Introducing the online classroom

I have been working with online classroom technology for over 10 years. I wrote one of the first books on the subject in 1998 when it was in its infancy. Since then, distance learning technology has appealed to me, but I wasn’t convinced it was possible for this new technology to recreate the kind of learning environments that were able to be built in the classroom.

I wasn’t convinced that trainers had the necessary skills to run engaging online events. I feared that learners couldn’t or wouldn’t participate. On the technology side of things, the Internet connections via dial-up modems were painfully slow and unreliable, and the web conferencing software was new and comparatively just out of Beta mode.

Since then, of course, nearly everyone now enjoys fast Internet connection through high-speed Broadband both at work and at home. The Web Conferencing software has evolved into a reliable platform, benefitting from over 10 years of development and enhancement. Additionally, besides having computer access at work, almost everyone has a laptop or desktop computer at home.

And so, it is within this climate, that the online classroom is now a very viable and beneficial medium for delivering learning.

Also, we have learned many lessons about it. The first lesson I learned was that the online classroom technology would not automatically deliver good learning, in much the same way as using PowerPoint will not automatically create great slide presentations. In an effective online classroom event, the technology is there to deliver the learning – and it should be transparent.

The second lesson, and the most important one, was that the classroom trainer could not simply transfer their classroom delivery skills into the online classroom. As you will discover, there are many new skills and techniques for you to learn.

Trainers need to think beyond the physical aspects of classroom, and instead create learning relationships with their learners, using the resources available to them in the online classroom. These learning relationships require the trainer to master new facilitation skills and techniques, as well as acquire mastery of different tools and resources than the ones we use when the trainer and learners are in the same room together.

Teaching at a distance does not prevent good communication, although we might sometimes feel that it hinders it. Because we cannot rely on body language to indicate the important visual cues you get from your learners, we must be more direct. Being able to identify these all-important cues, remains an important challenge for everyone who facilitates learning remotely. We must learn new techniques to obtain these cues. And we must help and encourage learners to become engaged in the lesson.

Like every training modality that has come before – classroom, CBT, correspondence courses, video, and so on, – there is no guarantee that the online training session will automatically translate into learning. The only key to effective online learning is held by two groups of individuals. The instructional designer, and the instructor or facilitator.

Effective learning builds on solid instructional design, but if you have ever seen a good classroom trainer, you know that what they do is way beyond what has been designed for the course. A trainer can bring real-life experience, humour, and adaptability to a session, and create a comfortable engaging learning experience to the learners. We must strive to bring that to the online classroom too.

In online learning sessions, it can be challenging to capture that level of connectedness that comes naturally in the classroom. However, this exciting new medium, is just that. It is technology that provides the functions and facilities to enable a trainer or a facilitator to use their new-found skills and techniques to enable learners to learn in an effective manner.

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