PREP for Web Conferencing Success

With training budgets tightening everywhere, more organizations are turning to web conferencing to deliver training programs online to save money and time. According to the 2008 ASTD State of the Industry report, the percent of training hours devoted to live instructor-led online training is growing rapidly. Between 2006 and 2007, the amount of live instructor-led online training jumped by 50 percent, from 4.24 percent to 6.39 percent.

Instructional designers and facilitators new to web conferencing may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of converting live instructor-led courses to courses delivered via web conferencing. While tempting, simply placing the slides used for classroom training into a web conferencing tool and launching a training event will not result in an optimal learning experience for your audience.

For web conferences to be successful, instructors need to devote time to planning the event, including optimizing the content and exercises for a virtual classroom, getting the right facilitation team in place, rehearsing for the live delivery and finally, evaluating what happened. These steps are the key steps of the PREP (Planning, Rehearsal, Execution and Post Mortem) Model for Web Conferencing. For more information on this model, view an article in ASTD Learning Circuits.

Raising Your Language Awareness Level

When you deliver a web conference, who are your participants and where are they from? With the reach of web, it’s possible that your audience may be more global than you think. You may spend a few minutes at the beginning of a session asking questions to determine who’s online and where are they from. You may also consider a poll question such as “Is English (Spanish, Arabic, etc.) your first language?” Responses to these types of polls give the facilitator essential information about the background of the audience to help make spoken language adjustments. For example, slang should always be kept to a minimum when the audience shares the same first language, and eliminated altogether if you have a diverse audience.

During a conference call with a team in the UK a few weeks ago, I also realized that even business words in American English and British English may cause confusion. The team referred to “bespoke e-learning solutions” which made no sense to my American ears. Now I know that bespoke means customized, but I got hung up on this word in their email communications and during the call until they sorted it out for me.

The spoken word in a web conference is so essential. Practicing what you plan to say with others from different cultures is a great way to raise your language awareness level so that what you say will be understood by everyone, regardless of where they are from.

Group vs. Individual Participation

One of my favorite courses I helped redesign for delivery in a web-conference is a workflow productivity course. During this highly interactive five-hour session, participants learn a new way of organizing to-do lists, emails and paper files. Although all participants are supposed to participate from their desk, in the most recent delivery a small group participated with laptops from a conference room. This was an unplanned twist in the delivery model, but an exception was allowed because we didn't have time to move the group back to their desks.

A very interesting group dynamic formed and I learned a great lesson – a mixed audience of individuals participating from their desks plus a group participating from a room may spell trouble. The solo participants were able to connect better with the instructor and other solo participants than the group, and consequently were able to work through the material better. At first I thought the small group would benefit from being together to help each other and exchange ideas, the small group began forming a clique, alienating the rest of the participants. Next time everyone will participate from their desks and we'll try to leave those high school clique-forming tendencies to the high schoolers!

Masie’s Missed Opportunity

This week the Institute for Corporate Productivity teamed up with Elliot Masie of the MASIE Center Learning Lab and Think Tank to deliver a webinar on Informal & Social Learning. While the content of the webinar was interesting (a summary of findings of research conducted by i4cp with commentary/interpretation by Masie), the delivery was a missed opportunity by Masie to model best practices for utilizing web conferencing software. A few observations:

1. The first three minutes: My first post on this blog was based on an article by Masie about the importance of the first three minutes of learning, which set the tone for the rest of an event. In this case the first three minutes consisted of an overview of findings as the audience viewed a title slide (not even a slide with key findings). A much more compelling opening would have been to turn some of the more interesting findings into questions for the audience such as, “What was the #1 practice correlated with the occurrence of informal learning?” (answer: sharing best practices).

2. Duration of each slide: About halfway into the webinar, one slide remained on the screen for 9 minutes as the speakers talked, and the final content slide stayed up for a whopping 12 minutes! Keeping your audience engaged and attentive is an art not a science, but in this case the delivery team could have easily included a few more interesting slides to support their commentary.

