How to run a great Zoom enabled training session: #facilitators #experience #tips #Zoom

Jessica Pryce-Jones and Jon Parker

Jess: Yes, I have now done 60 Zoom enabled remote L&D sessions since mid-March. I’ve tried Bluejeans, GoToMeetings, WebEx, Teams and Zoom. Luckily no-one asked me to use Adobe Connect which, when I looked at it, made me want to cry. So far Zoom has proved the most trainer and delegate friendly platform as well as the easiest to learn and use.

Jon: I’ve sat in on or delivered over 100 internal and external Zoom and Bluejeans sessions in the same timeframe. Here’s what I know works for creating engaging training – and experiences which are least stressful to deliver and most beneficial for participants.

Planning

1.      Check your licence before the event. If you’ve only got a licence for 50 people but 200 turn up, you’ll be in big trouble. (And you’ll freak out any presenters who can’t get in; #BeenThere.) If you want to run a hassle-free event, pay for the upgrade (you can often get temporary ones) and work out the limitations on delegate numbers, time and features. You need to know you have the right tech for your training event before you start designing it. If you’re going to use someone else’s licence, test it as soon as you can; they may have access to different features, and you need to know what they are.

2.      Plan less than an hour. Right now, people just can’t focus for longer. Remember that you’ll have late arrivals and you’ll want to end before the hour, so actually plan on 50 mins max. Once you’re really skilled and confident with all the tools then you can make your sessions longer; remember to include breaks and max out on engagement.

3.      Build a series if you’ve got more to get across. People would rather attend a series than a long session. We’ve both been on a 4-hour Zoom seminar without a break; no, neither of us would recommend the person who gave it. No-one can concentrate that long.

Think about 2-3 activities max for an hour's delivery. By the time you’ve set it up, dealt with tech issues, explained the activity or demo-ed it, then debriefed everyone, your time will be up.

4.       Keep your slides simple. People can’t take in complex slides right now and everyone is swamped, so don’t ask them to work too hard to interpret your deck. Keep it simple; one or two images is enough. And unlike a meeting room when a light background works better, particularly when there are no windows, a darker one is better on-line as it makes text and images ‘pop’ more.

5.      Get everyone doing something from the start; add a poll, ask them to change their name to the one they would preferred to be called by using the three-dot icon in the video thumbnail, ask a question in chat, get everyone to write in a google doc, ask them to find an image or a quote or consider a factoid; then you are working with the early arrivers and not pandering to your late entrants. And everyone will learn to come to your sessions on time.

6.      Think about Vevox, Polleverywhere etc. The Zoom poll function is a bit dull. Vevox (www.vevox.com) is clunkier to use as participants have to download an app and it’s more expensive. But Polleverywhere (https://www.polleverywhere/.com) is free for under 25 users, has some funky polls, is customisable, and participants can see others responding in real time. All you have to do is download the PowerPoint add-on, create the poll and post the link in chat or get people to simply enter it on their phones. (If you’re using either app remember to use basic view in Zoom to activate them; polls don’t show up on advanced view.)

7.      Use Google drive; here’s a link to all the apps that are integrated with Zoom https://marketplace.zoom.us/ but using more than one app means you can do whizzier things, enhance engagement and give participants a better experience. G drives are super easy to use but remember when you share a G drive link to make documents editable by everyone. We recommend:

a.      Jamboards (prepared in advance) for brainstorming or sorting exercises; participants create sticky notes and unlike whiteboard, there’s no need to save anything as it’s automatic and you as facilitator and owner of the drive can see all the work happening in real time.

b.      Googledocs for shared insights.

c.      Google spreadsheets for clustering and putting thoughts or ideas in columns.

8.      Assess your bandwidth: www.speedtest.net will tell you what your upload and download speed is; www.PSAV.com will help you assess how much bandwidth you need given your expected number of participants and what you want to do.

9.  Think through Plan B; It’s all about credibility so be prepared. We’ve both experienced Zoom breakouts, polls, screen-sharing and chat not working. Make sure that you have a contingency plan if any of those happens to you. There’s always an alternative; worst case, end the meeting and ask everyone to dial in again or abandon ship and try another day. Don’t keep going with something that isn’t working because it will do you no favours in the long run.

Setting it up

1.      Turn off your alerts and phone

It’s really distracting to email alerts popping in; shut down email and activate ‘do not disturb’ on your phone.

Have a mobile Wifi (MiFi) to hand

Make sure it’s charged and on before you start and that your iPhone’s hotspot is also activated. I (Jess) have had my broadband and MiFi go down simultaneously and had to run a webinar off my phone. I was so relieved that I’d activated the hotspot and checked my laptop could access it. At the time everyone was in a breakout room and no-one even noticed.

3.      Use two screens

 It’s much easier to break out all the different functions (rooms, chat, participants and your presentation) so you can frequently scan them. If you haven’t got two screens, come into your meeting on an iPad or tablet as well and use that to view participants and monitor chat.

4.      Set your laptop up so the camera is at eye level.

Mine (Jess’s) is sitting on a pile of books but it means I remember to look into it more. Lack of eye contact is one of the hardest things about training virtually and this is the closest you’ll get to that.

5.      Use a headset

No-one wants to hear your dog barking, children fighting or doorbell ringing; a headset will eliminate that risk.

6.      Start your meeting 10-15 minutes early

Then you can test your presentation and any links. It’s best to have a document open with the following available:

·      The meeting link in case someone needs it

·      Your G drive that for participants to access

·      Other websites you might want to use e.g. YouTube

Embed all the links in the presentation but when you’re on basic view in Zoom, they are hard to copy and paste into chat. Remember that when someone arrives late, they can’t scroll back through links you’ve posted before; you’ll need to re-post them, which means making sure they are easily available to you.

