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“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” – William Pollard
This quote is an all time fit but all the more in this given current global COVID-19 lockdown – with businesses closed, staff working reduced hours, or sadly laid off altogether – learning new skills is a priority for many people right now to survive and later on thrive in their industry.
But with this current situation there comes another obstacle – In person Trainings have come to a halt. Online or Virtual Instructor Led Trainings (VILT) have taken over the trainings & certifications. Many people consider VILT as a Taboo but is it really a Taboo… Is it really just a gimmick to earn money from the participants sitting anywhere or Is it the authentic and impactful way out to upskill oneself to keep surviving and thriving in earning their livelihoods? What is it?
So the answer is that new age technologies have made virtual training easier, economical, and as effective as in-classroom training. The Time & Travel constraint has been widely taken care of with this VILT (thanks to the current situation).
There are many key learning advantages of the virtual classroom. While few people may be inquisitive to upskill and add new feathers to their caps, others may be focused on getting a qualification. Few might just want to get their hands into something entirely different – a new language, an alternative profession, or a subject they always wanted to explore for a while. The list and possibilities are endless.
In all these cases, the way in which the matter is taught matters a great deal. In short, DELIVERY MATTERS. Today in current times where offline education is bit out of reach, given that classroom settings are off-limits for now, more and more people are turning to online courses, certifications.
These include:
Out of all these VILT programs are the best match to our favorite Classroom Programs. VILT doesn’t only recreate the ‘instructional’ setting & traditional method of delivery, they also provide wider scope for collaboration, discussion, and interactive learning.
VILT offers the perfect fusion of in-person learning and digital functionality, VILT programs are, at their core, live learning sessions & They Are Empowering!
These are delivered in real-time by an instructor who connects with participants remotely, via a technology platform: primarily a video conferencing tool with a whole host of additional features. This brilliantly allows lessons to be recorded and played back by participants as they’re needed – to help with revisions, assignments and other associated tasks.
The moment you look more closely at this type of training and a whole list of other benefits quickly become crystal clear:
Virtual training also gives participants more time to get to grips with the information that was being disseminated to them. Virtual training can be carried out over a number of months, instead of a string of successive days, as there’s no need to book out a classroom. This also means that they have more time to ask questions and get help if they need it. And this also loosens the burden from the shoulders of your participants to take days off etc.
This has huge benefits over classroom training. e.g If a participant is sick and misses a traditional class, they could fall behind the rest of your employees and potentially fail the course where as a virtual classroom set up, can allow participant to keep training while they recover at home.
3. Attends To Varied Learning Styles – Although VILT learning can be both generic in scope, or highly tailored to specific needs, the functionality on many platforms provide a better set up to attend to multiple types of learning. Many education practitioners have long posted that there are three main learning styles: visual (watching), auditory (listening), and kinesthetic (doing).
In practice, VILT programs enable all of these. Live and recorded classroom sessions give learners the opportunity to engage by watching, listening, asking questions, and making notes – while a whole suite of digital tools provide them with opportunities to interact on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis
4. Virtual Training is Economical – Keeping an eye on costs is an essential part of learning and running a business too. If you need to book out a classroom for weeks at a time, hire a specialist to come in and teach your staff, that’s going to put a big dent in your finances. And accordingly you have to keep the fee of your courses at a higher end so that these your costs can be recovered.
Virtual training doesn’t require any special equipment nor does it require relocation. This means that running a virtual training program can cut down on costs quite significantly and eventually your participants also benefit from this as they end up paying less for the same certification that used to be out of budget for them earlier.
5. Participants Can Get Feedback Right Away – The most important part of any course is comprehension. Yet in a traditional training environment, the facilitator would need to take tests away, mark them, and return them at the next session.
However, with virtual training, you can set up tests and even small exams that your participants can take whenever they need to. You can set up these tests to return feedback to the students immediately. This means that they can start improving any weaker areas right away, without wasting that precious time between lessons.
6. Virtual Training Helps Participants Retain Knowledge – Think about all the times that you’ve spent in a traditional classroom environment and left not understanding the material. You could have taken all the notes that you can, but still struggle with retaining the information that you’ve been taught. No matter how smart you are, it can happen.
When you study in a virtual class, you don’t have this problem. Virtual lessons can be repeated and re-studied at any time. If participants don’t understand something the first time, they can take another look at the class and review any areas of weaker understanding in moments.
7. Virtual Classes Enable Better Communication – Virtual classes don’t mean that there’s no communication between participants. In fact, it can often make participants communication far easier. For instance, you could set up a discussion board and require your participants to contribute a post to the board every week, offering up any ideas and questions they may have.
There’s no time limit on these discussions, either. If your participants need a little more time to get their heads around the material, the end of a class doesn’t mean they can’t talk to other participants. This extra time to formulate questions and discussions gives rise to better communication and better results.
8. Improved Technical Skills – Virtual training is a thriving industry and it isn’t going away anytime soon, infact this is the in thing now. This means that using virtual training gives your participants a huge advantage for future training sessions.
9. Remotely Accessible Anytime, Anywhere – With VILT programs, training can be delivered to anyone, anywhere – and accessed at any time, as long as sessions are recorded!
While this isn’t unique to VILT programs per se, it is an important aspect of their growing popularity, particularly when the structure they follow is relevant to a specific learning need.
10. Blended Learning Is Key To Success – In addition, facilitators also have a variety of digital content elements they can use to make the learning experience more interactive.
These include things like surveys, polls, and quizzes. They can also share graphs, videos, and other resources easily – and at scale – to all participants at once.
VILT’s success is, without a doubt, a result of its ability to blend different elements of human-centered and technology-based learning – interaction plus instruction.
It can also be used in conjunction with other types of digital or real-world education – including MOOCs, eLearning, and other forms of training.
So now the Answer to Impactful Future Learning is VILT.
Just Go For It!
