Zoomifying your training skills
As a trainer of many years, mainly for the BBC, I have relished the opportunity to meet such an exciting collection of people from around the world. From politicians to veteran war reporters, the stories they tell trainees illuminate our training courses and stamp them as memorable experiences in trainees’ minds.
As a trainer of many years, mainly for the BBC, I have relished the opportunity to meet such an exciting collection of people from around the world. From politicians to veteran war reporters, the stories they tell trainees illuminate our training courses and stamp them as memorable experiences in trainees’ minds.
Fast forward to mid-March 2020, in lockdown, and the need to adapt these training skills to web-based, remote systems. It’s an exciting, yet daunting opportunity that has been catapulted into our in-trays.
But, how will I manage a chat room, with a whiteboard, whilst annotating and including the quieter trainees, without my kids walking in having a pointless row, or the cat screeching enthusiastically for its food or farting loudly (it’s their superpower)? Which backdrop should I use? Does the carpet from Turkey proudly displayed on our wall, a good idea on holiday, now look like an Al Qaeda recruitment video? How can we use facilitation skills, reading body language and intuitively understanding when trainees just haven’t got it, through a small screen?
Never being ones to shun the technology, we embraced the challenge.
Well, two weeks down the line, Quattrain have been adapting content for BBC journalism courses, holding webinars with top presenters and only managing to swear fruitily on open mic once.
It’s an electrifying moment when you have trainees from India, Indonesia and Thailand, all joining together in brainstorms, writing news stories and teasers into social media on chat, delivering interviews and receiving feedback in similar ways that they would do in the classroom.
We’re learning every day – but here are some top tips.
- Directed training works. Name your trainees and ask them to answer specific questions – the ‘cocktail party’ technique.
- Try to minimise open questions to the group, it’s more daunting at the other end of the screen to be the one to answer the first question.
- Take some time to set up your training early, relax the atmosphere and establish a relationship with your trainees before the course begins. Factor in time to get to know them. Have a holding slide for trainees joining early.
- Use the tools to make the session as interactive as possible: online polls, annotating answers, chat, breakout rooms.
- Have a loose but flexible plan. Break out rooms are phenomenal, but sometimes trainees on dodgy internet drop out. You have to be prepared to include them and move them to new rooms.
- Don’t neglect your usual training skills, blending a mix of pushing and pulling information. It’s easy to turn the session into a lecture, yet the interactive tools can be used creatively.
- Encourage trainees to get fresh air in breaks and walk around – constant screen time is draining.
- Admit to your trainees that we are all learning together and thank them for being part of the journey.
- Lock down is a time to test yourself and expand your skills. Jump into another media, learn a new communication tool –
we may not get this time again soon.
Quattrain are providing Zoom training in social media journalism, interviewing, storytelling, podcasting, writing for online and leading a series of webinars for AudioUK. Contact us if we can help your remote teams.