With the COVID pandemic, we saw a huge shift from a lot of face-to-face training to a lot more delivery online. I guess with that shift there was this brand new reality that a lot of people had to face. Myself, I was very reluctant to ever believe in the possibilities of delivering online, whether people would be engaged, retain enough, or be able to learn in a different modality.

I was very resistant in the beginning. I was one of those people that thought face to face is the only way to go, it’s the only way to learn, and online will never be as good. Now, there is a huge part of me that still believes that, and there’s a huge part of me that knows that with face to face you’re always going to get more, because there’s going to be a collaborative learning environment and a little bit more can be achieved.

Now, let’s accept the reality, which is that sometimes we just don’t have a choice. Due to market demand, student preferences, or whatever it may be, online is chosen. So we’re now designing a course for the online space.

I guess there are only a couple of things that I really think about. Number one, you’re going to need to provide a lot more breaks. Now, that’s just common sense, but a lot of trainers will still, even though it’s online, push their students to the 60-minute mark or the 90-minute mark before they actually give them breaks. As one of my mentors said, “You can only concentrate as long as your bum can tolerate.” It was a really great catchphrase, but it reminded me that if someone’s concentrating in the online space or going through a course, they need to be standing up, moving around, and getting the blood flowing, even more so than in a face-to-face environment.

I guess the next thing is people’s attention span. In a face-to-face environment you can have a lot more leeway and grace with focused time, because you’ve got ways to really speak to groups, you can move around the room, and different things. But in the online environment we have to be a lot more focused. We have to be on point. We have to be moving a lot faster, and at the same time we need to make sure everybody is keeping up.

So for me, a big thing to think about is having a lot of variety in activities: short, sharp, focused activities and tasks that keep people on point, knowing that it’s all leading towards learning outcomes. There are lots of breakout rooms going on, and there’s lots of variety in how things are being approached.

At the end of the day, engagement is engagement, and face to face or online, you can definitely achieve it. But when we’re designing an online version, we need to factor in more breaks, and I’m going to say we actually have to have less information on the slides. We need to be more strategic in how we present the information so that people are more tuned in to the experience, so to speak.