Teaching in a virtual classroom is a dream job for many and learning in a virtual classroom is a dream education system for students all over the world. Gone are the days when a simple board meeting required the physical presence of all involved parties. A feat that is not only stressful to the participants but in most cases potentiates a drop in productivity, since they have to navigate from their distinct geographical locations to the venue of such events. Welcome to the future where scheduled online classrooms, events, and meetings are organized with the full participation of all relevant parties regardless of their geographical locations through the use of online virtual classroom technology. Welcome to live training through virtual classrooms.
A virtual classroom is a real-time simulation of an online learning environment. In such an environment (which could be web- or software-based), participants are fully immersed and communicate seamlessly with the teacher/instructor and other students, in the same way as they would in real life.
But delivering these classes isn’t without its challenges. Just like in physical classrooms, you need to be creative and resourceful when the going gets tough if you want to keep your audience interested.
In this article we’ve prepared for you 5 tips on how to deliver effective live training through virtual classrooms:
Your customers are your students, and they are at the core of your business. You need to make sure you’re giving them them the best customer experience you can possibly provide. Given that in the virtual teaching environment you’re pretty much reliant on technology, it makes sense to check everything before you go ‘live’. The competition is fierce, and if your platform malfunctions once or twice, some of your students won’t think twice before going to your competitors. The ability to schedule live sessions virtually anywhere in the world using a vital feature like data center selection also increases redundancy and fault tolerance in case of a disaster.
The second most important factor determining the success of your live training are your employees and instructors. Your online facilitators need to be trained and updated on how to set everything up and use audio properly. On top of that, a virtual classroom can be challenging to manage, especially when the learners aren’t actively participating or do not understand something. Instructors need to be trained on how to approach these learners without losing the interest of other participants.
In both virtual and physical environments, it’s sometimes easy to get sidetracked by other topics that do not precisely follow the syllabus. Although it is far better to have a healthy discussion and active participants as opposed to inactive ones, losing the sight of your goal isn’t a good idea. While instructors should allow students to express their opinions, it is crucial to stay focused on the task at hand.
Enrich your classes visual elements whenever you can. Today’s attention span is shorter than ever, and putting big chunks of text on your PowerPoint slides will bore your learners to death. People are visual beings, and they love seeing something along with hearing it. Visuals help learners retain information far better than by using audio alone. Try using infographics, videos, charts, and diagrams whenever you can along with writing or drawing on the whiteboard to make your live classes more interesting.
To keep your students motivated, especially when teaching children, you need to resort to several techniques. For example, make sure to praise your online students using emoticons on the whiteboard or chat every time they do something right to build their self-esteem and keep them interested. Similarly, if they misunderstand something make sure you explain them why that isn’t the case. Illustrate your point with examples. Secondly, you should enable learners to keep track of their own progress to motivate them to continue towards their goal.
Virtual classrooms stand poised to transform the way individuals and educational institutions go about content delivery. With the sustained interest displayed by tech developers and stakeholders alike, it is expected that in the not so distant future virtual classrooms would be the standard for worldwide content delivery.