How To Develop Effective Interactive Virtual Training
It is difficult to imagine training that is not influenced by technology in one way or another. Whether we are talking about attending live lectures on a laptop from home, taking online quizzes, learning through interactive games, or engaging in an online learning community, training now exists mostly in the virtual world to accommodate the complex needs of participants. These digital experiences offer learners much-needed flexibility and can significantly boost knowledge comprehension and retention, overall learning outcomes, and real-world application. However, to achieve these benefits, you need to know which best practices and tools to leverage to develop truly engaging and interactive virtual training.
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Addressing The Learner Engagement Gap In Virtual Training
Discover how to shift your strategies and invest in interactive tech solutions that bridge the learner engagement gap.
5 Best Practices For Engaging Interactive Design
The secret to interactive virtual training that engages learners is more than flashy visuals. It involves careful design that invites learners to collaborate, think critically, and apply the knowledge they acquire. Let’s see the best practices this translates into.
1. Set Clear Learning Objectives
For learners to agree to commit a couple of hours or more to complete an eLearning course, they need to know what they are trying to accomplish. Giving the course a specific purpose ensures that all activities, materials, and supporting tools are designed with a common goal in mind. This way, not only does the design process become more straightforward and targeted, but learners are more invested in the learning experience as they recognize that it will bring value to their lives.
2. Use The Right Tools To Structure Interactivity
Using tools and technologies to promote interactivity is certainly the right way to go, but you need to use them with caution. Quizzes, games, and other interactive elements can effectively engage learners, but you will only overwhelm them if you overuse them. Give careful thought to how you want to structure the course so that you can balance passive and interactive learning activities to create variety and keep participants interested. Another thing to remember is that design and layout choices must be consistent throughout, reflecting your brand’s unique identity while ensuring that the learning materials are visually appealing and comprehensible.
3. Foster Collaboration Among Learners
Engagement and interactivity can be fostered through games, simulations, and other immersive learning techniques. However, often all that’s needed is some good old-fashioned peer interaction and collaboration. This, of course, must be supported by sophisticated tools that align with the principles of virtual training. Such tools can include breakout rooms, discussion boards, and peer review feedback, among others. By providing learners with these means to communicate and collaborate, you empower them to exchange ideas, use their collective knowledge to achieve more effective skill development, and participate in a community that further enhances their motivation to learn.
4. Design For Accessibility And Inclusivity
Interactive virtual training is effective only when it is designed to accommodate all learners, regardless of their learning preferences or challenges. It is important to take the necessary steps to ensure accessibility and inclusivity from the initial stages of the design process, rather than trying to tackle them after the project is complete. Incorporate subtitles, descriptive audio, and screen readers, select your color scheme with potential visual impairments in mind, and allow the integration of assistive technology. Moreover, ensure your learning material is accessible across different devices and browsers to reach a broader audience.
5. Be Ready To Adapt
One of the principles of interactive training is its ability to adapt to individual learner needs. The same must be true for training facilitators, who might need to temporarily shift the direction of the course to align with the interests of the learners. Without saying that you should change the storyboard of the training course, you might have to spend more time than planned exploring a certain topic that captured learners’ attention. If the course is self-led, this could translate to personalized additional content recommendations. This adaptability sparks engagement, as learners see that the course responds to what they consider interesting or valuable.
Tools To Use For Enhanced Interactivity
Earlier, we discussed how interactivity can be achieved by using the right tools. We will now take a deeper look into the specific features a sophisticated virtual training solution can offer you to help you incorporate interactivity into virtual training experiences.
Customizable Pods And Layouts
Customizable functional windows, known as pods, give you control over the design process, allowing you to create elements that align with your course’s needs. This can include games, chat boxes, video players, LMS integrations, and other components that can be combined to create course storyboards or layouts. These features offer creative freedom, enabling you to foster a dynamic and adaptable learning experience.
Breakout Rooms
Encouraging interaction among peers can be made possible with the help of breakout rooms. This feature allows facilitators to divide the online classroom into smaller groups, making it easier for participants to collaborate on group projects, engage in discussions, or complete activities that promote teamwork. Then, they can rejoin the main group to compare results and share insights, making the overall learning experience more collaborative and engaging.
Persistent Virtual Rooms
While this feature doesn’t directly enhance interactivity, it is there to help you ensure that your virtual training course is consistent throughout. A persistent virtual room lets you design a virtual “classroom” once, selecting all the settings, content, and layouts you need, and then reuse it multiple times in the future. This facilitates the creation of consistent virtual learning environments that are tailored to meet the needs of different audiences.
Interactive Whiteboards
Something that online learners appreciate is the ability to interact with the learning material instead of simply having it presented to them. An interactive whiteboard allows instructors to use colors, shapes, and annotations to highlight key information and direct learners’ attention to one essential piece of content at a time. Learners can also use this feature to brainstorm and collaborate more effectively, ultimately resulting in improved knowledge comprehension.
Polling And Q&A Pods
What can be more interactive in a virtual training course than the ability to directly communicate with facilitators through live polls and Q&A sessions? These fully customizable pods allow instructors to pose questions about the learning material or the overall effectiveness of the course and receive instant feedback from participants. This feature guarantees that learners can express their opinions and questions at any time, maintaining the high quality of the course.
Real-World Success Stories Of Interactive Virtual Training Initiatives
Adobe Connect carries an impressive suite of features that can revolutionize interactive virtual learning experiences. Let’s explore how it can help businesses through the following real-world success stories.
Blue Sky Broadcast
Blue Sky Broadcast is an eLearning and virtual event organizer that facilitates events for companies and organizations in technical industries. Their collaboration with Adobe Connect aimed at the creation of a proprietary webinar and online learning solution designed to improve training for global audiences. The LMS’s customization, multimedia integration, and interactive features resulted in a platform that increased participation in virtual events, met complex compliance requirements, and enhanced the overall virtual learning experience.
Kolbe Academy
Kolbe Academy, based in Napa, California, was established in 1980 and has been recreating the physical classroom environment in a virtual setting for over a decade. When the academy first expanded its offerings to include live online courses, Megan Lengyel, Chief Academic Officer at Kolbe, knew that typical conferencing apps wouldn’t give them the interactivity they were aiming for. Working with Adobe Connect partner GetConnect gave them the ability to create custom layouts to vary classrooms, connect with students using engagement tools, and train teachers on how to get the most from the platform. The results were continuous learner engagement using features like raised hands, refreshed student interactions by switching between multiple layouts for different lessons, and focused sharing of lesson visuals for better learning, thanks to camera freeze.
Conclusion
There is no learning objective that interactive virtual training can’t achieve when it is carefully designed and developed. If developers and Instructional Designers focus on equipping learners with the right tools to enhance collaboration, engagement, accessibility, and direct feedback, they can help them transform the way they absorb information and apply it in real-life situations. Make sure to leverage the best practices and tools described in this article to understand how a robust virtual training platform can change learning as you know it.
Download Addressing The Learner Engagement Gap In Virtual Training today to leverage the latest tech, implement tested strategies, and overcome engagement obstacles in your L&D program.
You can also check out Adobe Connect’s webinar “Can You Hear Me?” Isn’t A Learning Strategy to uncover why traditional video tools don’t cut it for training, and what to use instead.
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