Training the E-Trainer


Perhaps not surprisingly, the virtual classroom appears tantalisingly similar to its bricks and mortar equivalent and trainers can justifiably expect to make use of many of their existing skills. However, there is a difference in working with an audience that could be thousands of miles away and which, to all intents and purposes, is invisible. In this chapter, I explore what it is that the e-trainer needs to do differently to make a success of virtual classroom training and consider the benefits that synchronous online communication can bring to just about any organisation with a distributed workforce.

Intro

Sometimes it seems like virtual classrooms are e-learning's best kept secret. According to my own survey of nearly 300 trainers conducted over the last two years, only 7% had ever participated in a virtual classroom, the rest blissfully unaware of what one was. This compares with approximately 25% who had completed some form of self-study e-learning, online or on CD-ROM.

It's not as if virtual classrooms are particularly new, having been available in much the form they are now for as long as e-learning has been employing the Internet and intranets as channels. It's just that the predominant paradigm in e-learning has been and probably still is interactive self-study in the CBT tradition, even though virtual classrooms provide a basis for learning which is much closer to the experience of the typical non-technology-based trainer.

It's time to rectify all that. In practically every seminar for trainers in which I've been able to demonstrate a virtual classroom (just a recording, not even a live event), the result has been the same. Trainers understand almost straight away what virtual classrooms can do, they can see how they could work in their organisations (particularly those which are geographically dispersed) and they want to know what's involved in having a go. And having a go is what this chapter's all about.




E-Learning's Greatest Hits
E-learnings Greatest Hits
ISBN: 0954590406
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 198

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