Saturday, October 24, 2009

Two for One

This week I had a unique opportunity to attend a web conference with Bob Mosher of LearningGuide Solutions where I also served as the session producer. He presented a session for Metro DC ASTD members on “Informal Learning – Are We Missing a Huge Opportunity.” Bob encouraged us to think about how to establish a "holistic learning ecosystem" that supports dynamic learning. A key component of a learning ecosystem is training was performance support “in the moment of need.”

Not only was the material of the presentation extremely relevant for training professionals, but he also demonstrated best practices when delivering training via web conference. During his 45-minute session he included four chat exercises and a poll exercise interspersed throughout the session so the audience was continuously engaged. His slides were rich with images, graphs and concepts and not overloaded with the usual bullet points of text. Furthermore, when speaking, he annotated the screen non-stop using white board tools. I felt as if I could see him gesturing as he annotated and it added tremendous energy to the presentation. It was a very valuable session where the audience had a two for one experience: excellent content and an exceptional demonstration of how to make material come alive in a virtual classroom.

1 comment:

Bob Mosher said...

Thanks for the very kind coments Darlene! You and ASTD dis a wonderful job of hosting and setting up the event. For these virtual session to work it needs to be a complete team effort. Nice work! Keep in touch and continue to let me know any way I can help...