Tips to Re-Energize Your Online Training

The impact of the events of the last year affected nearly every area of everyone’s lives: physical, financial, emotional, mental, occupational, spiritual, and social. The neuropsychological effects packed the biggest punch.

What is neuropsychology? It’s the area of psychology concerned with how our brains and the rest of the nervous system impacts our cognition and behaviors. In short, we were all forced to retrain our brains for the big move to online learning … and there were many learnings along the way!

In a recent webinar, Becky Pike Pluth from The Bob Pike Group offered many insights into how using neuropsychology techniques is advantageous for trainers … and will continue to be especially important this year and beyond.

6 Ways To Re-energize Online Learners

1. Attention - Keep learners’ engaged with gaming and other ways to keep their attention, so be sure to offer:
   • Storytelling
   • Visuals
   • Redirection
   • Breaks

2. Perception - Learners are there to walk away with what they perceive to be true as trainers focus on tone and delivery, including:
   • Kind tone
   • Appearing confident and easy
   • Remembering you and learners are behind webcams
   • Keeping eye contact
   • Being enthusiastic

3. Memory - Encourage real-life ideas and interaction for learners by offering:
   • Revisiters
   • “Learning by doing” activities
   • Opportunities for learners to talk out loud
   • Visuals and imagery that reinforce ideas
   • An organized space
   • Breakout groups

4. Motivation - Trainers and learners alike need to remember why they are there, so it’s important to include:
   • Stand and stretch breaks to re-energize
   • A sense of community
   • Deep breathing breaks
   • Inspirational content

5. Evaluate Learning - Make sure the training session demonstrates that learners have actually learned the content and feel great about it!
   • Include puzzles
   • Offer a self-assessment
   • Trainers can predict what learners want to learn about by using artificial intelligence (AI): paying attention to their search history, for example

6. Assessment: This is more focused on knowledge- or skill-based evaluations or activities to ensure learners have retained the content.
   • Surveys
   • Polls
   • Questions
   • Fill-in-the-blanks
   • Match games
     
     

At the heart of making sure these can be accomplished, it’s super important to evaluate if leaners are engaged or disengaged! Engaged learners actively participate throughout the session, are naturally curious and positive, ask for help and advice, and are more willing to revisit course content. On the contrary, disengaged learners are silent, act bored or frustrated, and can come off as negative or critical.

So how can you as a trainer tackle those disengaged learners? Becky offers these 5 tips to engage learners:

1. Love what you are teaching about!

Does your enthusiasm shine through online when people can’t see you? Remember, your tone and excitement comes across clear as day for learners.

2. Include everyone

Try to use activities and games that allow everyone to participate in unison. Use whiteboards and text chat, for example.

3. Silent night

You don’t always have to fill the time by talking! Include mini break sessions for learners to process the info or answer the questions.

4. Webcam on, webcam off

It’s okay to turn off the webcam sometimes (but keep the audio on)!

5. Games and activities

Make them fun and engaging but not TOO hard to figure out.

These tips and tricks that focus on learners’ emotions and behaviors are a great place to start! For more on these and some virtual PowerPoint tips, listen to the whole webinar here.

If you’d like fine-tune your training techniques or tackle any problematic training woes, be sure to check out all online training sessions and crash courses, free webinars, and free resource guides and blog posts from The Bob Pike Group!