Online Learning And New Skills Required For Trainers And Facilitators

eLearning And What That Means For Trainers, Teachers and Facilitators
While Face-to-Face Training is still preferred by some, eLearning or Digital Learning has been identified as one of the top 10 trends in Enterprise Learning and Talent Management.

Online courses has been used by independent coaches as well as institutions helping many learn new skills and start new ventures. It is making learning accessible to anyone who is motivated to learn.

Today even elite Universities are offering online courses using the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) model. Coursera, Udacity and EdX partner with universities to deliver free courses to online learners.

Schools and colleges too are also using learning management systems to host and conduct courses. Some school teachers are encouraging students to watch recorded video lessons before class so they can come together for discussions or Q&As (sometimes referred to as a flipped or inverted class). It is a trend that will only accelerate as more people appreciate the mobility and flexibility that online learning offers.

I was recently interviewed on a national TV program and discussed elearning, the next wave in education:

• How that affects Trainers and Facilitators 
• What are some skills they will need in order to adapt to this change

1 – New Skills In Designing The Online Courses

In a virtual environment, you need to make more conscious effort to engage and interact with the learners. Lessons need to be chunked down, interlaced with quizzes, questions, and maybe even games. Activity-based lesson plans with lots of participation and questions allow learners time to reflect, digest and assess how well they have grasped a subject.

If you are delivering a live session, you can pause and ask for participation. But if you are designing video based courses, the control of the learning experience is in the hands of the learners. So you’ll need to have clear sections and sub topics with lots of checklists, worksheets and notes.

2 – New Skills In Producing / Authoring The Online Lessons

There are two main ways you can conduct lessons online. Lessons that take place in real time, either one-to-one or one-to-many (classes can be as big as 50 to a few hundred) or lessons that have been recorded and played back on-demand.

If you are offering video-based training you will need to record your lessons and host those on servers so learners can access these on demand, watch them online or download them for viewing later.

You’ll need to learn to be comfortable in front of a video camera if you are recording yourself teaching or demonstrating a technique. There are online courses that teach yoga or piano playing with demonstrations of movements. These typically employ videographers in the preparation of the video creation.

Alternatively, if you are teaching languages, online business or “how to” courses, you’ll may want to make use of screen capture videos that show navigations on the internet or power points notes.

There are many applications for screen captures. If you are reaching out to adult learners power point presentations may be sufficient. If you are teaching younger learners you may want to learn  popular authoring tools which allow you more interactive lessons design.

3 – New Skills In Facilitating The Online Lessons

I believe online learning will continue to grow but there is definitely a place for personal faciltation for learning to be effective.

Trainers, coaches and tutors will need to learn how to engage learners who are not “in their view” and may be easily distracted.  Instead of reading from notes with monotonous voice teachers will need to sharpen their virtual presentation and coaching skills and bring out the best from each learner.

We are still in the early days of online learning but technological advancements and changing learner habits will shape the next wave of learning. And one thing is for sure: Teachers, Tutors and Trainers will need to continuously learn new skills to faciliate online learning.

If you are a teacher or tutor who wants to find out how you can start running your own online learning business, just write in to support@LouisChan.com and we’ll be in touch.

Here’s a report we have on setting up your own etraining business…


You can view the YouTube Video here

Photo credit: sheelamohan