This document discusses strategies for effectively delivering training remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. It outlines lessons learned from initial attempts at virtual training, including that it is difficult to engage students and maintain focus without in-person interaction. It recommends adopting a combined approach using multiple instructors, flexible scheduling of material, and specialized online tools to help facilitate collaborative learning and make remote training feel more personal.

1. © Instil Software 2020
Social Distancing ≠
Behaving Distantly
growing the team & training clients
remotely

2. @GarthGilmour / garth.gilmour@instil.co

4. build
teach
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instil.co

7. The Classroom is Closed…

8. – Extending existing capabilities
– Retraining across platforms
– Graduate induction programs
Training Is Still Required
Your Staff Still Need To Grow

9. Different Kinds of Training

10. – Cheap, accessible and repeatable
– Typically won't adapt to the learner
– The learner tries to adapt to it
– Very good for
– Picking up a fixed process
– Adding to existing skills
E-Learning
Taking Courses Online

11. – Tailored, focused and adaptable
– Teaching the same thing ten different ways
– Transferring knowledge via individual coaching
– Acquiring the why as well as the what and how
– But not without downsides
– Expensive in both time and money
– Difficult to fit around project work
Classroom Training
Attending In Person

12. – We need to deliver training in a virtual format
– Whilst preserving what is special about the classroom
– This is a big ask (especially outside the IT industry)
The Big Ask
Teaching in a Pandemic

13. – It’s hard graft even for experienced trainers
– Hard to engage the students and keep focus
– Very little ‘audience energy’ to bounce off
The Lessons Being Learned
1: It’s damn hard work

14. ‘Whatever you do boy,’ said Terry, ‘just keep looking
straight into the camera. It doesn't matter what you say or
what else is going wrong … just look into that lens.’
Terry Megan's advice to Andrew Marr

15. – People prefer to work together
– Work hard to grow collaboration
– Insist that video remain on
The Lessons Being Learned
2: Create co-working spaces

16. – The future is probably asynchronous and multi-modal
– Lecture-type material doesn't stick (esp. at present)
– Let students do as much as possible whilst off-line
The Lessons Being Learned
3: Slice up the material finely

18. – There's no seat at the back on a Zoom call
– You have novel teaching tools available:
– Assign research assignments and ‘quests’
– Randomly cold-call students with questions
– Regularly broadcast polls via Zoom etc.
The Lessons Being Learned
4: Exploit the Virtual Landscape

19. – In the classroom you can ‘bounce around’
– Fixing setup and configuration issues on the fly
– If someone missed a step it’s easily corrected
– In Virtual Training this is much harder
– So enable students to ‘be their own sysadmin’
– When in doubt document clearly and share publicly
The Lessons Being Learned
5: Be Public and Explicit

20. – Keep the tech as simple as possible
– It's the learning that's important
– Informal and personable wins
– Formal and remote doesn't work on video
– Be rigid in your schedules
– So students can rejoin if necessary
The Lessons Being Learned
6: KISS and YAGNI

21. Online you aren’t necessarily the one delivering the
knowledge. Rather, your role now is that of a facilitator.
Your students are adults. Facilitate their learning.
Jeff Vallance
https://twitter.com/jeffvallance/status/1237730531011223552

22. Our Combined ApproachOur Combined Approach

23. – Multiple Instructors
– Specialized Tools
– Flexible Hours
The Three Key Components
To Make Online Training Personal

24. – The instructor works with the group
– By teaching, live coding etc…
– They proceed at the average pace
– The coach responds to queries
– Working with students at the extremes
– They ensure that no one is left behind
Multiple Trainers
Acting as Instructor and Coach

25. – We partitioned our material into 60 min blocks
– Allowing us to deliver a course to your timeline
– A delivery could take place over:
– A week's worth of mornings
– One day a week for six weeks
– Afternoon and evening sessions
Flexible Hours
Fitting Material Into Your Day

26. – Distributed teams already build software
– We can take advantage of their tooling
– For us this means
– Zoom for power features like rooms and polling
– JetBrains Space for distributed code review
Specialized Tools
We Have The Technology

27. Specialized Tools

28. – A White Paper is available on our site
– Within a section devoted to Virtual Training
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www.instil.co