Introduction

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Colleague Consulting was delivering over 70% of its courses via classroom instruction. After an initial hope that things would turn around in a month or two, many of our clients asked that we teach our classroom-based courses virtually. A number of these courses were required for participants to keep certifications current, and they simply couldn’t be put off. So, in a very short time we had to adapt these courses to a new medium, even if the basic content was unchanged.

Our classroom deliveries use a combination of lecture and experiential activities (our courses typically spend a minimum of 40% of course time on exercises and their follow-on discussion):  Talk/lecture about a new topic or concept – apply the concept in an exercise – and then talk about it a little more in light of the shared exercise. This framework still made sense in the new medium.

But looming out there was the big problem of the incredible “screen fatigue” that comes from participants interacting in front of a computer screen for five, six or seven hours a day (researchers at Stanford University are currently developing a scale to quantify this condition – the Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale or ZEF Scale). And no amount of jazzing it up would really get at that issue – after all, there is a reason that Hollywood will rarely make a movie longer than two hours. If science fiction films with special effects or period dramas with elaborate wardrobes are limited to 120 minutes – how were we going to make Quantitative Risk Analysiswork over six hours?

In contrast, courses that we had developed specifically for a virtual delivery were designed differently, with this concern in mind: In a 24-hour course, rather than teach it over three or four days, we typically spread it out over multiple weeks with two sessions a week of two or maybe three hours per session. This blended learning approach in many ways mimics a graduate seminar – with assigned readings and homework due between sessions.

So, our initial thought, as we looked to quickly convert our classroom courses to virtual courses, was to fall back on the seminar framework. And that probably would have worked – except – for a variety of reasons, our clients insisted that the deliveries be done over the same calendar dates as they would have been if it were a classroom. If a 24-hour course had been scheduled to be taught the week of August 10th, it still needed to be taught the week of August 10th, not the weeks of August 10th, 17th, and 24th. 

What we came up with ended up working better than we could have ever hoped for – in fact, it has some advantages over both the virtual seminar format, and over the traditional classroom format.

What did we do differently?

We looked for opportunities for longer, more detailed exercises.

A lot of our courses are related to the management of large projects. And often our target audience members, in the course of doing their jobs, are awash in data and reports. Big reports – with lots of data!  What if we used more of those documents in our exercises?

For example, in building an exercise around trend analyses of a project’s schedule, we would typically pull the most salient pieces of information from an actual project and package it up so that the student would only need 20 minutes to understand the context and setting. But in creating the new version of the exercise, if we had previously pulled the salient information from a 200-page monthly report (seriously, they can be that size) – why not give the same assignment (What trends do you see?, What are you worried about going forward?, What are the next actions you plan to take?) – but give participants the entire report rather than having cherry picked the important details?

This framework works successfully as homework assignments in the seminar-style virtual courses – over the next couple of days, read this report, and answer these questions that we will talk about in the next class. But would it work? And how would it work, especially in a virtual course where the expectation is that the course would be taught in full-day sessions over consecutive days? 

Actually, it worked really, really well.

The best exercises are those that mimic the actual work setting. In designing exercises, Colleague strives to minimize the participant’s need to extrapolate what is being learned to their setting – we want the exercise to be in their setting to the maximum degree possible. So, using the example above, we asked ourselves (and we asked the excellent Subject Matter Experts that help us build our courses), if a project manager received a 200-page monthly report flush with earned value data, health and safety metrics, and risk status, would they take three to four days to go over it before they did anything? And the answer was “no – they’d take a couple of hours to read through it, then they would start acting on it.”  So that is how we built/revised our exercises: Take two hours to read through this, then get together with you team and discuss the following questions…

This general framework had four significant advantages, and one not-insignificant challenge.

