This week we are pleased to release the Trainer’s Guide to GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting is probably a platform that you have found yourself in already for meetings. But is it a platform that you have considered conducting a training session in? The Trainer’s Guide to GoToMeeting will show you how you can easily conduct your next training session via the GoToMeeting platform.
Here at Endurance Learning, we like to give the people what they want. And this year that means virtual training tools! The best virtual training tool to try in 2021 is Soapbox. Simply tell Soapbox that you are planning a session via GoToMeeting (or any of our other compatible platforms) and Soapbox will build you a lesson plan, handouts, and slide deck in 10 minutes or less. Take advantage of the 14-day free trial to experiment with creating new training sessions or spend a few minutes asking Soapbox to convert a pre-existing in-person training session to a virtual training session. We know, we’re making your job so easy!
We’ve arrived in 2021 and I think it’s safe to say that virtual training is here to stay. Hopefully, you’ve had the chance to become comfortable with one or two virtual training platforms over this past year.
If Adobe Connect is your organization’s platform of choice, (or perhaps you’ve been considering it for yourself) you’re in luck. The Trainer’s Guide to Adobe Connecthas arrived!
Step-by-step directions for how to set up and run breakout rooms in Adobe Connect.
The thing that sets Adobe Connect apart from the other training platforms in the field are the impressive breakout room capabilities. A poll of TLAC readers showed that breakout rooms tend to be the scariest virtual training tool for trainers and participants alike. While participants fear being “sucked out” never to return again, trainers fear losing people in a deep unknown void. Once you have mastered the functionality of breakout room capabilities, you will see how it can exponentially benefit your virtual training programs (and that fear factor will fade away). Breakout rooms are unmatched in their ability to allow participants to collaborate and participate in discussion. If you’re not incorporating them in your sessions, it’s time to start!
Breakout room features that make Adobe Connect a standout platform include:
File ShareDuring Breakout Rooms. Share files and handouts with participants within a breakout room. Bonus: each breakout room can have unique files!
Create Stations. Rotate groups through different breakout rooms (as you would have participants rotate through stations in a training room) with the click of a button. Each breakout room can have its own PowerPoint and handouts for download.
EasyGroup Presentations. Take advantage of the ability to share content created in a breakout room, such as a whiteboard, with participants in the main room. If you use breakout rooms as a collaboration tool for groups to create something that they will be presenting to the large group, you’re going to love this feature!
Expansive Tool Options for Participants Within the Breakout Room. Participants in a breakout room have access to a group chat, screen share capabilities, whiteboard, and file sharing. Additionally, a host can drop into a breakout room and poll that specific group using the polling feature!
Use for Large Groups. Adobe Connect offers Capacity for up to 200 participants to participate in 20 breakout rooms.
Here in the United States, our Spring of COVID-19 has turned into the Summer of COVID-19, and soon, we’ll have the Autumn of COVID-19. It doesn’t appear that we’ll be coming together to deliver in-person training or in-person conference sessions any time soon. So how can organizations best help their presenters convert their programs from in-person to virtual delivery?
Retrofitting your existing programs to try to do the same thing, just in a virtual environment is tempting. Keep in mind, however, that virtual delivery offers opportunities for which in-person instruction doesn’t allow… and there are some things you can do in-person that you just can’t do online. Below, you’ll find a lesson plan that we’ve created for a 90-minute session that you can use to help educate your staff, co-workers or clients on ways to think through the conversion from in-person to online instruction.
With a headline like that, I’m guessing my future career in politics may be over before it begins. I’m ok with that.
For a long time I felt that we lived in a nation that was realizing Dr. King’s dream, where people in the United States in the 2000s had every opportunity to be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. I worked in Washington, DC, in a youth center helping students earn their GED credential so they could have bigger and better opportunities. My students seemed to enjoy my tough love approach and my sense of humor and perhaps most importantly, my presentation style – it worked for my students in a way that their traditional high schools didn’t.
There were times when my students would be talking about “white people” and I’d give them a look and they’d quickly say: “Oh, we don’t see you as ‘white’, Brian!”
I worked with neighborhood gang members and drug dealers and it really felt to me that with some hard work, a good support system and some determination, anyone in this country had an opportunity to make it as far as they themselves wanted to go. I saw it with my own eyes! My students were earning their GEDs and getting jobs!
Then, a little over 13 years ago, I was serving as the training director for the National Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) Association. Our organization worked closely with the foster care system – a system which touched families of color at an overwhelmingly disproportionate rate compared to the general demographic make-up of the United States. Our organization’s volunteers across the country were overwhelmingly white and middle aged.
Designing effective training is one thing. Designing training that can be delivered effectively (by you or by someone else) is a bit of a different animal. It doesn’t matter whether the training is being delivered in-person or virtually, the person delivering the session is an enormous X Factor in whether the training will be effective or not.
How many people does it take to put on a successful webinar? A facilitator is obviously necessary to present the content and facilitate activities. If you want to present information while using polls, having participants white board on the screen and getting people into small groups using the breakout rooms feature all while responding to private messages in chat – both about your content and about technical difficulties – then you’re going to want a “producer”.
Unlike in-person sessions, this role isn’t the same as “co-facilitator”. An effective producer can make the difference between top-notch virtual training and a well-intentioned virtual train wreck.
One of the most-searched-for blog posts on Train Like A Champion has been my post offering a Train the Trainer Course Outline. At 6.5 years old, this post is begging for some updates, and so over the next several weeks, I’d like to not only update the actual outline itself but also offer some specific examples of how to actually facilitate sections of this program.
“G****mmit, I knew he was going to make this hard!” exclaimed one of the participants as we got underway.
Earlier this week I was asked to drop by a client’s meeting with a group of their trainers. I’ve worked with these trainers for several years and they have adopted the dialogue-based approach to training in which my company specializes. I wasn’t asked to help them work on their facilitation or delivery, I was asked to come in to help ensure everyone understands the “why” behind this dialogue-based approach. So I reached deep down into my bag of tricks to find a way to unearth any resistance or misunderstanding that may still exist among these trainers.
Have you ever wished you could reduce the number of hours (or days) it takes to come up with engaging ideas for your training sessions?This morning my company, Endurance Learning, launched an online tool that can help you generate a facilitator guide, a complete set of activities and a PowerPoint deck – all in under five minutes. The tool is called Soapbox. Here is how it works:
Happy Halloween. Fun scary days call for spooky stories…
In a dark room, a visage is backlit by a square projected light. Ghost-like and monochromatic the visage speaks, is he speaking directly you? Should you answer his indirect questions? No, the words are abstract and generic, almost as though he is reciting an old childhood adage he has recited over and over before he has brought them before you today. Continue reading →