7.      Prepare your breakout rooms

It’s easiest to prepare these up when you start the meeting before everyone’s arrived. The easiest option is to set them up to happen automatically. But if you’re running a series of webinars, you might want to ensure that people get mixed up differently or intentionally. If that’s what you need to do, make a note of who has been put in rooms with who each time, so you can ensure maximum mixing. It’s a bit of a pain to assign everyone at the start, but if your participants have something to do, they are OK waiting for you to sort everyone out. Remember that only the host can manage the breakout rooms, not the co-host.

8.      Check and size your screen view

Either you can go to basic screen and then you won’t see your PowerPoint notes, or you can use the advanced function. This is really helpful but make sure you size the screen before you start so you don’t waste time, participants can’t read your notes and you know that all the slides fit your sizing.

9.      Get a co-host

It’s vital to have a co-host, even if that co-host is also a participant and its worth asking them to join a few minutes early. This is for three reasons:

a.      They can let in your late arrivals: it’s really off-putting to your flow to suddenly see people in your waiting room and have to go back to meeting management instead of content delivery. Additionally, you can alter your settings to enable direct entry to your session without delegates needing to be manually admitted. That’s really useful if you have a large group and it feels welcoming to delegates.

b.      They can keep the show on the road; if your WiFi crashes your co-host can manage everyone even if they are unfamiliar with your design. Tell them to ask each participant for an insight or reflection so far; you’ll probably pop back up a minute or so later.

c.      They can test your links for you; if you’re using your G drive, you can’t test it as you’ll own all the documents and whatever you do, they will be accessible to you.

Just remember that a co-host can’t respond to polls, so if you want them to answer or join in, you’ll have to alter their status.

Delivering your training

1.      Giving instructions

It’s really easy to give confusing instructions. Give your instructions verbally and put them on a slide, then tell everyone to come off mute to ask any questions, or with a larger group use the chat function. This is the point when I also share the instructions with a Google doc link, and I ask everyone to click into it before I send them to breakout rooms. You can also come off screen share and get everyone to give you a physical thumbs up if they’ve understood and it’s clear, or thumbs down at which point you can answer any questions. 

Using your touch-screen function or annotation tools

If you have a laptop with a touch screen, use a pen to highlight graphs, numbers and points. It’s a useful feature to add interest and make explanations clearer.

If you don’t have a touch screen, you and others can use annotation tools instead (turn them on in settings, then find them in the ribbon; go to stamp and you’ll find six to click on). 

2.      Using video

If you want to show a short clip say about 2-3 minutes, embedding it in your PowerPoint is fine. Remember to click ‘share computer sound’ at the bottom left hand of the sharing screen or no-one will be able to hear it. But if it’s any longer, use a YouTube link; if it’s an in-house video and you don’t have a channel get one because long videos just add unnecessary drama when they stick or crash.

3.      Reviewing exercises

This is the time when you can’t be facilitative; if you ask a general question to the group, you’ll get an uncomfortable silence. Be directive and tell people how you want them to respond: is it in chat? Raising a literal or digital hand? Or using an annotation stamp? You haven’t got the time to listen to long answers, so get one sentence insights or conclusions instead. Remember that if you’re reviewing in chat, and screen sharing at the same time, you may need to remind participants to exit full screen view.

4.      Building engagement

Remember that everyone is experiencing ‘virtual fatigue’. By now they’ll have attended many lengthy remote meetings and dull training sessions with poor engagement and interaction. Skilful engagement and interaction is king!

Get the conversation going by either:

1.      Doing a gallery walk, whereby everyone says something but not more than a sentence or few words if you’re in a big group. Model what you want by going first.

2.      Inviting one person to speak and then they choose the next person etc. Doing this will feel much more like a shared endeavour instead of cold-calling everyone all the time.

If some people don’t speak up, create speaking orders out of months of birthdays, alphabetical names, favourite baked goods (brownie, croissant, doughnut, etc) favourite number under 10, phone numbers: the possibilities are endless.

5.      Over-running: don’t

It’s been very noticeable how time has been ‘chunked’ into defined 30 and 60-minute virtual blocks, meaning if you over-run people will simply have to leave. Instead of cramming one more thing in, drop it. Let your session breathe and if something takes longer don’t ever say ‘we’re running out of time’. All that does is create a sense of anxiety among attendees. Instead, just discuss the take-aways instead. Your co-host can also be you time-keeper and sounding-board allowing you to plan what you might drop or how to wrap up. The private chat function is the best channel to make that happen.

6.      Troubleshooting

I (Jess) recently found that chat had mysteriously been turned off. I could enable it but every time I had to login to settings in the middle of my session, disable and re-enable it. Somehow chat in security (on the ribbon) had become unticked when the previous upgrade was released. Zoom does lots of upgrades so it’s worth checking your settings before an event.

7.      Looking after yourself

It’s exhausting running virtual sessions; you are hyper-focused and on 100%, so don’t expect to deliver the same amount virtually that you can in when face-to-face. You can’t, because there are no 'soft breaks'. Fatigue shows, and you’ll start to drop balls, so space out your sessions in a way that works for your energy levels.

8.      Enjoying it

With tech, things go wrong and that’s guaranteed. If you’re cheerful and relaxed your group will be too. So, smile, be warm and enjoy the moment. Things might go wrong, but you’ll have some great stories to tell afterwards.