The world has been moving into the digital realm for some time, given the COVID-19 pandemic that forced everyone to go virtual almost immediately. In Singapore, the education industry was faced with similar challenges, having to design innovative and interactive remote learning environments for the learners. But, what good does it come from moving on to virtual?
A survey was conducted to assess the perceived utility and the impact of virtual teaching platforms conducted following the COVID-19 pandemic. It is proven with a total of 768 valid responses recorded – the majority felt that the ideal duration for virtual sessions should be approximately an hour or less. Factors that helped the majority in choosing a virtual session were as follows:
The challenge with a virtual session is that you do not have a captive audience. With virtual, the only game in town is that everyone is trying.
Moving On To Virtual: Ensuring Engaged Virtual Audience
Hosting a virtual session requires the same care and attention as an in-person would. In both cases, you need to craft a training strategy to effectively promote the session, engage your virtual audience, create a memorable moment, and ultimately, prove a successful training event. As value-added, engagement-driven experiences, you can create impactful training that extends well beyond a computer or mobile screen.
Virtual sessions do carry a limitation that in-person sessions do not. Where in-person sessions can draw audiences with a unique destination and the promise of physical networking; virtual sessions must rely on the content and the right speakers themselves. Marketers and planners must market content to the segments that get the best responses and decide on how to provide the content to engage the audiences virtually. We can be frank here – virtual sessions will never be able to offer the same level of physical interaction as in-person sessions do. There are ways to ensure your virtual session is successful as long as careful and detailed planning is in place.
There are plenty of virtual engagement strategies you can adopt to keep your virtual audiences engaged and interactive during the training. From meeting icebreakers to application gamification, your audience can enjoy more than what your training content delivers, thus completing the whole positive training experience. The possibilities for a virtual engagement are endless!
The Virtual Session Elements.
A virtual session is built around the content, audiences’ engagement, and data. While virtual sessions do not require any food catering, they are made of many of the same kind of elements like any other kind of training session or event would have.
It is crucial to always have a good and stable video production quality and connectivity, as well as the site that houses the training agenda and content. According to Forbes, a virtual session should always contain a mixture of LIVE and pre-recorded content. Here are some elements that make up a virtual session which you may find useful in your planning:
Website
This will be used for promotion. It serves the same purpose, regardless of whether this session takes place virtually or in person. This website is the key promotional tool to attract potential audiences and entice them to register for your training session. It should compromise the communication value of your training, the schedule, speakers, and some FAQs that might help allow your audience to understand better what they will be registering for.
Registration
This serves as your first tool for data collection and is critical to your training plan. Registration tools allow your audiences to register for virtual sessions, submit their preferences and personal information, as well as provide the payment if it is required to do so before the session takes place.
A robust virtual registration tool allows your audiences to register with convenience and with the audience’s data, marketers and planners can utilize it to the fullest to successfully plan this training plan and prove it as a success.
Email Marketing
This tactic can drive demand for your virtual session and thus, increase registrations. Keeping your audiences informed before the virtual session takes place by communicating with them at all stages of the training can be done via branded, personalized and automated emails, sent to whomever, based on the attendance data provided with open rates and click-through metrics.
Virtual Session Feedback
Feedback is always crucial for any event, be it in-person or a virtual training session. Planners cannot gauge reactions by the expressions or verbal feedback from your audiences on-site. Using a feedback tool to collect and consolidate your feedback- using post-training surveys can be used to prove the success of this training. Additionally, it can be used as a tool to qualify virtual leads and drive them to higher effectiveness in your sales.
Moving On To Virtual: Questions To Ask When Planning A Virtual Session.
The planning process of a virtual session is very similar to that of any other kind of training. Just as you would put yourself in your audience’s shoes when planning an in-person training, likewise for a virtual one. As you plan, use your standard planning tips and tricks to create and execute a great training plan. Virtual sessions may feel different, but the more you treat them like in-person training, the better.
Here are some questions you may ask when you are planning for a virtual session:
Can your agenda be translated to a virtual setting, or is an in-person mode required?
Would you like to have the audience’s attendance tracked? If yes, how so?
Do you have a virtual meeting training solution?
Do you have any staff members in your team who can support and manage the possible technical aspects of a virtual session?
Can you handle the bandwidth?
Do your attendees have all the materials required to attend this training virtually?
Moving On To Virtual: Preparing Your Audiences For Your Virtual Sessions
While technology is involved since it is a virtual session, no doubt there will likely be user error involved as well. There are plenty of different video conferencing tools out there, including technology options.
A kind piece of advice: Do not take your audiences’ digital-savvy (or lack thereof) for granted!
Before the virtual session takes place, it is always the best idea to create a guide for your audience with a detailed explanation of how to access the virtual training. A bonus would be if your audience can practice launching the virtual sessions or sending virtual messages before the training starts. This eases the audiences’ stress and decreases a whole ton of questions on the day of the virtual training – likewise, providing them with a better experience. This guide does not have to be stale, that’s for sure.
There may be times when you must make a quick shift and your options are to either cancel your training plan or make it virtual. Making your training virtual is not that hard if you have the right infrastructure in place. This is if you mean shifting the training curriculum or content is difficult – it’s not!
There are plenty of ways to plan your virtual training event as so much can be done using your virtual event solution. Adding in some fun to your virtual training with LIVE polling, breakout sessions, or even a mobile event application, the options are endless.
Sources:
https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/23/four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions/
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/08/13/how-does-virtual-learning-impact-students-in-higher-education/
https://www.uis.edu/ion/resources/tutorials/overview/strengths-weaknesses
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