The eLearning Connection

I just finished presenting from my home office along with colleague who was at a conference over 3 hours away. Though I enjoy engaging face to face with my audiences, I was not able to make the trip because of prior committments. In the past, I would have missed this opportunity to work with an incredible group of people and to share tools that can enhance their work.

To make this a reality, we used Skype to provide the connection into the session. My video was run from the computer to an LCD projector and the audio was run into the sound system. We were able to communicate with our audience as if we were standing next to each other. The participants were actively engaged and we were able to fulfill the objectives the conference coordinators set before us. This event highlights a few barriers that e-learning can overcome for your company, organization, or classroom.

Barrier 1: Distance. Many times we are limited by the availability of professionals in our geographic region. I have worked with a few agencies that were seeking the support of a service provider. Unfortunately, they were forced to select their 3rd and 4th option because their top choices did not have time to provide what they needed (or did not want to make the trip). E-learning solutions allow people to provide their skills to a much wider audience; minimize the barriers of time and distance; and maximize effectiveness.

Barrier 2: Finances. As travel costs increase and the price of a gallon of gasoline skyrockets, this will become the greatest hurdle to access support services and training to assist your staff. The use of e-learning as a communication tool minimizes or removes the costs that you would be required to spend to bring in the “expert from Harvard” to train your staff. No flight, no rental car, no overnight stay, and no meals (which is important if you are bringing in the championship eating all-stars to give a motivational speech) are required.

Barrier 3: Follow-up. The key to any effective professional development is follow-up. The research literature is very consistent in supporting that “one-shot, sit and get lessons do not change the way people work”. However, most training events are exactly that. We sit and listen to someone drag on and on about a topic while hoping that the fire alarm will go off or Jesus will come back. As supervisors, we have unrealistic expectations that our staff will go out and do what was talked about during the session. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way (yet we still do this over and over). E-learning technologies provide a realistic way for trainers to connect back with the participants to follow-up after the initial training. This let’s everyone know that the content matters and provides a venue for questions to be addressed as implementation ensues.

When you are planning training and events for your staff and clientèle, the options have grown quite a bit. Most importantly, “Keep the main thing, the main thing”! Great technology and poor content is still poor content.

Just yesterday a colleague and I did a presentation on the 5 steps to success when using video conferencing as a consultative tool. I figured it would make for a logical post on our blog. Before actually getting into the steps however, I need to explain the graphic above as it will likely be the most important takeaway from this post.

For a consultation to be successful you basically need three things to occur. First you need to make sure that you develop an effective intervention for whatever it is your client is needing you to do. This may be a new marketing plan, a new piece of technology, or a new behavior intervention for a student (or teacher) you are trying to help control in a classroom setting. Secondly, you need to know that the intervention is being implemented appropriately. I can’t tell you how many times the never ending argument starts by putting the blame for an intervention not working on an inappropriate intervention by the consultant. The consultant then fires back saying “the intervention is fine, you’re just not implementing in correctly.” This is where the final piece of the diagram comes in: measured outcomes. By identifying the outcome you hope to accomplish beforehand, the task of creating an appropriate intervention and implementing it correctly increases ten fold. Having said that, here are the five steps to success:

1. Obtain Appropriate Permissions First -
   More often than not there is a higher power that needs to allow the use of video conferencing as a consultative tool. Some departments have strict policies in place that do not allow the type of technology used for this type of support. In addition, there are often privacy and ethical issues to consider. For example, are you videoing this intervention, do all parties being videoed know the situation? If so, will that change things?
2. Practice Makes Perfect -
   Never, I repeat never, start using video conferencing technology in place of face to face consultation without doing a few practice runs first. Technology doesn’t always work right and if it can happen it will happen, especially when you need it to not happen the most. Be prepared for this with a back up plan and knowledge about how to fix whatever problems you may encounter
3. Define the behavior and setting you need to develop the intervention for -
   This rule was developed for more of an educational setting, but I can see how it would apply for almost any other area as well. If the point of the consultation is to provide a solution to a problem, you need to clearly define what that problem is and where it occurs the most. Choose one setting and stick to that setting. Otherwise your data will not pan out later. There are too many external influences to consider.
4. Collect Baseline Data -
   You know the problem and the setting, now collect the measurable data you decided upon before you implement any intervention. Make sure the problem really exists. This data can most always be collected using a simple webcam and internet connection in the setting you choose to observe.
5. Develop Intervention and Collect More Data -
   You have your baseline data… Now develop your intervention. You can demonstrate this intervention through video conferencing until you are confident those who are implementing your intervention can do it right. Take a sales rep for example. Have them role play with a colleague in front of the webcam the intervention you’ve developed until you are satisfied. Then you can be sure that if it doesn’t work, it’s the intervention that’s the problem, not the implementation. Then, as the step says, collect more data. If the data isn’t looking good, it’s back to the drawing board (see graphic and top of page and start at step 1 again).

That’s it. Now you’re on your way to moving part of your consulting online. In our experience, we usually meet face-to-face at first, then move a large portion of our work online. In one example still in progress, we had to travel 2 hours one-way to meet the client. Had we continued face-to-face meetings, we would have only been able to fit them in once every couple of months. Instead, during the primary visit, a webcam was installed. We can now meet and observe around 3 times a week and the data we are getting is unbelievable (look for it in a later post).