Running Effective Online Trainings

Thanks to a variety of new online learning tools, students can earn a college degree without ever setting foot in a classroom. Training and capacity-building organizations are also starting to take advantage of these learning tools by offering online trainings and Web-based seminars (or "webinars") to supplement their usual in-person curricula.

For NPower, the need to offer online training became evident in 2005, when, along with CompuMentor, we set out to train nearly 100 recipients of a Charles Stewart Mott Foundation grant. With grantees spanning the United States, Europe, and South America, the cost of delivering training in person would have been exorbitant, so we began researching online training options. Several online workshops later, we have gained a great deal of insight into what makes an online training program successful.

If you are an experienced trainer and facilitator, the idea of online instruction might initially seem daunting. How do you keep your participants engaged when you cannot see their faces and visually gauge their reactions? How do you make sure your attendees are actually learning? How do you know they are not checking their e-mail or multitasking while you're teaching?

Despite the challenges, we believe you can deliver a successful and engaging training program online. Everything you already know about how to teach and engage students -- like establishing clear objectives and including content that appeals to a variety of learning styles -- still applies. There are, however, a few additional requirements for translating successful in-person training into effective online training. Here are a few of NPower's tips for successfully planning and facilitating an online training session.

Choose a Good Training Platform

There are numerous tools available, ranging from basic Web conferencing systems that allow a presenter to guide attendees through a set of slides over the Internet, to complete learning management systems like the ones used by colleges and universities to conduct semester-long courses online. Most systems work in conjunction with a telephone so that everyone can listen to the instructor.

Because NPower uses a Web conferencing system for running online training classes, this article will focus on our experience with Web conferencing systems, not learning management systems. If you are interested in learning management systems, read Chief Learning Officer magazine's "Assessing Learning Management Systems."

Price structures for Web conferencing systems vary greatly. Some companies charge a per-minute or per-participant fee. Others charge a flat rate that includes a limit on the number of training sessions you can run each month or year. Per-minute and per-participant fees range from about five cents a minute per attendee to 25 cents a minute. Full-featured, flat-rate systems can cost as much as $10,000 a year.

The price for a conferencing system increases with the number of features, so know what you need before you choose one. Here are some questions to ask before you decide on a system.

1. Do trainees need to see your desktop and specific software applications?
2. Are your classes mainly one-time sessions with a few slides' worth of content, or are they a more intensive series of sessions that require a discussion board, a participant tracking system, and streaming multimedia?
3. Do you want your participants to be able to submit questions online?
4. Are you offering your training in real time, with the instructor and students all online at once, or will the participants move through the curriculum at their own pace and on their own schedule?
5. Do you want participants to be able to chat with you? How about with one another?

Most companies that offer Web conferencing or online training tools run regular group demonstrations or will arrange an individual demonstration of their products, so make sure you preview a number of options before choosing one.

For NPower's one-time classes and webinars, a good Web conferencing system with a few bells and whistles has been more than enough to meet our needs. The features we most often use in our training sessions are:

• Application sharing, which allows attendees to see a software application running on an instructor's desktop during a demonstration. We especially like training products that enable the instructor to pass control of the software to the participants, so that they get hands-on experience using it on their own computer. Though only one attendee can try the software at a time, application sharing is a great way to ensure that everyone understands what you are trying to teach, and promotes active participation.
• Polling slides, which allow you to quiz or poll attendees and also encourage active participation.
• A question-and-answer window that lets users pose their questions in writing. This feature is invaluable for those students who are too shy to speak up over the phone, as well as for very large training sessions.
• A training platform that enables an instructor to chat one-on-one with attendees. This can be very helpful for troubleshooting individual technical problems without disrupting the entire training.

For examples of Web conferencing or online training software that you might want to use in your organization, check out Think of It's "Real-Time Conferencing," a guide to software and services providing real-time communication.

Prepare Attendees Well

Preparing your attendees in advance will save you a lot of headaches on the day of the training. Many of your attendees may never have participated in an online training, so this will be a new experience for them. After running into some technical problems in our first online class, NPower quickly learned the importance of good preparation. We suggest taking the following steps in the weeks leading up to each training session.

