Many companies use web conferencing as a way to train their employees instead of holding in-person training sessions. These sessions can be easily held online so you can include all your employees, including those who work from remote locations and can’t travel to the office. When you follow the proper conferencing tips, you will find your training sessions with Onstream Media too be more effective.
Create an Outline
It is important for you to provide your trainees with an outline of what you intend to cover in your training session. This will help keep your attendees focused on what you will talk about and allow them to prepare before they attend. If you don’t see them in person before the conference, email the outline to them.
Test Everything Ahead of Time
Web conferencing doesn’t always work as it is intended to, if you or your attendees don’t have equipment that can handle the software. Therefore, it is extremely critical to test out everything before the final training session. This includes checking phones and headsets and the stability of your computer. You should also check with your web conferencing provider to determine if you can do a dry run of the presentation, including polls and other interactive features, so you can be sure everything works properly.
Test Connections with Other Facilities
You need to make sure the people who will be attending the web conferencing session from other facilities will be able to access the conference with no troubles. Sometimes the firewall at an organization can block this type of conferencing. Testing this ahead of time will prevent problems when you are trying to get the training session started.
Testing for Other Presenters
Guest speakers are sometimes used during web conferencing training sessions. If your training session will have guests presenters or someone who will introduce you, it is important to make sure everyone tests their own equipment to make sure it is compatible with the conferencing software.
Check Background Noise
Whether you are holding your training session from the office or from your home office, you need to make sure background noise is to a minimum. Before you begin using the web conferencing software, make sure you have everything you need and all background noise is eliminated. This includes rustling papers during the presentation.
Choose a Point of Contact
It can sometimes be difficult to portray information to multiple people. Therefore, it is often best to designate one person in any trainee group as a point of contact. You can then keep that person informed and he will be responsible for making sure that information gets to everyone else in the group. Make sure you choose someone who will be reliable to ensure everyone is informed.
Watch Your Scheduling
If your business spans the country or the globe, you could find you need to invite people who are in different time zones. If this is true, you will need to work hard to coordinate everyone’s schedules. Start working on scheduling early so you have the best chance of finding a time that will work best with everyone in your training group.
Verify Times
When you are dealing with people in different time zones, it can be difficult to make sure you have communicated the proper time to everyone. For instance, perhaps you forgot to include the time zone when sending out a time. You can avoid this by double and triple checking the information you provide to all attendees to make sure the same date and time is indicated in all communications.
Use Dual Monitors
The use of dual monitors has become more popular in businesses today, especially since many businesses have gone paperless. This is also useful for web conferencing as well. If you don’t already use dual monitors, ask your IT department to set it up for you. With the help of dual monitors, you will be able to keep the training session up on one screen and your notes on another.
Check Attendance
Before you being your training, it is important to make sure everyone is in attendance. If you have chosen a point of contact for the training group, ask this person if everyone is present. This will give you a backup to ensure everyone is accounted for and available for the training.
Stay Flexible
It is important for you to make sure you stay on track with your presentation to stay within your time constraints. However, it is also important to stay flexible. If you want the attendees to really learn something from you, you need to be able to take their lead to a degree to ensure all their questions are answered.
Real Life Exercises
Teaching something to your attendees by talking to them and showing them examples on a PowerPoint presentation isn’t always enough. In addition, you should also provide them with some training exercises they can perform to drive in the information you presented to them. This will ensure they fully grasp what they have learned.
Follow Up
Your training won’t be effective if you send your attendees off after your web conferencing session and don’t follow up with them. Send each attendee an email asking them what they thought of the presentation and inviting them to email you with any questions or concerns they have. If you need to gauge how well they absorbed the information, you can also send a test for them to complete. Following up with them will show them just how important this information is.
Keep Your Notes
Throughout the process, you should take notes about what went right and wrong with your web conferencing. You can use this list to implement more web conferencing tips you can use to improve your training sessions the next time you must hold them.
Using Onstream Media's servics to conduct web conferencing as a training tool is a fast-growing trend today. Because it is something many businesses are not yet familiar with, it is important to read as many web conferencing tips as possible to make the process go more smoothly. The more experience you have with these sessions, the easier they will become.
