How to develop effective interactive virtual training
It’s difficult to imagine training that is somehow unaffected by technology. Whether you’re talking about taking live lectures on your laptop from home, taking online quizzes, learning interactive games, or engaging in an online learning community, training exists primarily in a virtual world to address the complex needs of participants. These digital experiences provide learners with much needed flexibility and can significantly enhance their knowledge understanding and retention, overall learning outcomes, and real-world applications. However, achieving these benefits requires knowing best practices and tools to leverage them to develop truly engaging and interactive virtual training.
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5 Best Practices to Attract Interactive Design
The secret to interactive virtual training that attracts learners is more than flashy visuals. This includes careful design inviting learners to collaborate, think critically and apply their acquired knowledge. Let’s take a look at the best practices that this translates.
1. Set clear learning goals
In order for learners to agree to commit more than a few hours to complete their eLearning course, they need to know what they are trying to achieve. By giving a specific purpose to the course, you ensure that all activities, materials, and support tools are designed with a common goal in mind. In this way, the design process is not only easier and targeted, but learners are more invested in their learning experiences as they realize that it brings value to their lives.
2. Use the right tools to configure interactivity
Using tools and technology to promote interaction is certainly the right way to do it, but it should be used with caution. Quiz, games and other interactive elements can effectively engage learners, but are only overwhelmed if they use it too much. Think carefully about how you want to build your courses to balance passive and interactive learning activities, creating diversity and keeping participants interested. Another thing to remember is that design and layout options must be consistent throughout, and reflect the unique identity of the brand while ensuring that the study material is visually appealing and understandable.
3. Promote collaboration between learners
Engagement and interactivity can be cultivated through gaming, simulation and other immersive learning techniques. But in many cases, all you need is good old peer interaction and collaboration. Of course, this should be supported by sophisticated tools tailored to the principles of virtual training. Tools like these include breakout rooms, discussion boards, peer review feedback, and more. By providing learners with a means of communication and collaboration, they can exchange ideas, use collective knowledge to achieve more effective skill development, and participate in communities that further strengthen learning motivations.
4. Designed for accessibility and inclusiveness
Interactive virtual training is only effective if it is designed to accommodate all learners, regardless of their learning preferences or tasks. Rather than working on them after the project is completed, it is important to take the necessary steps to ensure accessibility and inclusiveness from the early stages of the design process. It incorporates subtitles, written audio and screen readers to select color schemes with potential visual impairments in mind, allowing for the integration of assistive technology. Additionally, it will allow study materials to be accessed on a variety of devices and browsers, allowing them to reach a larger audience.
5. Be prepared to adapt
One of the principles of interactive training is the ability to adapt to the needs of individual learners. The same applies to training facilitators, who may need to temporarily shift course direction to match the learner’s interests. You may need to spend more time than planning on exploring a specific topic that will attract learners’ attention, without having to change the storyboards of your training course. If the course is self-service, this could translate into recommendations for additional personalized content. This adaptability stimulates engagement as learners ensure that they are responding to what they find interesting or valuable.
Tools used to enhance interactivity
We discussed earlier how interactivity can be achieved by using the right tools. Now we’ll explore more in depth the specific features that will help refined virtual training solutions incorporate interactivity into our virtual training experience.
Customizable pods and layouts
Customizable functional windows known as pods allow you to control the design process and create elements tailored to the needs of your course. This includes games, chat boxes, video players, LMS integrations, and other components that can be combined to create course storyboards and layouts. These features provide creative freedom and can promote dynamic and adaptive learning experiences.
Breakout Room
With the help of a breakout room, encouragement interactions between peers can be enabled. This feature allows facilitators to divide online classrooms into smaller groups, making it easier for participants to collaborate, discuss and do full activities that promote teamwork on group projects. You can then rejoin the main group to compare results, share insights, and make the overall learning experience more collaborative and engaging.
Persistent virtual rooms
This feature does not directly enhance interaction, but it helps to ensure that the virtual training course is consistent throughout. Persistent virtual rooms allow you to design your virtual “classroom” once, select all the settings, content and layouts you need, and reuse them over and over again in the future. This makes it easier to create a consistent virtual learning environment tailored to meet the needs of different audiences.
Interactive whiteboard
What online learners appreciate is their ability to interact with learning materials rather than simply presenting them. An interactive whiteboard allows instructors to use colors, shapes and annotations to highlight important information and highlight learners’ attention to one important content at a time. Additionally, learners use this feature to brainstorm and collaborate more effectively, ultimately improving their understanding of knowledge.
Polling and Q&A Pod
What is more interactive in a virtual training course than the ability to communicate directly with the facilitator through live voting and Q&A sessions? These fully customizable pods allow instructors to ask questions about the overall validity of the study material or course and receive instant feedback from participants. This feature ensures that learners can always express their opinions and questions and maintain high quality of the course.
Real-world success stories of interactive virtual training initiatives
Adobe Connect features an impressive set of features that can revolutionize your interactive virtual learning experience. Explore how it can help businesses through the next real-world success story.
Blue Sky Broadcasting
Blue Sky Broadcast is an e-learning and virtual event organizer that drives events for businesses and organizations in the tech industry. Our collaboration with Adobe Connect aims to create unique webinars and online learning solutions designed to improve training for global audiences. LMS customization, multimedia integration and interactive capabilities have created a platform that increases participation in virtual events, meets complex compliance requirements and enhances the overall virtual learning experience.
Colbe Academy
Based in Napa, California, Colbe Academy was founded in 1980 and has been recreating a physical classroom environment in virtual environments for over a decade. When the academy first expands its offerings to include live online courses, Kolbe’s Chief Academic Officer Megan Lengyel knew that a typical conferencing app wouldn’t give the interactivity they’re aiming for. Working with Adobe Connect Partner, GetConnect was able to train teachers on how to create custom layouts to change classrooms, connect with students using engagement tools, and make the most of the platform. The result was a continuous learner engagement that updated student interactions by updating student interactions by focusing lesson visuals thanks to camera freezes, thanks to the raised hand-held hand rise, and hand-held layouts.
Conclusion
There is no learning goal that interactive virtual training cannot be achieved when carefully designed and developed. When developers and education designers focus on equipping learners with the right tools to enhance collaboration, engagement, accessibility, and direct feedback, it can help transform and apply the way they absorb information and apply it in real-world situations. Take advantage of the best practices and tools listed in this article to understand how a robust virtual training platform can change your learning as you know it.
Use the latest technology to implement tested strategies and to overcome engagement obstacles in L&D programs, downloading to address today’s virtual training learner engagement gaps.
You can also check out the Adobe Connect webinar “Can you hear me?” It’s not a learning strategy that reveals why traditional video tools don’t cut it for training and what to use instead.
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