. In this four-part series, we are going to explore helpful tips on how to adapt In-person instructor-led training (ILT) content for a virtual modality.