If your organization is like most, you have a wealth of face-to-face classroom courses that you wish to convert for delivery in a virtual classroom, an inexpensive and quick-to-develop form of eLearning. While this is clearly possible, it does take some effort. Here are some tips that will help you manage this process.
Analyze your existing instruction and your audience
The first three steps in the conversion process are to edit, focus, and plan.
Put your instruction on a diet
Virtual audiences will not sit through a long instructional segment. Most major television national news stories are only two to two and a half minutes long, and local pieces get only 30 seconds. Strive to make your virtual instruction modules about 45 to 60 minutes long. Do not make your modules less than 20 minutes. Attendees tend to feel that anything less than 20 minutes is trivial and not worth their time.
Analyze your audience
You need to determine how many participants will attend, who they are, specifically how the instruction is relevant to them, and their history regarding the topic. Also, be very clear about what you would like attendees to do because of your instruction, such as buy a product or fix a software glitch. Then focus your virtual instruction on what is most important to them, so that you can achieve the goal that is important to you.
Create and complete a virtual instruction planning form
Sit down with your instructional assets (e.g., handouts, web links, and media) and determine the quality of your materials. Are they serviceable? If not, you may as well start from scratch. If they are, create an instructional plan that clearly identifies what you intend to do, when you intend to do it, and what virtual meeting or instruction tools you will use. I recommend that you document your plan in a chart identifying each of the above elements for every topic.
Carefully design your virtual curriculum
At this point, you have analyzed your existing face-to-face instruction and the audience for your virtual instruction. You have also created a planning form to guide your efforts. The next step involves several design decisions.
To chat or not to chat?
When you are presenting to large audiences, you may prefer the control that you have when you use chats. You or your producer/moderator can determine which questions or comments you display and respond to. You may also decide to group and answer them during a natural break point in your instruction.
Who can talk with whom?
Designers often believe that all voices deserve to be heard during discussions. That works fine with small audiences. With larger audiences, however, it creates anarchy. In those cases, provide attendees with the ability to ask questions or make comments through the producer/moderator. You may also wish to provide participants with the ability to chat with other attendees on a limited basis.
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