Hot Topic! Training the Virtual Trainer - August 2009

Does your company deliver (or are you considering) virtual classroom training? With reduced L&D budgets, restrictions on travel and geographically dispersed teams it's becoming a cost-effective choice for course delivery. We're finding that many internal trainers need help tackling this topic. And while it's a topic many L&D departments and trainers would like to explore, they don't know where to start in designing and delivering effective virtual learning sessions and programmes. Well, help is at hand in the form of our 'Train the Virtual Trainer' course.

A good virtual classroom session is like a good face-to-face session - interactive. It's important to engage your learners using the skills you'd use face-to-face, encouraging exploration and providing plenty of opportunities for practice. This is even more important in the virtual classroom, because you can lose your audience and not even know that they've gone. Trainers need to be creative to use the facilities provided by the software in ensuring maximum participation.

This face-to-face 1 day course allows trainers to adapt to this new format, modify training materials to be extremely visual, allowing plenty of opportunities for trainees to interact using online tools. And because virtual classroom sessions are relatively short, the course will enable you to 'chunk' materials appropriately, both in terms of length and in terms of the logical flow of the course as a whole.

Our course helps learners to:

• Confidently handle the challenges peculiar to training remotely
• Design effective Virtual learning sessions and programmes using either high-end video conferencing or more widely used web-based applications.
• Use the various techniques for engaging and motivating a Virtual group
• Adapt session design to address the different Learning Styles
• Know how to design pre-event, intra-session and follow up activities to maximise the learning difference
• Address personal concerns about running Virtual training
• Use the tools within the technology appropriately to support learning
• Create effective PowerPoint slides which support rather than undermine the learning
• Be aware of how they look and sound over the Internet
• Know what is possible and what is not in training Virtually

Note: This is not a technical training course and as such will NOT cover 'how' to use the various technologies.

Get further details on our 'Train the Virtual Trainer' course. This 1 day course is available both as an in-house and public course event.

If this is of interest to you or any of your colleagues, please let me know. Email me, Laura Whitworth, if you'd like to speak with one of our consultants or to arrange a meeting.