• What
• Who
• Why
• How

What:

This is the initial step in the process where the product or skill the audience needs to know is defined. Think of this as the central theme from which all else emanates. Definition of the central theme prior to commissioning development is key to building a focused and high impact training. Not doing so wastes the resources of both your development team and the target audience, not to mention damaging your professional credibility regarding your ability to conceptualize and execute on strategic initiatives.

Be sure to define your central theme with this in mind; only 25% of what you’re teaching on the first pass will be retained. The remaining 75% is retained via post activity supportive materials and activities. In short, your activity must be focused to be high impact.

Who:

Having clearly defined and articulated the learning activity’s focal point, it’s time to identity ‘who’ the target audience is. Doing so requires that you gather as much information about this group as possible, such as:

• Direct job responsibilities
• How they are compensated
• Are they disparate
• Where do they typically gather information
• What are the expectations of their managing group

The more you know about your target audience the more focused and contextual your training can be. Context yields relevance, which in turn creates ‘stickiness’. Remarkable content, be it courseware or reference documentation is what you should always strive for. Never fall into the practice of saying: “It’s just a reference manual” or “It’s only this or that”. Always think about how the consumption of the material can be made easier and how usage metrics can be extracted from them.

Why:

’Why’ speaks to justification. It’s imperative you be able to neatly articulate the benefits the audience will garner once they’ve consumed the training. Equally important is a clear message for your boss as to why and how resources will be consumed to develop this learning activity.

Tackling the audience justification first, a good place to obtain data points is in the ‘What’ section you walked through earlier. Using a new product roll out as an example, here is a sample list of proficiencies that clearly communicate what the audience will be able to articulate upon consuming the course:

• Business challenges addressed
• Market dynamics
  • Size
  • Competition
  • Trends
• Opportunity assessment
  • Good vs. Poor
• How the product works
• Up-sell opportunities
• Value to the channel

The second part of the ‘Why’ section is justifying the development time and the associated spend to your boss. Illustrate how training is aligned with delivering on his job responsibilities, how it will positively affect the audience’s job responsibilities and ultimately how it corresponds with revenue generation activities.

How:

The ‘How’ is the final step. To be effective it is tightly aligned with the ‘Who’ and ‘What’ stages. This is where the, “rubber meets the road”. The ‘Who’ stage culminated in the audience definition. This identification is instrumental in determining which tools are most useful for communicating with them. For instance, if the audience is geographically dispersed, creating face-to-face training content will miss the mark almost entirely. An audience of this type would be best served with virtual training and self-paced learning opportunities.

Possessing a deep understanding of the subject matter pays dividends when creating training accordingly. Multi-faceted complex topics are best illuminated using videos and diagrams. Effective training is partly about showmanship. Don’t force the audience to adopt and learn new technologies in order to consume your training. Doing so is similar to forcing them to learn Mandarin prior listening to or viewing your ‘awesome’ podcast.

Don’t Skimp On Equipment:

This is not the time to be cheap. Frugal maybe, cheap definitely not. Seems like a no brainer however this happens all too often and the audience pays the price. In short, you might be the next Walt Whitman however if your machine doesn’t have the horsepower to compile your voice properly or your Internet connection is flaky you might as well be a mute.

Make sure to arm yourself with a higher quality microphone headset combination. Being that you’re going to have it strapped to your head for hours on end, make sure that it’s as comfortable as it is functional. I use the Logitech ClearChat Pro USB. Hindsight being 20/20 I should’ve purchased the wireless version for convenience sake but this one works just fine.

Location, Present in a Quiet One:

Find a location without background noise. It’s surprising what microphones will pick up. Echoing kills quality by making it hard for the audience to hear you. Add to that, a globally dispersed audience of non-native speakers and you’ve created a perfectly horrible learning environment. Improve sound quality by putting a pillow in front of you but behind your monitor to absorb sound. If you’re near a window, think about putting up a heavy blanket to absorb your voice from the inside and any street noise from the outside.

