Online learning through webinars

February 20, 2009

Yesterday I participated in my first ever ‘webinar’, which was for employment law training from a legal advisor. Having not been involved in online learning before I was intrigued to find out what it was going to be like.

The training was delivered from what looked like the trainer’s home, and was broadcast on the internet to all participating organisations with a webcam and Powerpoint presentation, so you could see the slides and the trainer speaking together on one screen – pretty much as you would with a live presentation. I felt that this was a really cost effective way of getting the information to us; because the training was delivered in this way there were no travelling, room hire, refreshments or paperwork costs, and the session was really inexpensive (especially as three of us watched the webinar) whereas if we had all attended a course the cost would have been in the hundreds. The other great benefit was that we simply booked a meeting room to view the webinar (I wouldn’t recommend viewing training at your desk because there will be constant interruptions) and therefore we didn’t spend half the day travelling to and from the venue.

However the session wasn’t all good – the connection was a bit jumpy and kept pausing - towards the end of the session it was really distracting and annoying. Also one thing I did miss that you would have in a face to face session was being able to interrupt the trainer in the middle of the session to clarify something and have a two way chat about it (we were able to email questions in at the end though). The tutor did at times go a little too fast to take in what she was saying, which again probably wouldn’t happen in a face to face learning session because the facilitator would be able to gauge the pace. However overall I would say these things didn’t considerably hinder the effectiveness of the learning process.

So in conclusion I would say that webinars can be a really useful way of providing learning opportunities to many people across different locations at the same time, and will provide a valuable addition to an learning and development strategy. However I would stress caution when implementing web based training – it is useful for knowledge/information transfer (such as employment law as in this session) but it is not suitable for skill based training such as management skills – interactive methods such as coaching will be more appropriate in this case.

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Posted by hrgirl | Filed Under Learning and Development 

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