Custom eLearning Custom eLearning
  1. What We Do
    Custom eLearning Learning Consultancy Performance Campaigns Mobile Learning Performance Support Microlearning
    Video and Animation Rapid eLearning Games & Gamification Flash-to-HTML ILT and VILT Value Added Services
  2. Who We Are
    About Us Leadership Awards Press Releases Clients Careers Contact Us
  3. Our Work
  4. Insights
    eBooks Whitepapers Reports Presentations Case Studies Webinars Infographics Newsletters
  5. Podcast
  6. Let's Talk
  • What We Do
    • Custom eLearning
    • Learning Consultancy
    • Performance Campaigns
    • Mobile Learning
    • Performance Support
    • Microlearning
    • Video and Animation
    • Rapid Learning
    • Games & Gamification
    • Flash-to-HTML
    • ILT and VILT
    • Value Added Services
  • Who We Are
    • About Us
    • Leadership
    • Awards
    • Press Releases
    • Clients
    • Careers
    • Contact Us
  • Our Work
  • Insights
    • eBooks
    • Whitepapers
    • Reports
    • Presentations
    • Case Studies
    • Webinars
    • Infographics
    • Newsletters
  • Podcast

Focusing on Audience

 

Learning Engagement  |  8 MIN

Focusing on Audience

Written by Sonal Sheth

(If you’re new to this series, here is some brief background to help you catch up:

Given the unique training challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic poses for us all, this series explores the various considerations for delivering an effective VILT (Virtual Instructor-Led Training). I recommend that you read the first two posts in sequence, and then, you can even pick and choose what’s of greater relevance to you.

  1. Training in a Corona-Hit World
  2. Choosing to Conduct a VILT
  3. Weighing eLearning vs. VILT )

Whenever you’re in the middle of making decisions about training, it’s a good idea to step back and consider your learners specifically. Very often, institutional constraints, business realities, and practical compromises end up gradually erasing the learner from the picture: naturally, this spells disaster for the ultimate success of the program. If you want to change learner behaviour and have a real impact on performance, the person who is actually performing those tasks cannot be left too far behind in the race of competing needs! (Of course, if you are only looking at a checkbox training deployment to fulfil on-paper compliance, this matters far less…)

So, in our deliberations on whether VILT is a good option — and when it is a good option — let’s turn our focus to the learner.

There are some things that we anyway consider when thinking about conducting an ILT (instructor-led training). Now, there are just a few more aspects we suggest tagging on because of the “V” of the VILT mode of delivery.

We’ll begin with the more familiar paradigm of ILTs and then see what VILT further layers on those initial considerations.

Familiarity with Learners
Every trainer knows that the quality of interaction and the level of engagement in a classroom session depends to some extent on how well the trainer knows the audience being trained. If the two parties are new to each other, you invariably have to carve out a little warm up time explicitly and implicitly. Explicitly is in the sense that you will have icebreakers and kick-off discussions, to get everyone used to each other. Implicit in the sense that you will not launch into the core content or pick an aspect driven by discussion or intense activity – rather, you will start off light and easy.

This is true of any classroom; it is doubly true of a VILT. The only thing is, as we saw before, there may be a challenge in terms of making that design trade-off between getting your learners comfortable with the dynamics of participation vs. making as brief a session as possible.

Language Considerations
Always, with a synchronous medium, the learner has to keep up with the pace at which a session moves. If there happens to be a multilingual audience, any of whose primary language is not the medium of instruction, the facilitator has to strike an average so that native speakers are not disengaged and non-native speakers are not left behind. This is true for both ILTs and VILTs.

Class Size
Well, definitely the number of people you can accommodate in a classroom session is something to think of! But even if you discount a mob, you do have to think of the class size in relation to the content. There are some kinds of role-plays or activities that are necessary from a content perspective, but viable only for certain numbers of people. Just to be totally clear, I am not implying a blanket rule for role-plays in general – I am talking about the number of roles in a role play varying based on the content of each training!

Most times the digital medium itself means that many of these conventional activities will be ruled out. Okay, in that case, if you’re anyway adapting the design in that manner and ruling out these tricky parts of the training… are you in the clear? I’m afraid not. For example, you need to consider how many attendees at a time your platform will support.

