At the eLN Showcase event on 9th July, the Onlignment team each presented a Pechu Kucha (20 slides, each 20 seconds in duration). Today we present Phil’s session, titled Getting the job done with live online training.
Most training is carried out live in the classroom or on-the-job, but face-to-face instruction is not always the most practical or cost-effective option. Web conferencing allows you to continue to offer live training but without the need for all participants to be present in the same location. The ‘virtual classroom’ is ideal for running short training sessions, follow-ups, seminars and meetings. In this Pecha Kucha session, you’ll learn how leading organisations are making use of web conferencing to provide more training more efficiently and how they have equipped their classroom instructors to make a successful transition to online delivery.
Tag: virtual classrooms
Web meetings, webinars and virtual classrooms compared
A table comparing the three principle uses of real-time online communication.
Unless I’ve missed something important, there seem to be three distinct uses for real-time online commmunications. The following table represents a first attempt at clarifying the discriminating characteristics of these three:
| Web meetings | Webinars | Virtual classrooms | |
| Primary purpose | To solve problems and make decisions | To share ideas and experiences | To facilitate learning |
| Secondary purposes | To provide updates | To promote the speaker or organiser | None |
| Face-to-face equivalent | A short business meeting | A session at a seminar or conference | A classroom session |
| Who’s in charge? | The chair of the meeting | The host and/or presenter | The teacher / trainer |
| Typical activities | Presentation of situation updates and proposals; discussion of proposals; decision-making; action planning | Presentation of ideas and experiences; demonstrations; polling of audience opinion; Q&A; discussion; participant-to-participant text chat (back channel) | Ice breakers; presentation of formal content; software demos (for IT training); group exercises and activities; discussion; formative and summative assessment |
| Visual focus | Participant webcams; shared documents; slides | Slides; presenter webcam; text chat; polls; website tours | Slides; electronic whiteboard; questions/polls; shared applications; website tours; text chat |
| Auditory focus | Participants’ vocal contributions | Host / presenters’ voices; possibly also participants’ vocal contributions | Teacher/trainer’s voice and participants’ vocal contributions |
| Most frequently used interactive devices | Voice; text chat | Voice; text chat; polls | Voice; text chat; electronic whiteboard; questions/polls; application sharing; break-out rooms |
| Tangible outputs | Agreed actions / minutes | Recordings; participant feedback | Recordings; participant feedback; assessment scores |
If you believe there are other, distinct forms, or feel you could refine or add to this table, I’d love to hear from you.