Netcentric Campaigns has trained hundreds of activists through our online training programs, giving us the opportunity to test a variety of training tools and approaches. Some tips and tricks we've picked up along the way...

In many ways, online trainings are just like face-to-face trainings. All training events – whether virtual or in person – should be fun, instructive, and most importantly – actionable. But online trainings need to do these things even better, given the additional challenges of keeping people’s attention in the online space.

Why an online training?
The ability to meet, share and train virtually has revolutionalized the speed and effectiveness of communications within networks operating across time and place. Networks can organize strategy meetings, briefings and updates, trainings and even teambuilding events in the online space. You probably have no shortage of ideas for ways you can use the online space for your work. But do you know how to use it well?

The clear advantage of online trainings is their minimal use of resources. You can save hundreds of hours in travel and expenses by meeting online. But there are downsides too. Retaining participant attention can be challenging even for experienced facilitators. It's trickier to gauge the mood of the participants and generally infuse physical energy into the crowd as you normally would. Some strategies and tips for running and effective virtual meeting or training:

SET UP
1. Know your motivation: purpose and audience
Why do the training? What does it do? Who are the participants? What value do they get?

 

2. Choose content well
This is true for both on- and offline trainings. Consider what content best serves your needs. How can you ensure participants are absorbing material? What do participants need to master in order to act after the training is over?

 

3. Take advantage of online tools!

If you can avoid it, don't just show a powerpoint online! Some services enable you to use interactive content, video, sound, etc. Use this media whenever possible to make the presentation more engaging.

 

4. Make it personal
Tailor your content to your audience. Know who will participate in advance, and prepare material that is interesting and relevant to them.

 

5. Know your learning process
Knowing your content, people and purpose isn’t enough – you still need to develop your learning process. If you just want to hand people information do it in a paper. Think about how people can interact with you, each other and your content to learn something in a fun way.

GETTING STARTED
6. Time matters
The best average training time is 1 hour. Break your content into multiple sessions if necessary. Encourage attendees to log on 5-10 minutes in advance to get set up. And don’t let them sit there once they’re set up – get them engaged with the technology – complete a poll, add content to a wiki, etc.

7. Map the process
Give the audience a big picture idea of where you want to take them before you launch into the presentation. Encourage questions and discussion along the way, and be flexible if the audience wants to move in a different direction or at a different pace.

8. Set the mood
Hold the conversation in-check. Know what’s relevant for this training, and what should be addressed offline or after the group training. Distractions are death. A conversation that wanders off topic is a big problem. Remember, participants don’t have the body language to “shut off” conversations and are dependent on facilitator to keep conversation focused.

9. Plan well
If possible, have another person available to troubleshoot any set-up problems once the training has started. Remember to take participant locations into account, and plan a call for a time and day convenient for all. The facilitator should use a headset or handheld phone (no speakerphone!), thereby transmitting his/her voice as clearly as possible. And ask participants to mute their phones if they're not speaking, to prevent unnecessary background noise.

DURING AND AFTER
10. Get chatty

• Have the participants introduce users to each other at the beginning of the call, as this helps to make connections. Tell them to type names in the whiteboard. You’ll find that some users know each other from current or past work or that they have something in common.
• Encourage questions and interaction.
• Use inflexions in your voice to add meaning and connection. You don't have visual cues to do this. Solicit opposing or correcting comments, to engage people and bring energy to the conversation.
• Pause after each key visual and solicit responses. Start this early so that people are in the habit of "owning" the conversation with the facilitator. This increases learning, satisfaction, and readiness to follow-through (you can also gauge comprehension).
• Provide lots of detail in your visual descriptions...the office space, weather…anything that helps people "lock in".
• Remember the principles of effective trainings (virtual or otherwise): don't read from slides, do make things interactive, do use examples, do introduce groups of new material followed by time for participants to process.
• Put your photo on the screen when you are talking.

11. Wrap up
Ask for volunteer to summarize conversation. Get a summarizer to recap the presentation and discussion, including possible next steps and take away points. Establish a checkout process. “Check out” by soliciting a few words from each participant. Generally the focus should be "What did I learn or what moved me in the conversation?", "What I'm going to do?" or "What made me think in a new way."

12. Survey
Close out with a follow up survey. Respond to results of the survey within 24 hours. Provide useful notes and follow up links and remind participants how they can get additional information and get to the next training. Remember to feel out your success as a trainer - constantly strive to improve organization and delivery. Reviewing taped trainings is one way to do this.

BUT, HOW?
Following are tips and suggestions for some of our favorite online training tools. By no means are these the only options out there – but these are ones we like. A general piece of advice is that while the free services are usually effective, they're not as reliable as paid services. Nevertheless, many networks effectively use the free tools regularly.

WebEx: This paid service offers the ability to host trainings for an unlimited number of participants through live, real-time sharing of uploaded material, specific applications and even the host's desktop. For example, trainers can switch between a powerpoint presentation and a live website illustrating a point being discussed. WebEx also offers a paid conference conference call service to accompany the presentation. www.webex.com

Google presentations: Google has recently launched its free 'presentations' feature, accessible through Google Documents. The service allows meeting hosts to share a powerpoint presentation with an unlimited number of participants. Layout options are somewhat limited, but functional. www.docs.google.com

Jing allows users to capture images and video and share them instantly with others online. Jing doesn't have a real-time component, but the host can record material in advance and share with others. http://www.jingproject.com/

Free Conference Call.com: Offers free and moderately reliable group conferencing.