5 Tips to Make Your Virtual Training More Interactive

We all know interactive training is key to making your training more memorable. But when you are tasked with delivering training via webinar, e-learning, or another virtual method, it can be tricky to translate your in-person interactive exercises.

In our on-demand webinar How to Deliver Valuable E-Content, Lou Russell (Director of Learning, Russell Martin & Associates, a Moser Consulting Company) shares her advice for making your virtual learning more interactive:

1. Drawing or sketching

Lou suggests having people engage both their bodies and their imaginations by asking them to draw a concept. You can ask them to use the webinar drawing tools or ask them to do the exercise off-screen. In fact, she starts the webinar by asking participants to draw themselves learning – check it out for yourself here.

2. Chat and feedback

One simple way to add interactivity to a live webinar is to ask people to write in their comments or questions in the chat. Then read aloud some of the responses you see. This way your learners feel “seen” and they can engage with each other on side topics. This is especially useful when the chat room is visible to all your learners.

3. Poll questions

Another easy interactive option on live events is to use the polling tool. You pose questions to your audience, and they chime in with their answers. This can help set a baseline of what the group understands or simply help your learners get to know each other better.

4. Express interest

Get your learners to express what interests them so that they engage with the content. For example, Lou suggests putting up your learning objectives on a slide as your learners join. Then ask them to pick what is most important to them.

This will help you understand your learners, but, more importantly, gets your learners thinking about their goals for this class from the outset.

5. Redefine interactivity to include emotion

We tend to think about interactivity as if it is only physical: raising your hand, writing on the chalkboard, breaking into different physical spaces to discuss a topic. But Lou argues that another form of interactivity is engaging your learner’s emotions.

She suggests creating stories to engage people. They don’t need to be elaborate, but framing a concept around someone’s story will help your learners engage.

Of course, some things are easier said than done. To prove her point, Lou employed each of these strategies in the webinar. Watch it now to see these tips in action!

These tips focus on synchronous virtual learning. If you’re looking for tips on making asynchronous courses more interactive, check out this on-demand webinar with Brian Washburn from Endurance Learning.