While we are in strange times a new normal is emerging fast. Staff are working remotely, families are hosting Thursday night quizzes online and lots more people are using this time for Continuous Professional Development (CPD). As many higher education institutions and corporate training providers flex to this adjustment, it is worth taking a moment to recap on these top tips for lecturers and training providors to deliver engaging online sessions for their participants.
Using Zoom or other webinar tools
- Zoom is fast emerging as a popular choice for teleconferencing, online training and even family quiz night.
- Use a good quality headset for best results.
- When setting up a Zoom meeting, set it to mute all participants.
- Ensure your Zoom meeting is protected by requiring participants to log in using a password.
- Use the poll function to get learner answers and improve engagement.
- Use the chat function to ask learners questions and get their responses. (Top Tip)
- Some learners may be shy and less willing to answer verbally. Use the chat function to overcome this.
Session Planning: This requires adaptation
- What works in a physical classroom environment won’t necessarily transfer to an online environment.
- Ensure you break up your lecture slides into clearly define sections. Each section should contain a brief introduction and conclusion/summary. This gives learners a sense of progress.
- Avoid long class durations, break it up by inserting activities. For example: a 1.5 hour class could be broken as follows:
- 30 mins: Class - Introduction/discussion of key points and assign reading to learners.
- 30 mins: Independent - Learners review reading assigned and answer questions individually or in predefined teams.
- 30 mins: Class – Discuss observations from reading and provide deeper insights.
Engage your audience
- Participants may have short attention spans so insert engaging activities, polls, quizzes, videos or ask them questions etc every 10-15 mins to re-capture their attention. (Top Tip)
- Give participants tasks/activities that they can work on themselves. This can be done during online class time or in the days between class.
- Examples: review videos, read a case study, complete an accounting/mathematical task, answer preassigned questions etc.
What content should I create
- Learners want great quality content (video, image, audio text) but this can take time to produce. If you find a great video explaining a topic or demonstrating a concept, distribute it to learners rather than trying to re-create it yourself (be considerate of copyright). (Top Tip)
- Our role is to facilitate learning so create summaries of key topics, illustrate concepts using examples, explain how topics relate to each other and support learners to excel in their assessments.
- Hold Q&A sessions or ask learners to submit their questions via an online survey (such as survey monkey).
How long should videos be:
- You may providing your participants with videos to watch before, during or after your training sessions. Ensure that these videos are short and to the point.
- MIT say under 6 minutes. Shorter videos were found to be much more engaging. Videos longer than 6 minutes were found to result in significant viewer attrition.
- University of Wisconsin say under 15 minutes in length.
- TED use the "18 minute rule".
Help participants to monitor their own progress
- Create short multiple choice question (MCQ) quizzes that allow learners to test their own knowledge on a topic. This can help them to identify where they excel or need improvement. (Top Tip)
- These can be created in moodle or Google forms etc.
- This can be added to moodle and completed at the end of the week.
- Use gamification to motivate learners by posting a leaderboard of the groups test results online so they can see their performance versus peers.
- Note: seek learner permission before posting their scores. Or post the score but not the learners names.
Don’t forget your LMS
- Your Learning Management System (LMS) has some good features that can be used to support online learners.
- The forum can be used to distribute content, facilitate conversations and encourage peer learning. Example activity:
- Monday: Hold class to discuss a new topic/concept. Afterwards, post related content (1 reading + 1 video etc) to the forum. Instruct learners to review the content and prepare answer to defined questions.
- Thursday: Hold class/tutorial to discuss what learners gained from their activity and provide deeper insights.
What is good eLearning
Angeliki, Asimina, and Eleni (2005) state that effective eLearning has the following characteristics:
- Successful in reaching learning objectives
- Easy accessibility
- Consistent and accurate message
- Easy to use
- Entertaining
- Memorable
- Relevant
- Reduced training costs