I’ve been talking to trainers recently about how to adopt learning technology in their work. Now these are really good, experienced facilitators, yet they are still nervous about running a webinar for example or using a virtual classroom. Sometimes the block is around the technology (yep, got that, but the more you practise, the more at ease you become with whatever platform you use). Sometimes the block is around the constraints they see technology placing on their hitherto successful and effective facilitation skills.
If you’re nervous too that’s great because you recognize that new skills are needed to facilitate learning in the online arena. It is not the same as face-to-face work, even if you’re using a system that allows participants to see you.
So here are a few practical tips to get you going:
- Make sure you are prepared and familiar with your technology platform before you use it with students. Do practice runs on your own or with colleagues until you feel OK enough to do it for real.
- Have a colleague act as moderator if you can. They can handle the questions and comments, whist you are doing a short input
- Every time you run a session, tell learners how to perform a task e.g. raise their hand, ask a question in the Q&A box etc. Don’t assume that each person knows how to use all the functions.
- Have a Plan B if the technology goes down. Believe me, it will at some point!! And it won’t be your fault; it will be because of bandwidth issues, or internet fails or whatever. My worst experience of this was running a training session with a co-host in a different country for participants on three continents. We used a webinar platform which I knew well. First my co-host and I couldn’t hear each other, then no-one could hear either of us and so it went on for agonising minutes whilst I tried to get things working. In the end I decided to call a halt. Once everyone had returned to their desks/beds/breakfast tables, I recorded a presentation of the main points of the training and sent them the link immediately. It wasn’t as effective as the ‘live’ call of course but it was way of dealing with dodgy connections!
I’m going to look at a few of the tools available in a series of blogs starting with chat rooms.
Any decent delivery platform will have a chat room; a place where participants can enter comments as the session goes along. Make sure you know how to use this before you start 😉
Chat exercises are a good way to promote learner interaction. Just because you can’t see each other, it doesn’t mean you can give them individual or group work to do. You can use the chat to capture the results of a brainstorming exercise, ask for their experiences to illustrate a certain point and so on.
- Tell them how they should submit their comments. It is really important to tell learners how you want them to respond. For example, say “Please place your answer in the chat area and click submit at the bottom of the chat panel”.
- Provide time boundaries. It’s a good idea to give specific time limits to chat exercises and let them know when they have, say, 15 seconds left to complete it.
- Allow participants to reflect on the other responses. If you have your chat set so that everyone can see everyone else’s comments (recommended) then allow time to compare and contrast their own responses with everyone else.
Go on, have a go. It really is a question of practice makes perfect!
What are your biggest blocks to using technology to enable learning?
What plan do you have to overcome these blocks?
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