Be A Student:

Do this from two perspectives. Work in the environment as if you were taking a course. Pay attention to how the instructor shares applications, interacts with the class and moderates lab sessions. Also, see how he handles Q&A in both the chat window and live from the microphone. Second, take the opportunity to sit with the instructor who developed the course you’ll be teaching. Talk to him about his style of teaching and determine if there are any pitfalls you should avoid.

Have A Personality:

Be yourself. If you’re snarky by nature, use it in your instruction. You’re not a robot. Your one-liners and sidebars add color to the conversation, don’t be afraid to use them. The combination of building a compelling presentation, expertly manipulating the presentation application and keeping your vernacular conversational will keep the audience engaged.

Lastly, there’s no silver bullet or magic elixir that will ensure a successful teach. Rather, it’s a combination of doing a number of things right. There will be malfunctions and students will ask tough questions. Remember to stay calm, expect the unexpected and talk to them as if they were directly in-front of you.

Own The Content:

“But I didn’t design or create the content”. Frankly, no one cares if you created the content or not. If your voice is behind it, it’s yours and you own it, plain and simple. It’s best to visit with the author(s) of the courseware to get a better feel for the message they are trying to convey and to whom they’re targeting. Not gathering this information puts you at risk of misinterpreting key points, contradicting previous communications or worst yet, being off brand.

Command the Environment:

As a baseline, understanding the courseware is the first half of being prepared for a virtual teach. Understanding how the course will flow within the presentation application (Elluminate, WebEx, Saba Centra) is the second half. Situations that affect the presentation software of choice as well as flow are;

• Is instruction being delivered via PowerPoint only
• Are technical labs which include virtual machines (VMs) being used
• Does the presentation have slide builds (animations)
• Will an application be demonstrated
  • Is the application web based
  • Is the web based application secure (https)
  • Will the audience be expected to participate
    • How are the expected to participate (labs, quizzes, surveys)

These are some of the parameters that require consideration when scoping a presentation platform as well as understanding how the platform will be used. Regardless, it’s imperative you’re comfortable with the environment. Why? Simply, because you won’t have the time or the brain-power to concentrate on the presentation at hand and stumble around the environment trying to figure out how to share the desktop, take control of an application or start a lab exercise.

Lose the Distractions:

Everyone multitasks. No one multitasks when standing in front of an audience. When you’re presenting to a virtual class, treat the situation accordingly. Turn off instant messenger, the ringer on your phone, and close your email. Have in front of you the objects that are pertinent to the presentation, such as reference material or diagrams. ESPN.com won’t help you when some asks a question about extending the schema in generic LDAP.

Present in Manageable Bites:

Your audience will revolt if your plan is to lecture to them straight for 4 hours. This never happens, right? Think again, it does and somewhere there’s a soon to be unemployed instructor who’s planning to assassinate a class with PowerPoint. Don’t be that guy.

Content is consumed best when it’s broken into 15-20min chapters. Weaved into these chapters should be the corresponding demonstrations that enrich the conversation. Try out different sequences to determine where labs and demonstrations make the most sense.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of this 3 part series where we’ll talk though points five through eight.

5. Don’t skimp on equipment
6. Location, present in a quiet one
7. Be a student
8. Have a personality

At the end of the day, it’s semantics.  There are two ways to look at learning. The first is learning that’s designed to enhance job and organizational performance. The second is learning that’s designed to satisfy a check box that communicates, “Yes, I took this training course”.  The latter of the two is not where you want to be, for a number of reasons.

One, check box training possesses a low ROI. Second, the most valuable training materials, regardless of delivery mode have second, third and fourth lives. They become points of reference and are shared, tagged and enhanced in lockstep with the evolution of the idea or product they support.

Learning materials that fall into the second category are typically the most compelling because there’s a 1:1 correlation between the information they communicate and the audience’s job related responsibilities. Additionally, they break the rules of traditional education delivery. Rather than forcing the audience to consume the information linearly, they work with how the audience thinks or needs the information.

The delivery modes are blended and use both digital and print liberally. These courses behave more like conversations between an SME and an interested disciple, opposed to a freshman chained to a desk in a 1500 person lecture hall.

Which experience sounds most appealing to you?

If you said the first, I implore you to never return to this blog. If you’re compelled by the second, stick around; we’re just getting started.