Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Identifiying the Skills and Team Members Needed to Support Synchronous Online Sessions and Webinars

Jumped into a different course - talking about coding rather than actually coding is a bit dry.

Karen Hyder, of the elearning Guild is presenting this particular session. Asking the class what tasks need to be managed when giving online sessions and webinars include:

Registration
Marketing - getting butts in the seats
Set up virtual session rooms and content folders
Set up LMS, post files for download
Create learning interactions
Coach SME's Trainers
Host/Moderator of sessions (I think this is one that a lot of people forget - imagine trying to manage presenting a class and moderate all the questions and comments as well.
Tech support during the session
Handle in-session support issues

Some comments include:

How long is too long? Answers include anywhere from 2-4 hours, and depends on how interactive it is (longer needs more interaction to keep people engaged). Karen finds that 75 minutes with 1/2 hour breaks seems to be a good benchmark to start with.

Tips for telephone supported presentations - have a tip slide that informs participants of functions of the call in line (like mute) so that everyone can have a pleasant learning experience. (gives good argument for VoIP supported presentations).

With the above task points, Karen suggests that you should map out which tasks are appropriate for which people and discover who you can assign multiple tasks to. Some things to be mindful of for example, would included how well that person communicates (if they are registering participants) or have different strengths that may suit a different task better.

Teach your learners how to use the interface and how to respond to questions or participate within the application you are using to present. This will help bridge the gap from F2F training to online webinars or sessions. Adjust your terminology to be more descriptive "Use the chat feature to answer this questions" and post an image to denote that it is Q&A time. Karen also notes that this is your time for a pulse check on how you are doing physically, mentally, and whether you are on point for time.

Another comment: what is too much? Should you have both voice and chat responses in online sessions? This really ends up being dependent on the culture of the participants and what you can handle.

How much time should you give for people to respond to polls and questions? 30 seconds to 1 minute and Karen states that she never really sees more than 75% response rate.

There is a lot more to this presentation, but Karen when over in time. As always, if you are interested in more, please let me know by email or through the comment sections of each post.

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