Seven Steps to Make Live Virtual Training Highly Interactive

People can initially be concerned that live virtual training cannot be as interactive as the traditional face-to-face approach, but this isn’t necessarily true. The key is to design your program well by constantly keeping it moving and keeping participants engaged. Some ways to do this include:

Encourage the group to highly participative in the very beginning. When you let them know you expect them to be active, they will better understand how the program is designed and what their role will be.

Have a lot of slides and change them frequently. This helps you keep the program moving. If you stay on one slide too long without asking them questions, they will start to think it’s a snore and mentally check-out.

Use the hand raising feature and telephone together. One technique we frequently use is to ask people to raise their hands in response to a question asked. Then ask a few people who responded to explain their reason for their answer. This keeps other people other than the instructor talking, encourages participation, and makes the program more interesting.

Actively engage the text chat feature. When you want people to respond to an open-ended question, using text chat can be a great tool. One excellent example is using it when asking people what they will commit to doing going forward as a result of the class. You can then also ask them to come off mute and discuss their answer.

Incorporate polling questions frequently. You will need to prepare these in advance as part of your learning design. The polling capability will indicate to everyone the percentages of the class that responded to each answer. Using several polling questions sprinkled throughout your program also keeps things moving and the participants engaged.

Use webcams on each computer so the participants can see each other and the facilitator. Not every platform can provide this feature but it is a great tool when it can. You can ask participants to raise their hand and actually see them. You can also watch them as they verbally ask questions and provide answers.

Include interactive game technology as a warm-up or ice-breaker before the class begins. There are quite a few resources like this available if you google them.

When you use the tips provided above, you will be better able to keep the program moving and your participants highly involved. You will have created a highly interactive live virtual training that will keep your participants wanting to come back for more!