Advantage 1 — Time away from the computer

Two hours reading a monthly report is two hours not in front of the computer screen – or at least the option of not being in front of the screen. Even if read on the computer, it wouldn’t be in front of a screen listening to someone and having to go at their pace. This had a huge impact on cutting into the fatigue factor. Some people like to read their information on a computer screen – others like a hard copy they can scribble on. In setting up the course, therefore, participants are given the option of downloading documents to print themselves, or (depending on the contract) having a printed copy sent to them. So, Advantage 1: by building in a number of “on your own” assignments, we slashed a huge chunk out of the fatigue factor.

Advantage 2 — The exercises themselves could be more complex

In an exercise where the cherry-picked information is provided, in addition to the basic set of questions for participants to answer, inevitably you have to add one last one: What additional information would you want to see next (and why)? But given the 200-page report, chances are the answers to many of those questions might well be in the document itself. The schedule is trending badly: What is the status of key project risks? What do we have available in schedule contingency? How big are the impacts on project costs? So, Advantage 2: the exercises became more realistic and delved deeper into the course content.

Advantage 3 — It highlighted a not-often appreciated competency, critical reading

As we stated earlier, the more the exercise matches the actual work setting the better. One competency that is rarely identified but is essential, is the ability to wade through tons of information and data and get to the content that matters. Reading comprehension is a vital competency, and no one ever talks about it!  The 200-page monthly report doesn’t read like a novel and shouldn’t be read like a novel – it has vast amounts of boilerplate and graphics summarizing the same information in different way. Following an inquiry or train-of-thought might require jumping around different sections of the report. However, because organizations and projects vary so much, it is difficult to envision a way to teach “critical reading” except by practice.

Advantage 4 — Mentorship in small group settings

There was an additional benefit to this longer exercise format that we hadn’t originally foreseen. Almost all exercises in Colleague courses are small group exercises – as that is how most of the work gets done in the participants’ work setting. In setting up the exercise teams, Colleague is always cognizant to build cross-functional teams and to ensure that the participants with the most experience are spread across the different teams. One thing we observed from the longer exercises was the very strong mentoring that took place in the exercises, as those with more experience shared their tips about how to work through large documents in search of critical information.

Challenge

If in a classroom delivery an exercise might take 20 to 30 minutes to read, but in virtual training takes two hours, the total course time is expanded unless you can find places to save some time. In our experience we “found time” by doing the following:

Streamlining the report-outs from exercises. Typically, after an exercise groups reconvene and report out on their answers. We found two ways to shorten this process without distracting from the learning: 

• Tighten the debrief questions so that there were fewer open-ended questions. We also found giving participants report-out templates – often formatted PowerPoint slides – tightened the report outs themselves.

• Facilitating a “what did you have that was different” report-out format. Consider a course where there are four small teams that work independently on an exercise in which they have to answer four questions. Often the easiest report out format is to have each team report their answers. But time can be saved by having just one team report their answers, and then have the other three teams report how their answers were different. A word of warning: these are not easy to execute and the first one you do will be awkward. But by the second or third time, we found that participants adapted quite well. Depending on the class size, this can save 15-20 minutes in the discussion, without a loss of any learning.

Hunting through the course materials looking for the extraneous. Colleague develops its courses using Instructional Systems Design (ISD) methodology. We take course and lesson objectives very seriously. When crunched for time, it is reasonable to go through the course materials and identify anything that doesn’t directly support a learning objective and incorporate it as supplemental information. Most of Colleague’s courses provide student handbooks that include notes to elaborate on PowerPoints. When looking for opportunities to tighten up course materials, the notes in the student handbook can often provide a useful means of shortening the lecture time, without losing information.

Surveys rather than introductions. Most classroom courses start with going around the room to ask people to introduce themselves. In large classes, it may take 20 minutes. Doing the same thing in a virtual course takes longer and accomplishes less (because you typically are not able to match the person to a face). Sending out a five-minute survey a day or two before the class, and then making the information available to everyone can accomplish almost the same thing as the opening introduction, saving 20-30 minutes.

