Continuing from yesterday’s post, here are five more basic best practices you’ll want to consider when hosting a live training session.
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4. Keep It Interactive and Engaging
When hosting a live training session, you’ll always want to keep your learners’ focus on you and/or the materials you’re covering by making your training session interactive. And the best way to do this is by having them engage in polls or brief surveys or by having them break out into small groups for a few minutes to complete relevant and engaging exercises.
Whatever you do, don’t simply ramble on and point at or refer to a boring slide deck for minutes on end. If you do, you will lose your learners’ attention and interest every single time. Instead, include them in the live training session and encourage them to be active participants.
5. Include Visual Aids and Video Clips
Human beings are visual learners, and they appreciate visual aids during a presentation. Training sessions that are in lecture-style format don’t tend to be very effective in the workplace. Whenever possible, include visualized data that solidify research you’re discussing so that it has a lasting impact on your learners. And include video clips to demonstrate and bring to life some of the training content you’re covering.
6. Provide Real-Life Context and Stories
During your live training sessions, be sure to provide real-life context to your material as it relates to your live audience, or you’ll be sure to lose their interest and engagement. You could ask learners to raise their hands or select the “thumbs up” button if they agree with a certain statement on the screen being displayed, and then you can tailor your training content around the responses that you get.
For instance, if a clear majority of the learners in your audience state that they are acting managers, you’ll want to consider tailoring your training material to address managers specifically throughout your live training session.
7. Offer Additional Resources and Supplemental Learning Materials
Throughout your live training session, you’ll end up fielding questions about what you’re covering. At the very least, you should allow your learners to ask questions at the end of your live training session. Be prepared with articles, resources, courses, etc., that you can recommend when they ask questions so that you can help them continue their learning process and development.
8. Always Solicit Feedback, Questions, and Suggestions
After every live training session, ask your learners what they liked or didn’t like about the training session, as well as any suggestions they might have for future improvements. This is the best way to improve your live training sessions and to ensure you’re truly developing material that resonates with your learning audience.
Keep the eight best practices mentioned above, and in yesterday’s post, in mind to ensure you have successful and effective live training sessions.