“How to deal with those face-to-face moments, when transporting or transforming your course to one that’s 100% online.”
Let’s meet face-to-face, online
People have always been social animals; that hasn’t changed. In these strange times, we humans miss ‘direct’ contact. We can’t meet face-to-face, or with distancing restrictions, and classroom courses are also affected by this.
That’s why we’ve created a new platform feature called ‘video conference’, which makes interacting with your learners online a lot easier.
aNewSpring has always been advocating blended learning to combine the benefits of online learning with moments of personal and direct contact. However, due to current circumstances, training providers need to take their courses (fully) online and (temporarily) scrap the classroom parts. Truly blended isn’t an option at the moment.
Changing your training strategy so abruptly comes with challenges. My colleague, Ger Driesen, recently wrote a great blog about it: ‘A three-step strategy to continue learning delivery without ‘face-to-face’.
It talks about the first steps to take to transport and transform your course into an online learning experience. You can also request the recording of the webinar about it here.
How to deal with those face-to-face moments?
That's first question you’re probably tackling. When transporting or transforming your course to one that’s 100% online, whether you had a classroom course or a blended learning course, you still want the impact and engagement of those live conversations and contact moments.
Let me tell you about the possibilities and the new functionality we’ve added to our learning events to fill these needs.
Conference with your learners
Typically, a(n old fashioned) classroom would have between five and maybe 50 learners in it. During your course, trainers use a great variety of interactions; you might want to check up on how they are doing, give that face-to-face feedback or explain the next part of the course. Webinar tools are sometimes used as an all-in-one solution for bringing every type of face-to-face event online, but it can be a bit of a blunt instrument. We’ve developed a more specialised tool that solves the specific needs of trainers and teachers.
aNewSpring already has several functionalities to help with replacing classroom elements, for example: putting explanation videos into your course, the social element ‘discussions’ or the video hand-in assignment.
To give you an extra option to solve what you miss in online meetings, we’ve recently built and added a specific new functionality into the platform for this: video conferencing for events. No more getting to grips with an external piece of software but another useful didactical tool added to your aNewSpring toolbox.
The new event functionality ‘video conferencing’ gives the trainer the opportunity to plan ‘face-to-face’ meetings directly into the course or learning journey. It gives you, as a trainer, the opportunity to talk to the learners, present them your screen to explain topics and even plan a series of follow-up events to ‘break out’ into smaller group discussions for working on a project.
This makes it incredibly easy to get those group discussions going, brainstorm sessions and include question rounds and instruction moments right into the flow of your online course.
Creating online courses is all about designing first, instead of being led by a certain piece of software or technology. Transform your course by carefully dissecting your former classroom elements and think about what you’re trying to accomplish with that element.
Next, think about how to reach that goal and only then does a tool come into consideration. The video conferencing feature gives you that precision tool for reaching a specific learning goal.
The biggest benefits of using aNewSpring video conferencing
To plan a video conference into a learning journey, you simply need to add an event into the journey and select the online option. This will give you the opportunity to use ‘aNewSpring video conferencing’, which has a number of great benefits for you as trainer and your learners
1. With video conferencing, your learners don’t have to leave the learning journey to go to a different platform.
2. It is a completely white-label function, which means that for you as a learning provider, it is completely integrated into the style and colours of your journey.
3. Enjoy the benefit of an integrated platform. No need to plan your session in system A and play in system B. Have one central place to plan, access, change and host your meeting/conference.
4. With the easy set-up, there is no need to create an account at an external webinar platform and learn to work with yet another piece of software.
5. Use a precision didactical tool: simple, to-the-point and without lots of (complicated) unused features/buttons/capabilities.
6. Let learners sign up for the video conference and know who’s attending, all integrated into the platform.
7. Share your screen with the room and present your course to the ‘class’.
8. Have the option of making the online meeting into an assessment by giving a grade or just by signing off someone’s presence.
But I need more than just an online meeting (room)
What if you want to reach a much larger group of students and give a presentation to them all? Then, you want to take it one step further and go for a complete webinar.
A webinar is slightly different from a video conference; it’s more a moment of teaching than a moment of interacting. It’s in the name — shorthand for a web-based seminar. Although this gives you the opportunity to reach a larger group of people at the same time and gives some interaction possibilities, it’s less the personal, ‘face-to-face’ moment a video conference can be. Choose wisely which option helps you reach your learning goals.
Link any other webinar tool into your learning journey
aNewSpring does offer two ways of easily integrating an external webinar link into your learning journey. Within your learning journey (template), you can choose to add the activity ‘webinar’ or the activity ‘event (online)’, which gives you the opportunity to add the link for a set date.
