Remote work is clearly the future. Even if we consider the situation after the current pandemic has passed, the benefits of working with remote teams are just too great to be ignored.
While being free from geographical boundations and the compulsion of coming to the office are lucrative advantages of having a remote working model, it also comes with its own unique challenges.
One such challenge is offering remote employees with a meaningful and impactful employee training experience. For starters, providing employees with a blended learning experience has suddenly become an exponentially more complicated task.
For those who don’t already know, blended learning refers to the blend of self-paced learning model and the instructor-led learning model. In a digital environment, where most remote employees interact with their employers, providing the instructor-led part of blended learning has become a challenge.
If you have been facing this challenge too, you have landed on the right page. In this article, we will be discussing the tools that businesses can utilise to deliver a blended training experience to remote employees.
Let us begin:
Video Conferencing Tool
This is perhaps the most obvious tool in this list. Video conferencing tools are being used by teachers all over the globe to teach school kids online. Hence, they can also be used to deliver virtual training sessions to corporate employees.
With that said, in order to do this effectively, you must keep two things in mind:
- Choose the right tool
Choosing the right video conferencing tool is important because your learners and instructors will be interacting with the tool before they can start interacting with each other. Hence, it is important that the tool you choose offers the kind of used interface that your users (learners and trainers) will be comfortable with.
Moreover, you must also understand that the web conferencing software you choose must offer certain specific features that are geared toward delivering virtual training sessions. Some examples include virtual whiteboards and in-built video recording capabilities (for learners that may miss a live session for any reason). However, the exact features will depend on the unique training needs of your organisation.
- Prepare Your Trainers
Chances are, your trainers have little to no experience in delivering virtual instructor-led training sessions. While these do replicate a lot of the features of a traditional classroom-style session, teaching virtually also comes with some unique challenges.
For example, many instructors depend on the response from their students to gauge whether or not they are able to understand whatever is being explained in the lecture. However, in a virtual setting, the instructor cannot see the faces of the learners and must devise another way to ensure the learners are able to keep up with the lecture. One possible solution to this problem can be to consistently ask for verbal feedback during the lecture.
The point is, the example mentioned above is one of the many challenges an instructor may face while delivering an online training session. Hence, it is important to identify possible challenges and ensure your trainers are trained to tackle them.
Learning Management System
A learning management system is required to deliver the self-paced part of your blended employee training experience. A learning management system allows learning administrators to upload, share, and manage training content on a single online platform. Learning administrators can also enroll learners and assign them to different courses depending on their roles in the company.
A learning management system also allows organisations to track learner progress and assess their performance.
It is also the ideal solution for sharing the pre-recorded instructor led sessions that some learners may miss due to unforeseen circumstances.
Conclusion
These were the two tools that will enable any organisation to deliver an immersive and impactful blended learning experience to their employees.
Do you use a different set of tools for this purpose? Tell us about them in the comment section.