• Send clear, step-by-step log-in instructions to all attendees ahead of time. Instructions with screenshots are especially helpful, and will decrease technical difficulties considerably. Make sure you inform attendees ahead of time about whom to contact if they have trouble logging in on the day of the training.
• Provide a link that attendees can use to test the compatibility of their browser and  operating system. Most Web conferencing systems provide a browser or a system-check Web address that you can send to your attendees in advance. Encourage them to test it at least 24 hours before the training.
• Make sure attendees know the technical specifications for your Web conferencing system. If your system works best with a specific browser, requires a certain type of Internet connection, or only works with one operating system, make sure your attendees know that before the day of the training.
• Send out a copy of the presentation, or have it available for download on the day of the training. If an attendee is unable to connect to the online portion of the training, at least he or she can follow along on this document.
• On the day of the training, encourage attendees to sign on 10 to 15 minutes early to receive additional technical support if necessary.

Be Ready to Provide Technical Assistance

Preparing your attendees is very important, but you need to be ready, too. For those attendees who need a little extra help logging onto the online training, we've learned to always have one staff person other than the facilitator available during the session to help answer questions or to support users who are having trouble. This keeps the facilitator from splitting his or her attention between training and providing technical support, which severely affects the quality and continuity of the training. For classes with more than 20 people, it's a good idea to have more than one support person available.

Keep the Training Interactive

This may sound difficult when you are dealing with an online training, but there are ways to make the training engaging and interactive. In fact, planning for an engaging online training is probably even more important than it would be for in-person training because of the added challenge of not being able to see students' faces.

First of all, try to build some rapport with the attendees by introducing yourself and putting your picture on the first slide. If the group is small enough, make sure all attendees make verbal introductions as well, just as they would in an in-person class. If the group is large, consider sending out an attendee list ahead of time.

During the training, make use of polling or quiz slides to get feedback from your attendees. This can be a fun way to let participants have a voice, to check their pre-training knowledge, or to figure out what they have learned from the training. Most online training platforms will allow you to show the poll results to attendees so they can see how the group answered the questions.

Give ample opportunities for questions, whether verbal or through an online question-and-answer window. In addition, be creative about how you ask for student feedback. In the system NPower used, we could ask attendees to change the color of the status box next to their names to give feedback to the instructor. Some systems also allow a student to click a button that displays a raised hand next to their name. Keep in mind that any time you ask a student to give feedback in some way, you are increasing their attentiveness and helping them stay focused in an otherwise challenging format.

We also use application-sharing to allow attendees to try the software we demonstrate. This puts attendees in control of the online training system for short periods of time, and is a great way to make sure that attendees understand and can apply what they are learning. If you want to use application-sharing, make sure you choose a Web conferencing or online training platform that supports it.

A Few Final Tips

These last tips will make a big difference in how comfortable you are while conducting the training class.

• Schedule a break if the class is longer than 90 minutes. If your attendees are listening in on a conference line, make sure no one hangs up the phone, but instead ask participants to mute their line for five minutes or until they get back from break.
• Make sure you have water (and coffee if it's early in the morning) on hand for yourself, since you won't be able to leave your computer easily once the training starts.
• Use a hands-free headset for your phone so that you can move freely but still be heard clearly. Speakerphones are not recommended for instructors or participants, as they detract from the overall sound quality of the audio portion of the training.
• Call on people directly by name instead of asking for volunteers. Online trainings, like conference calls, demand directed facilitation. If you don't call on a participant by name, make sure to leave ample wait time after you ask a question, as students are even more reticent when they are worried about interrupting one another.
• Speak slowly and clearly. It's harder for someone to stay engaged when they can't hear you!
• Don't be shy about asking participants to mute their phones during the call if you are hearing lots of background noise. You may feel rude, but if you don't ask them to do so, you are compromising all the participants' learning experience.

The most important thing to remember as a facilitator is that the principles of good training are still relevant in the virtual world. Just because you're online doesn't mean that all your knowledge of how to lead a good training should go out the window. Use graphics and visuals on your slides. Jump over to a Web site to show your attendees an example of something you are discussing. Speak slowly and clearly, but don't read your slides. Look for ways to engage your audience and address different learning styles.

With thorough preparation, leading online trainings can be a fun and effective way to broaden your reach and share your know-how with others, regardless of their location.