Lori Zeoli, Jonathan Kilgore and Isabella Strom:
As a result of COVID restrictions that affected our training sessions, our IQ Training Team brainstormed on ideas and techniques to ensure virtual learning is successfully executed for our 117th Congress. Here are some success factors we want to share:
Created a flexible calendar
We completely redesigned the IQ Training Calendar so it shows all of all the classes that we offer that month, week, or day. More importantly, our customers can self-register for session that best suits their schedule. This was key! Since Congressional Staff were onboarding at different times, it avoided the back and forth communication between instructors and customers on finding the best time for their training sessions.
Created a foundation class
To support a volume of new congressional staff, we created an Introduction to IQ course that served as a pre-requisite class for any class that our customers take. As a result, all our customers are given the same foundation on the skills and knowledge to get started with IQ, whether they are a new staff or one that simply needs a refresher course.
Maximized WebEx capabilities
We decided to use WebEx as the platform to host our training sessions for a number of reasons:
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- Capacity– we were able to teach classes to a larger audience size without the concern of reaching capacity limitations associated with other platforms.
- Recordings– we were able to record and share these recordings to offices that requested private training sessions so their staff can review their discussions as needed.
- Reports– we were able to generate our training attendee list and share with the IQ Consultants so they can track the training activities of their offices.
- Chat board– for large classes, we request participants to post their questions on the chat board, which is reviewed by a moderator. This helps keep the pace moving and keep the session within its timeframe.
Created 30 minute workshops
By offering 30 minute workshops that focused attention to complex or new processes, we helped customers become more comfortable completing these processes. More importantly, the duration makes it more manageable for folks who have very busy schedules. These workshops also served as additional review sessions from information already discussed in our standard 90 minute courses. We called these sessions, “Wednesday Workshops” to help our customers and internal staff remember when they are offered.
Created Quick Reference Guides (QRGs) that align with our training classes
By creating QRGs that fully align with the steps we demonstrated in our classes, our customers have a stronger point of reference to use when conducting these tasks on their own. Each QRG also serves the needs of customers who may not need formal training, but simply are looking for additional guidance. More importantly, these updated QRGs are reflected in the IQ Help page so customers can access the same information from any IQ site.
Turning on video cameras
As training professionals, we value our relationship with our students/training participants. Thus, we make the effort to turn our video cameras on at the beginning of the class (yes, even at our 9 am classes!) to ensure that our customers know who we are and to build that connection with our students. Interesting observation…we found that when we turn on our cameras, our students were likely to turn on their cameras. Sometimes, it led to great conversations prior to the start of class, which helped the mood of the class dynamics.
We have so many more to share but these are the items we want to highlight for now. If you attended any of our courses, we would love to hear from you on how these factors affected your training sessions. Let us know at Lori.Zeoli@leidos.com. Click here to learn more about virtual training best practices.