3. Q & A: The last ten minutes of the session were dedicated to Q & A. A good delivery team can weave the questions and answers throughout the web conference. If questions are collected throughout the session, the producer needs to be on the lookout for questions that map to a particular piece of content and get the speaker to incorporate questions from the audience during the entire session.

Every time we use learning technology, even for a presentation that is not meant to be a true learning event, we have the opportunity to practice what we preach about adult learning. Masie's content was intriguing, as always, but the delivery needed more polishing.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Rich and engaging interactivity is one of the reasons that events delivered via web conference are so compelling. At an online presentation for the Technology Special Interest Group of the Metro DC ASTD Chapter someone asked an interesting question: can you have too much interactivity in a web conference?

Although I tend to see the opposite problem -- too little interactivity -- I believe the answer to this question is yes. If the interaction does not support your learning objectives and you are interacting with participants merely for the sake of interacting, then it can frustrate your audience. Also, if you are using the interactive features of your web conferencing tool with your audience simply because you think the feature is neat and not to support your content, then the audience may feel like they are jumping through hoops pointlessly.

Putting on Your Marketing Hat

Last week I attended a webinar hosted by Ken Molay of Webinar Success on the “Secrets of Lead-Generation Webinars.” While the webinar had a marketing slant, several of his ideas were applicable to a variety of web conferencing events, including learning events. Let’s face it, we all need to put on a marketing hat. A couple of notable tips from Molay are:

"Get the audience to have a stake in the webinar – ask them to send questions before the event."

I like to send a pre-course survey before a web conference to get a sense of the learners’ experience level, needs and of course to see if they have specific questions they would like to address during the course.

"Reminders: send the day before and again 1-3 hours before the event. In the reminder email, remind people of the value proposition so they remember why they signed up for your event. "

The timing of email reminders is critical, and I agree with Molay’s suggestion. Also make sure the reminder is coming from an email address that the learner expects. Ideally, all communications about your event should come from the same email address.

Finding Your Inner NPR Voice

As a die-hard fan of National Public Radio, I’ve recently begun paying close attention to the quality of the voices of the hosts. I admire their clear and precise language that is free from annoying uhms and errs, and includes a variety of tones.

We can learn from the pros at NPR how maximize the use of voice to improve the delivery of a web conference. Since the audience may not see the speaker, the speaker’s voice carries additional importance. One tip that someone recently shared with me is to use the recording function of your web conferencing tool to record and listen to your voice as you rehearse. Great idea! The Public Speaking Help blog also offers 10 Tips to Improve your Speaking Voice

Web Conferencing is Green

One of the ancillary benefits of web conferencing that is sometimes overlooked is that by meeting virtually instead of face-to-face, carbon emissions are reduced. I like to include a slide at the beginning of each web conference that describes “what we saved,” to emphasize how web conferencing can contribute to carbon footprint reductions.

1. First, Calculate carbon emissions from transportation. Enter participants’ flight info, or estimate where all participants would have come from, and come up with one average flight. Then multiply the emissions for that flight by # of participants. You can use emissions calculators from CarbonFund.org or Terrapass.com

For example, if you have a web conference with 30 participants and half of them would have flown from New York to Dallas-Fort Worth Texas (2,700 miles each or 40,500 total round trip) the carbon emissions would have been 7.57 tons for the flights alone.

2. Next, convert the tons of carbon saved into something more tangible. The EPA has a great Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. Use Option 2 and input CO2 totals from #1 above, then click "Calculate Equivalencies." You'll get a variety of results to choose from - select the ones that will resonate with your audience.

Following the above example, 7.57 tons of emissions is the equivalent of recycling 2.4 tons of waste or the emissions from 16 barrels of oil.

Pretty nifty!

