Fear and Loathing in Las Virtual

Matt Turner is the Director of Live Time Learning and discussed the issue of why some are slow to move into the Virtual Classroom and what others have done to introduce it successfully.

Matt started his session by focusing on what the fears are of people towards going to live online training. He suggested “we are not advanced enough”, “once they experience it, they love it. For most of them they didn’t appreciate how much interactivity there can be. They love breakout rooms!” and “we need training but it would have to be face to face – we’re not clever enough to do it online”. The attendees all contributed the issues they have and Matt went on to introduce some research about the top barriers to online learning.

Matt used a poll to find out from the audience what we thought the top barriers might be, then showed us the results.

Matt took an really different route to look at terminology used in online learning. He played four pieces of music, two rap and two metal and asked us what type of music they were. There were lots of amusing responses from “I don’t hear any music” through to “speed metal” and “sonic metal”. Matt then told us what the type of music is called, such as “Avant-garde metal”. This joined up to make a great point about the terminology we use.

Matt pointed out that most people know what e-learning is and what training is… but that there are lots of terminology in the middle.

 

Matt went on to discuss what would make online learning work better and summarised the answers in the following slide:

Matt turned then to how to maximise take up.

The  summary from Matt’s interactive session highlights that promotion and reminders are vital and that the name is important.