Your Friend’s Cat versus Your Webinar

Differences Between a Virtual Classroom and a Webinar

Remember that important webinar your were in? when all of a sudden you received that picture of your friends cat wearing sunglasses? Let’s be totally honest here. That text message needed an urgent reply didn’t it? 

Passive or Active Online Participation?

I often get asked what’s the difference between a webinar and a virtual classroom? In my opinion, this is the same as the difference between a presentation and a training. A presentation allows you to be “passively present” but in a training, your (mental) absence gets notified. “What was that question you asked again please”…

Why did you join?

A virtual classroom has a clear learning goal. Good examples are “Learn how to create powerful presentations” or “Learn how to improve your account planning skills”. Often goals of webinars or badly designed virtual classrooms lack clear learning goals. Think of this one “Inform our employees about our latest innovation” That sounds more like an internal communication goal (a webinar works fine here by the way).

Are you still with me?

People only listen for 5-7 minutes, before they tune out and start browsing the news pages. In order to have impact, content in a virtual classroom is different than content that is used in a Face to Face setting. A mistake that is often made, is when the same PowerPoint is used for Face to Face and digital training. A virtual classroom has a set of (really) short content formats, orchestrated in a hybrid way. It should provoke interaction, stimulate critical thinking and allow the digital trainer to "pick what's needed".

Any question?

Good questioning techniques are crucial for every trainer, but even more important in a virtual classroom. I often hear things like “any question?” followed a second later by “ great, no questions, let’s move on”. A good virtual classroom has planned and structured interactivity. This allows participants to think and share their opinions in a safe way.

Let’s train that brain!

Training comes with exercises. Well designed virtual trainings use a wide range of exercises. This includes things like break-out sessions, chat-pod activities and even links to assessments on your LMS. There are great features that can be build in to stimulate reflection and sharing amongst peers.

Taking it all together, analyzing the right learning goals, building the right content-toolset (including exercises) are important skills to create virtual classrooms. Digital trainer skills should not be underestimated. Often, these “virtual people skills” get forgotten as we are distracted by technology or content.

Building truly engaging virtual classrooms is not about technology. It’s about human interaction.

A well designed virtual classroom makes you forget about your mobile phone for just a while...

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