How to Teach Online

Paul Signorelli Dan Freeman

Session Facilitators

How to Teach Online -- Freeman and Signorelli www.alatechsource.org

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Accomplishing Online What You Accomplish Onsite



Webinar Cons…and Pros

From “How to Run Great Training Webinars” | Dan Freeman www.alatechsource.org


• Con: You aren’t staring out at the sea of faces, so you don’t really know how engaged your audience is

• Pro: Less pressure

• Con: There is a camaraderie factor with in-person sessions that doesn’t exist online

• Pro: People are there for the stated purpose only; no side chat, fewer distractions, more focus

Webinar Cons…and Pros



• Con: People are not as engaged with your material because they don’t have physical documents with them.

• Pro: That isn’t really true.

• Con: Some people are more comfortable than others with the online format.

• Pro: For those people, there is an additional layer of learning going on and they are likely to leave more comfortable than they came.

Running Your First Webinar



Practice, Practice, Practice…



Make Cheat Sheets!



• Having documentation is absolutely essential:

• It gives you a checklist of everything you need to do to launch so you can think about it less

• It is a training tool so you can ensure that others will be able to run an events

• If there’s some emergency and an untrained person must run the event, the show can still go on

Designing/Delivering Engaging Learning



Reflections & Observations #1



Presenting Online vs.

In-person



Greeting Them at the Door:



Being Responsive



Similarities and Differences



Running the Event: 1 Person or 2?



• The ideal way to do it: 1 Presenter, 1 “Producer”

• Producer is responsible for technical aspects:

• Launching event; ensuring all settings are correct

• Handling audience technical questions

• Troubleshooting

Develop a Plan for Tech Problems



• You need two types of tech problem plans:

• A plan for the common problems individual attendees may experience

• It may take some time to figure out what these are

• A plan for a major disaster

Develop a Plan for End-User Problems



• It might take some time before you can figure out what the most common problems are going to be, but you can get a good grip on that by running lots of practice sessions.

• Write a script(s) that you can paste into chat. Here’s one of ours:

• Sorry you are having a problem with your audio. I'm assuming you are listening via the audio broadcast. If you're audio got interrupted, wait 10-15 seconds, and it should come back.

• Be prepared to deal with people who are angry/stressed/panicky

• The best approach is a customer service approach, even though the people attending probably aren’t customers.

Develop a Plan for the Disaster



• Disasters can take a lot of forms, but the bottom line is that we’re talking about a situation where your event gets severely disrupted or terminated.

• The first step in building a disaster plan is accepting the possibility that this could happen.

• You can minimize the possibility, but not eliminate it.


From “How to Run Great Training Webinars” | Dan Freeman

www.alatechsource.org


• Before deciding what you will do, examine what you can do:

• Does your platform give you a way to gather the e-mail addresses of all participants? If so, get that together as part of your preparation.

• If the event “dies”, can you quickly relaunch?

• Given the size of your group and significance of your event, what’s the possibility of rescheduling?




• Develop template e-mails to send to participants:

• We just crashed; please re-join

• We will need to reschedule

• Keep in mind that people are generally pretty understanding when these technical problems occur.




Building Engagement andAudience ParticipationInto Online Instruction



Stories that Stick



Finding Your Comfort Zone



Engagement via Social Media












Polling to Facilitate Engagement:A Sample from Dan What is your level of experience with webinars?



• I have been a webinar instructor/facilitator.

• I have attended webinars.

• My institution does webinars, but I’ve never attended.

• This is my first webinar.




Different Formatsfor

Online Presentation



The Visual Component of Presentations



• The visual component of a webinar is usually a slide deck.

• This is much more important in a webinar than an in-person presentation.

• Without slides, it’s just a voice.

Building Your Slides



• You don’t need design sense and you don’t need artistic ability.

• Base your slides on your outline.

• Include images to keep it interesting. (More on this in a moment.)

Building Your Slides



• While most webinar platforms will recognize PDFs and Word Docs, it’s best to work in PowerPoint because:

• PowerPoint is universal (more or less).

• It’s easy to export to other formats from PowerPoint.

• Stick with “common” fonts.

How Many Slides?



• The number of slides you use will vary heavily depending on your presentation style.

• A general guidelines is one slide per 90 seconds, but your results may vary!

• Think of your slides from an attendee perspective—do you have enough to keep it interesting?

• Using charts and graphs? Slow down!

Images on Your Slides

Modified from “How to Run Great Training Webinars” | Dan Freeman www.alatechsource.org


• Don’t go too text heavy—use images, even if its just ClipArt

• There are TONS of sources of free images on the web:

• Wikimedia Commons

• Flickr (check CC license)

• OpenClipArt.com

• You don’t need to spend a ton of time worrying about relevance, colors, etc.

Building Interactivity into Your Event



• Polls

• Exercises

• Open-ended Questions

Using Screen Sharing

How to Run Great Training Webinars | Dan Freeman www.alatechsource.org


• Use it; don’t abuse it

• Great tool for demo’ing software, websites

• Not a great tool for sharing your slides

• Mind the lag!




How to Bring Your In-person StrengthsTo Online Presentation



Facilitation



Listening



Inspiring Action






Finding Your Comfort Zone



Comfort Through Engagement



Hitting Your Own Target






How To Teach Online: A Visual Summary















Resources



Questions, Comments, and Next Steps



For More InformationPaul Signorelli & Associates

1032 Irving St., #514San Francisco, CA 94122

[email protected]://paulsignorelli.com

http://buildingcreativebridges.wordpress

.com

Twitter: @paulsignorelli @trainersleaders

Dan Freeman50 E. Huron St.

Chicago, IL 60614312.20/5413

[email protected]

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]





Credits & Acknowledgements



Rodin’s Thinker: From Wrote’s Flickr photostream at http://tinyurl.com/jwpp276Practice: From Tom Hart’s Flickr photostream at http://tinyurl.com/ldyflzrWelcome: From Margaret Almon’s Flickr photostream at http://tinyurl.com/k48jh6a Mail: From Donovan Beeson’s Flickr photostream at http://tinyurl.com/mtbddazListen, Act, and Understand: From Steven Shorrock’s Flickr photostream at http://tinyurl.com/l5mjagnFireworks: From Aristrocrats-Hat’s Flickr photostream at http://tinyurl.com/kbx3kdhBullseye: From Nicole Cho’s Flickr photostream at http://tinyurl.com/mcjt7rxQuestion Marks: From Valerie Everett’s Flicker photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/valeriebb/3006348550/sizes/m/in/photostream/

http://tinyurl.com/jwpp276

http://tinyurl.com/ldyflzr

http://tinyurl.com/k48jh6a

http://tinyurl.com/mtbddaz

http://tinyurl.com/l5mjagn

http://tinyurl.com/kbx3kdh

http://tinyurl.com/mcjt7rx

http://www.flickr.com/photos/valeriebb/3006348550/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Technology

How to Teach Online