Now, I won’t start overloading you with all the small differences between the two but, basically, both give you the opportunity to add an external webinar link into your learning journey, with different restrictions for each. This way, you can use external tools like Adobe Connect, Whereby, ClickMeeting, Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting (also GoToTraining, GoToWebinar), join.me, Panopto, Socrative, WebEx, WebinarGeek and Zoom.
For the people that are already using aNewSpring, I’m eager to make a small technical note, but if you are new to aNewSpring and wondering if this could work for you, be sure to contact us at support@anewspring.nl and we’ll help you out.
Now for the little technical tidbits:
- The biggest advantage of the webinar activity:
You set it at the template level so if you know that everyone in the implementation(s) of that template must go to the same webinar link, it’s easier to set up a webinar activity (events may differ per implementation).- The biggest advantage of events:
You can let people actually sign up for them (just like video conferencing), add a maximum number of people to the webinar and easily add multiple dates to choose from.
FAQ: aNewSpring Video conference vs external webinar tools
I can almost hear you saying: ‘I’ve heard a lot of possibilities and information. How can I choose which works best for me?’.
Well, you’ve got to ask yourself what your learning journey needs. Because, depending on the type of learning journey you give, how big the groups are or what you as a training need from this online meeting, the approach differs.
Maybe the following visualisation helps:
Now, let’s try to help by answering some frequently asked questions where we compare de video conference with external webinar tools.
“I have a small group of students with whom I want to meet up with during the course to check in or talk.”
aNewSpring video conference:
The easiest way to get that group interaction directly; see and hear each other; be present; and have personal communication between all attendees.
External webinar tools:
Can be a bit excessive for a ‘simple’ meetup moment and less direct and less engaging because it’s designed for a one-to-many transfer or interaction.
“I want my students to have a seamless experience without disruptions from different types of applications, new pop-up tabs or login procedures.”
aNewSpring video conference:
The big advantage of video conferencing is that it stays completely within the platform, with your own branded style. It feels like it’s part of your thing and not some external program.
External webinar:
Regardless of whether you use the webinar activity or online event to add your external webinar, you still have the opportunity to ‘embed’ it into your learning journey. However, this won’t be in your style; you still see the logo of the tools you embedded and any setting changes will need to be done in two different places (aNewSpring and the external tool).
“I want to ensure that the software I use for video conferencing is one I can trust.”
aNewSpring video conference:
The video conference has the same security and ISO standard we uphold for our whole platform. You can read more about our security here.
External webinar:
While a lot of webinar tools handle privacy perfectly fine, it is something aNewSpring cannot control for you. When using an external tool, you will have to look into how secure their videos are and if they have the correct level of privacy control.
“I have 100 students following this course and want to get them all together online.”
aNewSpring video conference:
Our video conferencing tool doesn't have a maximum amount of users, except for the maximum you as a trainer put on it. Be aware that video conferencing is better suited for smaller groups where the interaction is more equal between all attendees and less 'one-to-many'.
External webinar:
A lot of the external tools you use also don’t have a limit on the number of users in one webinar/meeting. Make sure you look at the requirements and restrictions of your tool before you start using it, to see if it matches your needs.
“I want to deliver a virtual classroom session within my journey.”
aNewSpring video conference:
When it’s a very ‘basic’ virtual classroom and all you need is to speak to the learners, show your screen as a virtual blackboard/presentation and/or discuss any questions they have, then the video conference will suit your needs perfectly.
External webinar:
If you need more than that, for example, interaction via polls, the possibility of break-out rooms, virtual whiteboards and other more interactive tools, it might be worth your time to look into some of the external webinar tools. Usually, having all these functions comes with extra costs.
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However, there’s more than one way to get what you need. For example, if an online poll is all you’re missing, consider using a (free) tool like Kahoot or VoxVote that you can stream from your screen within a conference.
“I want to temporarily move the “offline” moments from my blended training or course to fully online so I can easily switch back at a later time.”
aNewSpring video conference:
With the video conference function, you can share your screen with the group. This gives you an easy possibility to present your Powerpoint/Keynote/Google presentation to the group while explaining everything. No fuss, no costs — Ideal for smaller groups, higher engagement and a quick fix.
External webinar:
Of course, almost every external webinar tool has this screen-sharing function. In that aspect, you can choose any tool you prefer. Webinar tools usually offer some more learning methods to increase the learning effect. External tools are not always free to use, can make it a bit more complicated (for you and your learners) and research is needed on the security of the tool.
Interested in more information about the video conference tool or want to start using it?
Read more about it on our dedicated page:
Callista de Sterke
You learn something new every day, without even realising it. But to help people learn, teach and grow is the best lesson of all.
On the wish-list to learn: Advanced photography, digital drawing, Painting
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