Tips from ASTD TechKnowledge Participants

I am at the ASTD TechKnowledge Conference in Las Vegas Nevada and what an amazing week it has been. Today I made two presentations on “Facilitating Virtual Events,” one to a virtual audience and one in a traditional meeting room. In the spirit of knowledge sharing, I collected best practices and tips from both audiences and have posted them here. Any other good tips out there?
· Applaud volunteers profusely
· Rehearse in front of my dog
· Don’t read your slides verbatim
· Don't put ALL content on slides. Slides should reinforce what you are saying
· Use your National Public Radio (NPR) voice
· Don’t limit interactivity to verbal questions. Ask for hand raises. Include electronic click questions, free text response questions, etc.
· Create competitions to add some fun
· If you plan to record, make sure people agree to be taped. Remember that every form of recording is discoverable in a court of law.
· Participants should close all other non-applicable applications to enhance performance and reduce if not eliminate band-width issues.
· Help presenters with developing their own interactive solutions by providing coaching feedback on their rehearsals/teach-backs
· Give a "door prize" ( a gift certificate or book) for participants who complete pre-work (verified by us)

PREP Model for Web Conferencing: POST MORTEM

The final step of the four-step PREP model for web conferencing that I’ve been writing about for the last few days is the Post Mortem.

The Post Mortem is simply a review of what you did. One component of the post mortem is an evaluation by participants (such as a level 1 online evaluation, at a minimum). The importance of soliciting feedback and making adjustments cannot be understated. Since we cannot see our participants, the evaluation is even more important. Another component is a debrief by the facilitation team. Talk with the team about what worked well, what needs to be changed to improve the delivery.

Both of these tasks should take place immeidately after the event. Make the changes to your course as soon as possible...before you forget what they are and before you forget to do them altogether! The last thing you want to happen is to log in for your next delivery of the session and then realize that you didn't make the changes needed (to the content, exercises, etc.) from the previous delivery.

PREP Model for Web Conferencing: Execution

Over the last few days I’ve been writing about a four-step model for web conferencing known as the PREP Model. PREP stands for Planning, Rehearsal, Execution and Post Mortem. Today’s post elaborates on the Execution step.

In the Execution step, you are ready for the formal launch of your training. By the time you reach this step you have planned and rehearsed, you are ready to go!

A few tips to make sure your delivery goes smoothly are:

· Log in 30 min. early; ask participants to log in 15 min. early.

· Start and end on time.

· Display conference call number or audio information on screen.

· Engage the audience early, exposing them to the variety of methods they can use to interact.

· Give audience time to respond to questions, polls, chat. Some silence is okay.

· Have a second computer next to you so you can see the participant “view” at all times.

· Disable email arrival notification pop-ups and chimes.

PREP Model for Web Conferencing: REHEARSAL

If you’ve seen a Cirque du Soleil performance you can appreciate the amount of time the performers spent to get all of moving parts on the stage to synchronize flawlessly. Think about what you will need to do in order to ensure a smooth delivery so that even the very first time you deliver a session you make a good first impression.

I shoot for three practice deliveries: one with the facilitation team to work on timing and flow, then two rehearsals with mock audiences. After each rehearsal note adjustments needed and incorporate them into your session.

PREP Model for Web Conferencing

Web conferences that require the most amount of time and effort are web conferences for formal events. Whether the purpose of your web conference is to teach college students irregular verbs in Spanish or to teach staff how to have a performance management conversation with their manager, there are core steps that all web conferences have in common. Planning, Rehearsal, Execution and Post Mortem, or PREP, are core areas to consider for a web conference. Let’s look briefly at what I mean by each core step of the PREP model:

Planning: In this model, the majority of your time will be spent planning. Simply taking the slides from a face to face training and uploading them onto a web conferencing platform will not result in a positive learning experience. You will need to re-think and adjust three main areas: your content, exercises and language.

Rehearsal: There are many moving parts in a web conference, therefore, it takes more time to practice and rehearse. If you have been delivering a course in a face to face setting, give yourself time to practice the delivery in a web conference. Even if you know your content inside and out, you need time to rehearse to see how it flows, based on all the adjustments you made to your materials in the planning stage.

Execution: When delivered properly, a web conference can be just as engaging as face to face training. This is the execution step and an engaging and flawless execution means that you have planned and rehearsed. It also means that you have the right facilitation team in place.

Post Mortem: A post mortem means “a review of what you did.” This step includes a debrief with facilitators and an evaluation from participants.

I’ll go into each step in more detail in future posts.

