Improving Virtual Instructor Led Training software sessions

COVID put a spanner in the works for a lot of things.
For our company that meant a quick transition into Virtual Instructor-Led Training.

Our Project Delivery Consultants were running sessions with just a PowerPoint deck and facilitator guide over a Teams meeting. 

Some of the challenges they faced were:

  • People not turning on their cameras or engaging

  • Struggling to navigate between presenting the PowerPoint presentation, following the facilitator notes and demoing the software

  • Being limited to using Teams for presenting.

So how could we create a session that was more engaging for the learner and easier for the facilitator to present?

Process

The session we focused on was for a particular product in our software. The sessions had a mixture of participants, some who had completed the pre-requisite training and some who hadn’t. The lack of engagement from participants made it hard for facilitators to gauge which parts of the training were helpful for the learners.

Any improvements needed to fit into the constraints of facilitation via Teams and that often only one facilitator was taking the session.

So I looked into researching ways of: 

  • improving engagement in the sessions

  • making it easier for the facilitator to present the different windows

  • turning the PowerPoint slides into a dynamic presentation.

Solution

  • Detailed set up instructions

    To help facilitators feel more confident and prepared, I designed a set of instructions they could us to ensure their screen and presentation set up correctly.

  • A more engaging presentation

    I simplied the accompanied presentation and added gifs, question prompts and animated call outs to encourage learner engagement.

  • Tool suggesions

    To make the session more interactive with learners I suggested facilitators could use the chat function, video clips and polls for questions.

  • Post session email template

    To give learners post session resources and to gauge their feedback, I designed an email template for facilitators to send out.

Feature question slide from the presentation

 
 

Scenario question slide from the presentation