Mastering Virtual Training Facilitation: The 3 P's You Need to Know

Whether you're leading a virtual meeting or conducting a training session online, the essential skills for being an effective and proficient virtual facilitator closely mirror those required for facilitating a session in a traditional classroom or meeting space.

Certainly! "If you excel at facilitating in-person gatherings, does that automatically make you a virtual Rockstar? Not necessarily. Recently, after conducting several virtual sessions, a colleague praised my facilitation skills and inquired about my proficiency in leading online meetings and learning sessions. The secret? The "three P's" — a dash of patience, a hefty dose of practice, and strategic planning with a clear purpose.

In the digital realm, we continually navigate one or more technologies. While some find using and multitasking with technology effortless, for others, it can be cumbersome. Regardless of the virtual platform you choose, cultivating patience and acquiring proficiency in utilizing the tools is essential. Seek knowledge from courses, social media posts, tutorials, and fellow users. When you encounter an enriching virtual session, engage with the facilitator, and consider following them on social media. I've gained valuable insights and techniques over the years by simply keeping up with some of the pioneers in the virtual space.

Engage in hands-on practice with the platform from both the facilitator's and learner's perspectives. While the global shift to virtual environments in recent years has equipped most individuals with the basic know-how of joining online sessions, learners may not be acquainted with your specific platform and its engagement tools. By immersing yourself in the platform as both the facilitator and the learner, you enhance your readiness to support and guide participants. Additionally, if you utilize multiple delivery platforms, it's important to recognize that their functionalities may differ. Practicing on various platforms enables you to pinpoint potential challenges and make necessary adjustments to your plans before stepping into the role of facilitating a live class.

Diversity Ads Flavor to the Art of Facilitation

Through consistent practice, you will develop greater comfort and familiarity with the virtual platform, facilitating the seamless incorporation of engagement activities into your virtual sessions. Poet William Cowper's famous words, "Variety is the spice of life," hold true in the virtual classroom context, where employing diverse tools and techniques is key to maintaining learner engagement.

Avoid overreliance on a limited set of features; instead, explore and discover the tools that resonate best with your audience and content. In traditional, in-person learning settings, we often form groups, share stories, and utilize whiteboards. Similarly, your virtual platform likely offers features such as annotation tools, polling, and breakout rooms. Experiment with these features to enhance the interactive nature of your sessions.

Take the opportunity to create a lively and inclusive atmosphere at the beginning of each session by introducing learners to more advanced features, such as annotation tools. For example, initiate a light-hearted activity where participants use the annotation tool to mark their favorite flavor of ice cream on a slide. Purposefully select engagement tools or strategies that align with your goals and enhance the overall learning experience.

Once you've acquired the skills to navigate the platform and strategized your engagement approach, dedicate time to consistent practice. Engage in solo sessions, record them, and review the recordings. Invite friends to join practice sessions and seek their feedback. Reflect on insights gained from analyzing your recordings and from collaborative sessions with friends. When reflecting on your facilitation, consider the following aspects and pose these questions:

• Have you diversified the utilization of your voice?

• Do you require fine-tuning in the enthusiasm or energy of your presentation?

• Is your camera positioned at the optimal level?

• How are your lighting and background?

• What does your on-camera posture convey?

Here are some elements within the virtual environment that can enhance your facilitation, transforming it from an opening act to the main attraction. Adapt based on your learning and continue practicing. This is where patience becomes crucial, as the repetition of practice may become tiring. While practice may not guarantee flawless facilitation, it does contribute to smoother and more effortless facilitation.

Repeated practice may not lead to flawless facilitation, but it certainly contributes to smoother and more manageable facilitation.

I consider myself fortunate as I didn't need to adapt to virtual facilitation amid the pandemic outbreak. I had already been conducting technical training classes in a virtual setting for eight years before COVID-19 led to the shutdown of nearly all in-person training (ILT). Despite having accumulated eight years of experience, like everyone else, I still had to make adjustments to my facilitation style to align with the new norms of living and working in a virtual environment. This required revisiting the fundamentals, practicing patience with both myself and the learners, and returning to a phase of continuous improvement.

Believe becoming a more effective facilitator is a challenging journey? Consider this to shift your mindset: I initially embarked on my professional journey in a clinical laboratory, where they analyze your yearly blood tests and other bodily samples. Spending my days peering through a microscope, I found satisfaction in examining specimens, searching for anomalies that might not belong.

After several years, I made the move into the professional realm of continuing education for healthcare providers. It's crucial for you to be aware of this, as I never anticipated that I would eventually find myself guiding learning experiences in a virtual setting. This includes leading training sessions on camera, with the content being live streamed over the internet. Why am I sharing this? It's straightforward: if someone like me, who started as a lab enthusiast and became an educator, can become proficient at facilitating in a virtual environment, so can you!