We feel your pain, because we’ve been there, too.
We love our face-to-face classroom training, but in the age of tight budgets and geographically dispersed workforces, it’s fast becoming a thing of the past. It was fun while it lasted.
I know it’s easy to dis on e-learning and e-simulation. And while there is still a plague of shallow point-and-click programs out there, a lot of folks are savvy enough to build in richer methods of engagement. But I frequently bump up against the limitations of online interaction. Don’t you? There is almost always content that requires the benefit of interaction with other learners and a live facilitator.
If only there was a way to create a hybrid that delivers the best of classroom and e-learning.
Enter virtual instructor-led training, or VILT.
Okay, don’t tune me out yet. Plenty of us have had lame experiences with new technologies like Acrobat Connect, Live Meeting, GoToMeeting, and others, which have simply become another medium for slogging through PowerPoint with a little bit of Q&A thrown in. (And if we are being honest, no one wants to look stupid by asking a question that they fear might have been answered while they were instant messaging a friend, or catching up on the latest web news.)
VILT took a good concept – less time and money – to its logical conclusion. Along the way, it lost sight of how people really learn.
But all is not lost.
We have discovered that VILT can be engaging, interactive and built on solid adult learning principles, while still saving time and money. Blueline designers and developers are pushing the envelope of this new medium with a broad range of proven immersive teaching methods including story lines and passports, online team assignments and collaboration, and rich interactive debriefs.
Imagine highly engaging team-based activities including Socratic discussions, remote synchronous role-plays, networking, and competitive team challenges. And individual exercises that create “whole brain” learning through visual templates, use of competition and interactive quizzes.
Yes, it can be done. And when it all comes together, it is a thing of beauty.
Do you have existing instructor-led content that needs to be transformed into high-impact, engaging, VILT? We’d love to tell you about some of the methods that we have implemented in organizations all around the world. Call the training experts at Blueline Simulations today.
