Elearning! Magazine

DEC-JAN 2013

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

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but once students are on-board with it, chat can be a tremendous boost to learning. Chat can also be used to encourage more student participation during live instructional sessions. Some students may be reluctant to ask questions during class for fear of looking stupid in front of their peers. But with a chat function enabled, students can ask questions electronically (and anonymously), driving higher participation while helping shape the classroom discussion more precisely. Tis phenomenon was demonstrated a few years ago by a professor at the University of California, Berkley, who set up a virtual classroom to boost attendance on Fridays. He noticed that attendance for his Monday-Wednesday-Friday class dropped severely on Fridays, so he set up a webcast to allow students to attend the class from anywhere they could get an Internet connection. Not only did class attendance go back up to equal Mondays and Wednesdays, student participation increased dramatically in the virtual sessions. In a live classroom, he would typically get four questions. But in the virtual classroom, he routinely saw 50 questions being asked. It was a valuable lesson in human behavior for the professor, and a huge beneft to his students. KEEPING STUDENTS UP TO SPEED Te remote learning aspects of virtual technology can have a particularly large impact on employees who need to comprehend particular information but are injured, ill or otherwise unable to attend classes when they are ofered. Typically, employees who miss the class have to wait until the next time it is made available — which could be two weeks, a month or even a quarter later. In the meantime, they have to struggle along without that knowledge. Tey might be able to watch a recorded session, but if their questions difer from those of the actual attendees, they miss the opportunity to interact with the instructor. If the class is webcast live — and the student is well enough to login — he/she can follow along during the lesson and even participate via chat. about school teachers dressing up as historical fgures to try to liven up the classroom and provide context to the lessons. But that's not for everybody. Tis is where a virtual environment can make a huge diference. Using this technology, instructors can create an atmosphere that is appropriate to the subject matter. For example, if the class is studying a technical topic, the "classroom" can look like something out of Te Matrix. If they're learning about operations in another country, the surroundings can take on the look of that country's culture. If the sales force is learning Te remote aspects of virtual technology can have a large impact on employees who are injured, ill or otherwise unable to attend classes when they are ofered. INCREASING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT One area in which instructors are always challenged is increasing student engagement. It can be difcult to get students really immersed in unfamiliar topics (such as fnancial management for marketers or human resources topics for new managers), because they don't have the right lens through which to view it. We've all heard stories about the company's newest line of cofee makers, they can do what Keurig did and hold the class inside a virtual cofee bar. And so on. We are all used to going to all sorts of places, real and imagined, in our everyday lives, thanks to technology. Virtual environments can deliver that same experience in the corporate classroom to help stimulate and engage learners. LEARNING FROM THE LEARNERS One additional advantage of incorporating webcast or virtual environment technology is the ability to capture behaviors. HR training leaders can review classroom lessons and see which aspects got students excited and active and which ones dragged the class down. Armed with that information, they can adjust future lesson plans to make them more effective. If diferent learning styles were tried, they can also see which worked best, helping shape future classes. THE NEW REALITY Technology has without question altered the reality of today's students. Tey perceive the world very diferently than even those of 10 years ago. And that has changed the reality of the 21st-century corporate classroom. Webcasting and virtual environments can help organizations make those adjustments, improving speed to comprehension while delivering greater ROI. Tey give context to the materials and help foster both student-instructor and student-student relationships. Most importantly, they help engage students in a way that fts their daily lives — which helps further the corporate training mission. —Eric Vidal is director of Product Marketing for the Virtual Environment Business Segment at InterCall (www.intercall.com), the world's largest conferencing and collaboration services provider. Reach him via email at evidal@intercall.com. Government Elearning! December 2012 / January 2013 53

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