Geographic Distribution
Of course, the more spread out your learners are, the more challenging it is to run a classroom session. Do you run a Train the Trainers series and scale up local capacity to run the program, is it something better done by one central team…? The answer could depend on a lot of other contributory factors, but essentially, this is a factor to think of.

It’s also quite obvious to associate this with a classroom training – there is also the logistical aspect of getting everyone to one place, right? Surely in the digital, work-from-home world we are in now, this shouldn’t matter for VILTs? Actually, it still does. We need to consider time zone differences because of the synchronicity of the medium. You would really struggle to work out a training time for combinations like SE Asia and South America, or the US and China!

The solution may therefore require multiple deployments catering to each time zone cluster.

So, these aspects we have considered up to now matter to any instructor-led session, physical or virtual.

What further implication does the ‘V’ of the VILT have for us?

Cone of Silence
Everyone in your audience attending your session should be able to do so within a ‘cone’ of silence at home. In our current world of ad hoc work-from-home arrangements and no childcare or domestic help and support, this is asking for a lot (if not the impossible!) from many. The training coordinator can only control managers and say “Free this person to focus on this training” — they cannot run interference with the learner’s 5-year old child, spouse, siblings, elderly parents, etc. and carve out dedicated and uninterrupted time to attend the training!

Missing Non-verbal Language
Anyone who has conducted even a one-hour training session knows how much we rely on being able to read facial expressions and body language as part of effective facilitation. There are many who hesitate to speak up and say they don’t understand something/ have a question. These cues are what tell us to stop and encourage the participant to speak up. Now, learners have an even more impersonal medium to cope with, and one in which participation is always less than face-to-face in a classroom. (And, Zoom fatigue is real, people!) So consider the effect of such a changed session dynamic on your learners and see if you might even need to consider support mechanisms to get learners to still engage effectively with the session, trainer, and content.

Context of the Space
Nobody needs an explanation of how distracting our personal devices can be when we are trying to work. Notifications and messages so successfully sabotage our concentration while we’re working to the point that a whole slice of the self-help and productivity industry is dedicated to solving this issue!

Now, many of our learners may be logging into work from personal devices. The separation of ‘space’ from personal life brought about by using a work machine, just disappeared. This has to be addressed and accounted for by facilitators and training coordinators. In a classroom training, you can still walk around and gauge who is looking at their work/personal phone a bit too much during the session. But with the virtual, distributed classroom – that is impossible. And it may not be a wilful disengagement from the session, even work (incessant mails, texts from up or down the line) can keep interrupting focus during training. We need to find ways to help learners manage these distractions.

Personalisation, Privacy, and Appropriateness
Our expectations for how employees conduct themselves need to change significantly, sometimes reasonably and sometimes less so. As we saw earlier, there have been lapses in conduct that range from understandable to inexplicable. Facilitators and learners alike have to be mentally prepared for the new normal. Facilitators particularly will have to moderate, and respond effectively to a whole new set of situations, even ones that have nothing to do with the training itself but impact the delivery and flow of the session all the same.

There is also a certain level of tech-savvy that facilitators need to acquire. (There is nothing worse than a facilitator who appears outdated — and hence incompetent! — about what’s happening with the platform.) For example, as we have seen with Zoom, anyone can later access a “private” session chat between two participants, rendering it not private at all. Think about the company confidential information that can be leaked as a result of perfectly natural, relevant exchanges between learners during a training! And that ‘Zoom-bombing’ has been added to our lexicon tells you just how much of a problem it is and how prevalent a phenomenon.

Mechanisms for Participation and Feedback
It’s not at all difficult to set up appropriate mechanisms to address the increased support that learners may need to be able to switch to a VILT-driven delivery format, but it does take a little thought and effort. L&D and facilitators have to coordinate and brainstorm to come up with effective solutions.

Similarly, even in-session and post-session feedback collection has to be handled differently for VILTs as compared to ILTs, needing perhaps a slightly different kind of organisation and collation.

