Engaging Virtual Trainings
Objective: Design activities to make virtual trainings more engaging.
Background
I attended The Alchemy Lab’s L&D Digital Conference in summer 2020 and was particularly excited about Kassy LaBorie’s webinar on Activities for Engaging Virtual Training. I decided to design my own virtual training activities modeled after the helpful advice she gave!
Tools Used: Canva and Zoom
Tools Used: Canva and Zoom
The Challenge
LaBorie is an expert on virtual trainings. In her webinar, she gave a lot of great advice and example activities for making those dreaded virtual trainings more engaging - all the more important during the COVID pandemic when a lot of learning moved online. I decided to use her advice to create some example training slides that could be used during a training for teachers who have to move their face-to-face courses online.
Planning for adventure
With any type of training, LaBorie recommends a “recipe” for success, a metaphor that is so relevant to my recent hobby of baking during the COVID pandemic. This recipe should help you design each activity within a virtual training. She recommended that this recipe should include the following steps:
1. Identify the goals and objectives.
2. Determine what's social.
3. Map the interactions to the features.
Here is my "recipe" for an ice breaker activity for my virtual teacher training, based on LaBorie's outline.
1. Identify the goals and objectives.
2. Determine what's social.
3. Map the interactions to the features.
Here is my "recipe" for an ice breaker activity for my virtual teacher training, based on LaBorie's outline.
LaBorie recommended an ice breaker activity as a good way to begin a virtual training. This brought me back to my classroom teaching days again, and her recommended slides were very similar to ones I have used in teaching English.
One ice breaker in particular I liked involved displaying images on a slide and having participants interact with them in the chat. If time allows, you can even have participants elaborate on their responses in audio or video.
I made my own version of this ice breaker below. (Can you tell I love cats?)
One ice breaker in particular I liked involved displaying images on a slide and having participants interact with them in the chat. If time allows, you can even have participants elaborate on their responses in audio or video.
I made my own version of this ice breaker below. (Can you tell I love cats?)
Based on everyone's responses, this is also a great way for you to personalize the training or address specific concerns.
LaBorie also recommended some fun interactive activities to make your virtual trainings more engaging. We tried one out - a scavenger hunt. This resonated with me because I had just finished reading a section in Julie Dirksen’s book Design For How People Learn that mentions a bit of competition can help engage your learners.
An online scavenger hunt is especially useful if your training involves information that is already out there. Maybe you need to refresh the participant’s memory on available resources or make an interaction with some online content a little more exciting. As I’ve learned from my teacher days, information sticks better when the learner has discovered it for themselves rather than just being told the important info from the teacher.
Here is my example of a scavenger hunt for my training on moving teachers online using a community college's guide for creating online courses (Mesa Community College in Arizona) based on Laborie’s set-up:
LaBorie also recommended some fun interactive activities to make your virtual trainings more engaging. We tried one out - a scavenger hunt. This resonated with me because I had just finished reading a section in Julie Dirksen’s book Design For How People Learn that mentions a bit of competition can help engage your learners.
An online scavenger hunt is especially useful if your training involves information that is already out there. Maybe you need to refresh the participant’s memory on available resources or make an interaction with some online content a little more exciting. As I’ve learned from my teacher days, information sticks better when the learner has discovered it for themselves rather than just being told the important info from the teacher.
Here is my example of a scavenger hunt for my training on moving teachers online using a community college's guide for creating online courses (Mesa Community College in Arizona) based on Laborie’s set-up:
Finally, LaBorie recommended an activity that works well at the end of a training - display pictures that came up during the training on a slide, then have participants create a story using each picture at least once in any order. These stories can be shared in breakout rooms or a few people can share for the whole group depending on the size.
Here is my example based on this tip. Imagine all these pictures were previously displayed somewhere in the training:
Here is my example based on this tip. Imagine all these pictures were previously displayed somewhere in the training:
Reaching the destination
What I learned from this webinar and my project:
- Storytelling engages learners.
- Involve the learner as much as possible! No one wants to listen to an online lecture.
- Associating ideas with images helps them stick.
- Having learners explain and practice concepts with others helps create “buy-in” - people are more likely to think a concept is worth paying attention to when others are doing it too. You can also see what really stuck with the learners and what didn't. In other words, was your training successful?