Really working the technology. Often, clients dictate the platform to be used for virtual course delivery. Each platform has advantages and disadvantages. In bringing the classroom course to its virtual platform, anything that would slow down the course needs to be identified and addressed. For example, Colleague has found that different platforms have issues related to going to and coming back from breakout groups, especially as it relates to groups “bringing back” their answers. In these situations, it is important to adapt to the technology rather than be slowed down because you don’t. Practicing ahead of time saves time in the course.

We altered course structures.

While the longer exercise was the single biggest adaptation that Colleague made in its “quick conversions” of traditional classroom courses to virtual courses, we have also found a number of other things that can improve the quick conversion. These include:

Maybe one more day...or two

We noted earlier that with most of the conversions, clients did not want to spread the course out over multiple weeks, however, in most cases they were willing, for example, to spread a three-day (24 hour) classroom course over four, or even five days – so long as it was in the same week. The same was true for 1- to 2-day classroom courses. The total class time is the same, but the “in front of the computer screen per day” time is lessened. In addition to the fatigue element, we had to do this for a more basic reason – often the class encompassed participants from four different time zones across the county. Because of this, most classes were scheduled to run each day from 10:30 ET to 4:30 ET. This shorter class day results in participants having a couple of hours of “work time” either before or after class, which means they can keep up without having to be fully “out of the office” for numerous consecutive days

“Parachute” instructors

Many classroom courses are taught by a single instructor. Under many contracts it is too expensive to bring in a second or third instructor, even if just for a portion of the course. But in virtual courses, where there is no need to travel to the training location, it is possible, for a reasonable cost, to bring in an instructor with a particular expertise for a brief appearance in the course. Colleague refers to these as “parachute” instructors – they jump in at just the right time. For example, in one of our project management courses, in one of the long exercises, participants are asked to brief a senior official about some aspect of a project. To enhance the exercise, Colleague parachuted in someone who once was a senior official in that department who received those types of briefings. The instructor provided feedback on the briefings, letting participants know whether they were or weren’t on target, and giving suggestions for improving their briefings going forward. This type of real-life simulation in a low-risk setting is priceless in terms of the learning experience.

We applied virtual training protocols.

Other actions we took included applying protocols that were standard for all our virtual courses.

Invest in, and empower, a great producer

Good classroom instructors can be overwhelmed teaching virtually regardless of the platform being used. Who has their hand up? Who is writing something in the chat? Getting groups into their breakout rooms and back again and troubleshooting the inevitable technical glitches that arise – all of this is a full-time job. Having someone who excels at the production element makes the course go smoother and frees up the instructor to focus on the substance of the course.

Get the instructor comfortable in front of the camera and leave the camera on

It is a little thing, but there is some evidence that suggests that participants are more attentive when they see the instructor during the lecture portions of the course. And there certainly are ample best practices for what works and what doesn’t (e.g., camera height, room background, lighting). 

 Add polls, quizzes and games

Anything that keeps participants engaged is good for the learning experience. In virtual training, where the instructor usually cannot see the class, there is always a fear that participants have tuned out. Polls can help. Many platforms allow the instructor to see the names of those responding to polls (e.g., Sally Jones thought this task was particularly problematic), affording the instructor the opportunity to call on participants directly (e.g., Sally, what exactly do you think the problems are with this task?). There are also on-line “Jeopardy”-like templates that can be used as an engaging means to summarize course materials (we are constantly surprised — although by now we shouldn’t be — at the amount of energy participants put into such game situations).

Conclusion

Colleague has learnt from having to pivot during the pandemic that most classroom courses can be effectively taught in a virtual environment — if you pay attention to the details and work to make the course successful in the new medium. And in some cases, the medium affords an opportunity to do some things that might not work in a classroom (it is hard to envision a classroom course where large chunks of time are “read on your own” assignments). There will always be a place for classroom training, but its virtual alternative – even after initially designed for a classroom – does not have to be a weaker version of the original.