How to take your virtual training benefits to new heights

There are many benefits to virtual training. Virtual classrooms allow for instructor-led training without the constraints of traditional instruction. As more and more teams go remote, it ensures that everyone can receive the same quality of training even if they’re spread across the planet. 

But if your virtual training is limited to Zoom lectures and the occasional asynchronous learning activity, you’re not utilizing the benefits of digital training to their full potential. At worst, your training may even contribute to Zoom fatigue in the workplace. If you want to ensure that your employees are engaged and that your training is effective, consider supplementing your virtual training with the help of a modern learning management system (LMS) or other related tech. 

Here are just a few ways that you can leverage technology more broadly to support effective virtual learning. 

1. Reinforce your virtual classroom training

When you present information to people, they’ll typically forget half of what you say within 20 minutes. Within a month, they’ll forget more than 75%. It’s not that they don’t care or that they’re not paying attention. It’s just the way the brain works. The brain needs repetition and reinforcement in order for concepts to stick. Plus, remote workers are surrounded by constant distractions ranging from their phones to their families, so reinforcement is especially important for them. 

Reinforcement tools like Axonify help you ensure long-term retention by using short, asynchronous lessons and quizzes with information that’s regularly repeated. And since learners only need to spend a few minutes a day on their lessons, it doesn’t impede productivity. 

2. Take advantage of adaptive learning 

When you deliver a live training, every trainee has a unique experience. Different information resonates with different learners, and you can’t always tell who’s struggling with which concepts. That’s what makes an adaptive algorithm so powerful.

In its simplest form, an adaptive algorithm keeps track of each learner’s correct and incorrect answers and tailors subsequent questions accordingly. It determines which concepts are resonating and which ones need additional reinforcement.

And because the experience is tailored to every individual, you can be sure that everyone is brought up to speed with a custom-tailored experience.

3. Balance live and recorded content 

Technology can help you balance live and recorded content and make informed decisions regarding when people need to be in the same virtual place at the same time vs when they can access info on-demand and engage in different ways, such as via social tools.

If your trainees are showing signs of Zoom fatigue, and you want to reinforce the information without triggering their training exhaustion, a quality training platform can break up the monotony—particularly if the platform is designed for microlearning and gamification. Microlearning keeps the lessons short (often no more than 5 minutes), and gamification uses game mechanics like rewards and leaderboards to make the experience more personally fulfilling. 

This hybrid approach to learning can also be a huge time saver for you. When you implement an LMS, the core training material is saved in the system and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Employees can log in, complete their assigned onboarding or training tasks and get right to work with minimal supervision. Employees are still learning on a constant basis even when you’re not available to teach them.

4. See how well your training is working 

One limitation of virtual learning environments is that it can be hard to read the room. In other words, is your training actually doing an effective job of instilling the necessary information and encouraging the desired workplace behaviors? Even if you quiz your participants after the lesson, you’re still limited in the amount of useful data you get in return. 

But by reinforcing the learning with a quality training system, you can track numerous useful metrics and measure the impact of your employee training. For example, Axonify tracks not only how well your employees are learning the course materials but also how confident they are in their knowledge. 

And unlike a standard post-training assessment (which only gives you results in the moment), Axonify tracks each participant’s progress over time. Trainees also receive immediate feedback on their progress. 

5. Leverage the power of mobile learning

Mobile-friendly modern tech enables employees to take learning with them – regardless of where they are working. When you consider that nearly half of Americans spend 5-6 hours per day on their smartphones, this is a huge benefit. 

In addition, employees can reference helpful training materials on the fly if they’re ever struggling to remember an important concept. For example, if a new call center agent is dealing with a difficult customer in a live chat, they can open the LMS and click on an infographic that lays out the key principles of customer conflict resolution. 

The right LMS can make all the difference 

A learning management system serves as a powerful complement to any virtual training program. But if you want to get the most from this hybrid approach, you have to follow a few golden rules: 

• Make sure that the information presented in your virtual training sessions is consistent with the information in your LMS training materials 
• Make sure you’re using a mobile LMS that’s accessible from your employees’ smartphones, or common devices your employees already use like Zebra handhelds, your POS or clock-in system.
• Make sure that you’re using a sophisticated modern LMS like Axonify that supports adaptive learning, microlearning and gamification
• Keep the lessons engaging; while virtual training may be done on an as-needed basis, you want your LMS to be accessed daily 

By introducing LMS technologies into your workplace, you can take the many benefits of virtual instructor-led training to new heights.