• Find ways to keep class members talking, no matter their location, says Barbara Thompson, training manager at USA Funds of Indianapolis. She relies on a function called text chat within her Web conferencing tool. It lets participants send instant messages back and forth during the online session. "When you have people from Singapore talking to people in New York and exchanging experiences, it's an enabler for the connection and the collaboration that are so valuable to the learning process," she says.
• Don't forget that your audience will be calling in from different time zones, says Deepak Desai, president and chief executive officer of GlobalEnglish of Brisbane, CA, which offers software that helps global employees learn English. Trainers need to realize that participants in the same meeting will be eating breakfast or longing for an after-lunch snooze. Keep energy levels high.
• Make sure people are familiar with the technology they'll be asked to rely upon during the session and after it ends. Mandate that managers contact all virtual employees by instant message at least once a day, says Colleen Garton, founder of Garton Consulting Group.
• Offer training in small chunks of time. People don't have the time today to invest hours learning new content, says Joe Gustafson, chief executive officer at Brainshark of Waltham, MA. When team members are strapped for time and can't even be pulled into one location via technology, consider delivering documents via laptop or cell phone that employees can view at their convenience, he says.
RSS
