Nuts and Bolts: Rocking the Virtual Classroom—What About That Whiteboard?

I’ve been working in virtual classrooms since 2003, back whenI first met Insync Training’s Jennifer Hofmann, who pretty much invented usingvirtual meeting software to support instruction. My job involves a workforcewith many issues: geography, availability/coverage, and work shifts. These are frequentlycompounded by a lack of travel funds for moving people or instructors aroundfor face-to-face training events. I saw so much potential for the technologythen that I shifted nearly all my live instruction work to the virtualclassroom.

Of course, it didn’t take long for the technology to beleveraged for the worst possible applications: One thousand people enrolled inthe name of “efficiency,” with presenters only pushing slides while disablingcollaboration tools like whiteboard annotation, participant text chat, andbreakout rooms. As with the struggle to differentiate “presentation” from “training,”I tried to distinguish better use of—and my approach to—virtual classroom-basedinstruction with language like “live online session.” Let’s face it: There’snothing positive about the word “webinar.”

Over the years I’ve developed or picked up a lot of littletricks for making the environment more collaborative and engaging and thought I’dshare some of what I learned. This month I’ll talk a bit about using thewhiteboard as a working space instead of just a screen for displaying slides.

Help learners surface prior knowledge

Often the topics we teach are things our learners alreadyknow a lot about, like ethics, customer service, and leadership. Use anapproach that helps the learners access their own prior knowledge. Figure 1 (participantlast names removed) shows a whiteboard from a train-the-trainer session. Wewere talking about creating a better overall experience for our participants. Iasked people to use the arrow tool (a WebEx product feature) to claim a spaceon the whiteboard, then asked them to use the text tool to answer, “What causesour learners pain?” An audience made up of trainers doesn’t need any help fromme on that—as you can see.

Figure 1: Session participants were asked, “What causes our learners pain?”

This openedthe door to productive conversation about making training events betterexperiences overall for our learners. I didn’t have to spend a lot of timeproviding exposition about things I thought caused pain. Better: People don’t argue with their own data.If learners generated the information themselves, then I didn’t need to spendtime proving problems exist. In fact, participants in the session had so muchto say that I had to spend a bit of time helping them read spots where they’d writtenover each other’s text.

Build the slide

See Figure2. In this session on the importance of health literacy I loaded a slide withonly starter words. I then asked them to use the chat area to answer, “Whatkinds of forms do patients have to fill out?” I then started pulling from theiranswers to complete the slide. We repeated this with the rest of the items.

 

Figure 2: Use fill-in-the-blank structure to elicit participant feedback

Identify areas of focus

Figure 3 shows an activity from a class on human trafficking.It’s a somber topic with overlapping parts that touch on myriad issues, frompsychology to law enforcement and more. I had a number of key points I wantedto mention. I wanted to get a sense of what my audience already knew about thistopic from news reports and such. Figure 4 shows the material I wanted tocover, but before I showed the slide I presented them with the slide in Figure 3.I asked participants to put down their arrow and type an answer in the box they’dchosen. I could see they had some awareness of fear as a factor here, so I knewthat wasn’t something I needed to spend most of my time on. When we moved tothe slide in Figure 4, I was able to ask them to indicate which item surprisedthem most and tell them to start there. Also, as the boxes format is not linear,I was able to jump around as the conversation evolved rather than try to followthe flow that lists of bulleted items would suggest. In facilitating theconversation I saw, too, that I could call on any number of people by name toelaborate on fear of reprisal and a few other issues. This let them contributeto the conversation and gave people a break from my voice.

Figure 3: Participants share what they know

Figure 4: We can then focus on areas they know less about

Share it!

My recordsshow my first use of this in 2007 (originally contributed by Michelle St Pierrefor a Games Synchronous Trainers Play session), and I still find it valuablenow. It’s a quick closer that gives people the opportunity to reflect on theexperience and perhaps offer a bit of action planning. I use them in a lot ofsessions I do, then take screenshots and send them to my boss, who gets moreinformation than the usual “smile sheet” form offers. Then I’ll often removethe last names and post the image to my social media accounts. It’s greatmarketing and a great way to work out loud.

Figure 5: Screenshot of end-of-session feedback

My best advice? Use a producer

TheeLearning Guild’s Karen Hyder is an excellent role model for this, so do checkout one of the Guild’s online forums if you haven’t already. She serves aspresenter coach, session tech support, and sometimes as in-room aide. Work withyour organization to get this sort of support if you don’t already have it. 

Finally?

Learn to usethe tools you have. I offer this information in a live online session calledRocking the Virtual Classroom. Invariably I have attendees who say they don’thave tools that will do what I’m showing you—because they never checked. Mostof the big-name tools offer whiteboard and annotation functions. Some havequirks—like limiting the number of users who can write on a board at a time—sothat’s something important to know. Some have nice unique features: WebEx, forinstance, has the arrow tools you see in some of the figures here. Other toolshave a “moving pencil” indicator so you know whether people are typingsomething in chat to cue you that a comment or response to a question iscoming.  

Want more?

Thisis an oldie, but it’s the origin of many virtual trainingactivities, and offers things that work just fine in today’s virtual classroom.From Centra Software: Games Trainers Play, Virtually.

Jennifer Hofmann of InsyncTraining really is the last word onall things related to delivering instruction via the virtual classroom. Checkout her website for resources from blog posts to free events (including acouple dozen a year with me) and certificate programs.