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Making webinars work better

Pressure on training travel spend? Looking to reduce your carbon footprint? If so, you might be looking at webinars as a substitute for face to face training. But does one translate simply to the other? We think not. Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE

And we’ve just run our own Webinar on Webinars to spread the word on what makes good learning in a webinar (yes, we felt a little dizzy too). If you caught it, you’ll already know some of our trade secrets. If not, check out our tips below. It’s all about the sharing.

Webinars get your training further. Got limited budget? Only a handful of good SMEs? Learners scattered over the globe? Turning your training into webinars allows you to reach more people, more often.

A webinar is not….

Webinars can be a great vehicle for your existing face to face course. So, what does that mean? Upload your slides to Webex/DimDim/Adobe Connect and off you go? Well, no. We’ve all experienced death by PowerPoint, and it isn’t a nice way to go.

It might sound obvious but a webinar isn’t e-learning either. You have a living, breathing facilitator. Put them to good use! Get them explaining, challenging, probing and bringing the group through the journey together.

Don’t forget the learning

A good webinar is engaging and interactive. In a training room, you can see who’s flicking through their iPhone or sleeping under the table. You don’t have that advantage online. Is your audience making a cup of tea or doing their online shopping? The design has to be sharp and snappy.

Who are you looking at?

The golden rule is: keep it interactive. Get people to do something every few slides. Try these techniques:

• Pose a question: Check understanding with a multiple choice question
• Ask the audience: Poll your learners on a topic, use any mistakes as a learning opportunity
• Chatter box: Get learners to enter their ideas and answers in a chat box ; pick the best ones to talk about
• Any volunteers?: Ask one or two people for examples and get some good discussion material
• A show of hands: Who’s understood and who’s sleeping? Ask for a show of hands

New directions

We like looking at new ways of doing things. What about delivering interactive e-learning in a webinar? Make the most of a facilitator who can guide learners through scenarios, challenging learners’ assumptions and asking the right questions along the way. Mark Harrison demonstrated just that, showing an interactive sales scenario.

Communication isn’t one-way. It’s not necessarily even two-way. Get group problem-solving going in small ‘rooms’ just as you would in real life. We showed how we helped a client do this in a weekly webinar on training designers.

Find out more

Want help on getting webinars right? Got other ideas for webinars? Talk to us for advice and ideas: info@kineo.com

Want to take it further? Check out our top tip on webinars.