Looking to Go Virtual?
Talk to our Digital Learning Experts to understand how can we help you transform your ILTs to Digital Learning quickly and on a budget. Or write to us at elearning@upsidelearning.com

Tweet

Write a Comment



← Learning the best way to get values training in play 10 Things to Turn Your Boring Sales Training to an Online Triumph →
Subscribe for updates

Delivered by FeedBurner

Featured PostsTags
L&D Go Beyond Podcast: How can L&D Pivot from Learning to Performance?, with Laura OvertonGabriella DanielsDriving Learners toward Better Outcomes with Scenario-based LearningAlesiya KhanL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Bridging the Gap between Learning and Performance, with Charles JenningsGabriella DanielsIncorporating Spacing within Digital Learning InterventionsVidya RajagopalL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Strategies for Effective Learning in Retail Sales, with Ramakrishna RaoIsha SoodThe Journey of the Curious UpsiderGabriella DanielsL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Moving ID to LXD, with Clark QuinnIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Post-Pandemic Workplace Learning Strategy, with Shantanu BhattacharyaIsha SoodWhy Learning Design Should Incorporate SpacingVidya RajagopalL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Secrets to Being Smarter, Faster, with Arun PradhanIsha SoodThe Power Of Testing: Testing As A Tool For LearningSonal ShethL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Challenges and Opportunities for Measuring the Impact of Training and Learning, with Kevin M. YatesIsha Sood18 and Fabulous – Upside Learning Completes Another Glorious Year of Enabling Enterprises for Better Workplace LearningIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Instructional Story Design, with Rance GreeneIsha SoodStoryboarding – You Gotta LUV it!Neeti SudumbrekarL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Gamifying Workplace Learning the Right Way, with Karl KappIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Workplace Learning in the Post-Covid World, with Sam Taylor, Jr. and Rick HouslerIsha SoodDesirable Difficulties: Making learning slow, to improve performance fastShreyas KoradL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Learning for L&D Professionals, with Joti JosephIsha SoodBetter learning experiences lead to better employee engagement in the modern workplaceAmit GargL&D Go Beyond Podcast: The Ten Questions You Must Ask at The Start of Any Learning ProjectIsha SoodA little forgetting before retrieval makes memory stickier for workplace applicationAlesiya KhanL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Writing Better Multiple-Choice Questions to Assess LearningIsha SoodTime to onboard the great learning modernizationAlesiya KhanBeyond mere conversion, virtual ILT is an opportunity to modernize learningAmit GargModern workplace learning needs new wine in new bottleAmit GargIt’s Fun, But Is Netflix Right For Workplace Learning?Amit GargCan gamification level up your employee onboarding experience and boost outcome?Amit GargSolving before Learning: A Case for Inverting the Way Courses are DesignedShreyas KoradL&D Go Beyond Podcast: AI and The Upskilling Imperative for L&DIsha SoodLooking Back at 2021 with Gratitude: A Fulfilling Year with Many Reasons to CheerIsha SoodThe Forgotten Art of Exploratory LearningShreyas KoradDeep, durable learning ensures adept, adaptable workplace performanceAmit GargL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Design for How People LearnIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Chatbots in Workplace Learning & PerformanceIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Curiosity & Learning in the WorkplaceIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Curation & Learning Ecosystems – Dealing With the Complexity That Damages Learning CultureIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: How to Solve the Right Problems in L&DIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Innovation in L&DIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: How to Bring Performance Focus to TrainingIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Design Thinking for Learning EngagementIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Building Learning Programs that EngageIsha SoodL&D Go Beyond Podcast: Learning Engagement in Supply Chain TrainingIsha SoodThe Living Root Bridge of Learning EngagementAmit GargAuthentic, holistic tasks ensure engaged, applicable learningAmit GargThe Curious Role of Spaced Practice and Staggered Retrieval in Learning EngagementAmit GargWhy Interleaving is a Significant Practice for Learning EngagementAmit GargUnderstanding Learning Engagement – The Missing Link Between Learning and PerformanceAmit GargWhat is Learning?Amit GargEngaging eLearning is Effective LearningAmit Garg
Mobile Learning (140)eLearning (115)mLearning (98)Instructional Design (50)Game Based Learning (42)Technology (35)eLearning Development (35)Workplace Learning (33)Learning (26)Learning Games (26)Design (25)Upside Learning (24)Learning Design (22)eLearning Technology (21)Social Learning (20)ipad (19)DGBL (17)Best eLearning Links (16)augmented reality (15)eLearning Outsourcing (15)Games (14)HTML5 (14)Innovation (13)LMS (13)Responsive Authoring Tools (13)Mobile (13)UL Fun Cartoon (13)Future (12)IPhone (12)Future Learning (11)UL Fun e toons (11)Informal Learning (11)elearning weekly digest (11)Responsive eLearning (11)Flash (10)Development (10)Top eLearning Links (10)eLearning On Tablets (10)Learning Technology (10)Weekly Digest (9)Top eLearning Posts (9)Blended Learning (9)GBL (9)Mobile Learning Technology (9)eLearning Weekly Finds (8)Tablet Learning (8)Multi Device eLearning (8)eLearning Weekly Find (8)Mobility (8)elearning in a multi-device world (7)Learning and Development (7)Trends (7)Rapid Authoring (7)Training Outsourcing (7)Engaging eLearning (7)Custom eLearning (7)Performance Support (7)Mobile Technology (6)Casual Games (6)Serious Games (6)
eLearning Learning