ELearning Web Sites

It's a new year and a great time to set goals. One of mine is to keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on in the e-learning industry. I've compiled a list of useful e-learning websites, many with free newsletters that may be of use. If you use Delicious, I've also posted them on my Delicious account.

American Society for Training and Development
http://www.astd.org/
World's largest organization dedicated to workplace learning and performance professionals. Learning Circuits is ASTD’s online e-learning source for the latest learning technology news and ideas. Go to ASTD home > Publications > Learning Circuits.

Brandon Hall Research
http://brandon-hall.com/
Independent research on e-learning trends, best practices, tools and vendors.

Chief Learning Officer Magazine
http://www.clomedia.com/
Articles on a variety of topics and trends in training, and is especially good for organizational issues and innovations in e-learning.

Distance Educator
http://www.distance-educator.com/
Provides publications and research from education, corporate, government/military sectors and is a good site for current news in e-learning. Free weekly newsletter.

E-Learning Centre
http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/
Comprehensive portal of information on e-learning, covering key issues and links to key publications and reports.

E-Learning Guild
http://www.elearningguild.com/
The Guild provides a good source of surveys and reports on trends in e-learning. Different levels of membership provide access to different information, however the free membership level includes a subscription to Learning Solutions eMagazine and eLearning Insider.

Learning for International NGOs (LINGOS)
http://ngolearning.org/
Mission is to facilitate the creation, development and support of learning environments in the humanitarian relief, development and environmental sector. Members gain access online courses and e-learning tools.

MASIE Center Learning Lab and Think Tank
http://www.masie.com/
Source of information on technology, business, learning and workplace productivity run by Elliot Masie. Free e-newsletter subscription called Learning TRENDS.

Society for Applied Learning (SALT)
http://www.salt.org/
SALT is a professional society that offers resources and conferences for those in the field of instructional technology. Sponsors three journals: Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems, Journal of Interactive Instruction Development and Journal of Education Technology Systems.

Sloan-C
http://www.sloan-c.org/
A Consortium of Institutions and Organizations Committed to Quality Online Education. Publishes the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks and the Sloan-C View, a free weekly newsletter.

How to Sabatoge

I recently came across a humorous posting on the Boing Boing blog by Cory Doctorow on a 1944 CIA Simple Sabotage Field Manual with tips on how to sabotage the workplace. This resurfaced manual sounds eerily familiar to meetings I am in at work with tips such as

"- Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible."
"- Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions."

I started working on my own list of tips to add some humor to the web conferencing planning process:

How to Sabotage a Web Conference
1. Send unclear meeting instructions to enrollees
2. Do not begin or end the session on time
3. Do not practice or rehearse your session prior to the actual live delivery
4. Speak for long periods of time and do not move your slides frequently
5. Do not engage participants via polling, chatting or other interactive features.

The list could go on and on, but I'll stop there. You get the idea!

An Integrated Experience

I was reading a recent article by Jakob Neilsen, a web usability guru, on Aspects of Design Quality, and realized that his comments on the importance of total user experience apply directly to web conferencing. In the article Neilsen states, “We can liken a website's user experience to the metaphorical chain that's no stronger than its weakest link. If any one usability attribute fails, the overall user experience is compromised and many users will fail.”

The user experience in a web conference should be though of in an integrated manner as well. From the registration process, to the delivery of the content to the post-event evaluation, the user should expect a smooth progression. Looking at a web conference from a more holistic point of view, rather than just focusing on the material to be shared, will ensure a high quality web conference.

First Impressions

We’ve all heard the saying that you only get one chance to make a first impression. This seemed liked an appropriate topic my first blog entry on web conferencing. I have a passion for web conferencing and how to design and deliver first-rate sessions. Elliot Massie recently posted an article about the Reflections on the First Three Minutes of Learning, summarizing ideas from his readers about the power of the first three minutes. In a web conference, the first interactions with a participants are extremely influential. Participants will quickly decide whether or not your session is worth their time or if they should go back to their email.

Making those first three minutes as interesting and flawless as possible requires preparation and rehearsal. I like to get the participants to practice posting a chat message, changing their status icon and responding to a poll within the first three minutes. It sets the tone for a high level of interaction and gets new participants used to the technology quickly.