Upcoming Events

Archives

Resources
Compliance Training: Stop Ticking the Box
Compliance Training: Stop Ticking the BoxesHave a compliance program that’s not as effective as you’d hoped? Or wondering where to start to design an effective one? Find the answers to all your queries in this eBook.
Read More and Download
The Ultimate Guide to migrating eLearning from Flash to HTML5
The Ultimate Guide to migrating eLearning from Flash to HTML5This eBook is meant for organizations who want to migrate their eLearning from Flash to HTML5.
View Recording
Tips for Designing, Testing and Delivering eLearning in a Multi-device World - eBook
Tips for Designing, Testing and Delivering eLearning in a Multi-device WorldA collection of highly useful tips on the various aspects of designing, testing and delivering multi-device/ responsive eLearning.
Read More and Download

GET INSIGHTS AND LEARNING DELIGHTS STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX, SUBSCRIBE TO UPSIDE LEARNING BLOG.

Delivered by FeedBurner

Published on June 10, 2020
Topic : Learning Engagement

Don't forget to share this post!

  • Snow
  • Snow
  • Snow
  • Snow

Related Blogs

L&D Go Beyond Podcast: How can L&D Pivot from Learning to Performance?, with Laura Overton
Podcast,   Workplace Learning    | 2 MIN
Gabriella Daniels
Driving Learners toward Better Outcomes with Scenario-based Learning
Upside Learning    | 5 MIN
Alesiya Khan
L&D Go Beyond Podcast: Bridging the Gap between Learning and Performance, with Charles Jennings
Podcast,   Workplace Learning    | 2 MIN
Gabriella Daniels

GET INSIGHTS AND LEARNING DELIGHTS STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX, SUBSCRIBE TO UPSIDE LEARNING BLOG

Delivered by FeedBurner

  • Snow
  • Snow
  • Snow
  • Snow

Follow us on

  • linkedin
  • Facebook
  • Snow
  • Slideshare
  • Feedburner
  • Youtube
to be in trend with latest happening in the elearning domain.

More from Our Resources

  • eBook

  • Whitepapers

  • Reports

  • Presentations

  • Case Studies

  • Webinars

  • Infographics

  • Newsletters

Snow
Forest
Mountains
Mountains
Mountains

WANT TO FIND OUT HOW OUR SOLUTIONS CAN IMPACT
YOUR ORGANISATION?
CLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH

Custom eLearning

Upside Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Punakar Complex, Survey No-117,
Bangalore Pune Highway, Warje,
Pune, India

Tel: +91-20-2523 6050 / 51 / 52

Email: elearning@upsidelearning.com

FOLLOW US

GO BEYOND
What is Go Beyond Compliance Training Sales Enablement Measuring Learning
Effectiveness
Microlearning Gamification Learning Engagement
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Learning Strategy Solution Design and
Development
WHAT WE DO
Custom eLearning Learning Consultancy Performance Campaigns Mobile Learning Performance Support Microlearning Video and Animation Rapid eLearning Games & Gamification Flash-to-HTML Conversion ILT and VILT Value Added Services
WHAT WE ARE
About Us Our Work Leadership Awards Press release Clients Careers Contact Us
QUICK LINKS
Insights Blog Submit a RFP Schedule A Call Client Login Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2022 Upside Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd.