Great Virtual Learning Starts by Knowing Your Audience

As virtual instructor-led training (VILT) continues to grow in popularity and practicality, training and learning and development (L&D) professionals must create an ideal foundation for learning to occur. The ability to know your learners is a crucial piece in this process, allowing for all subsequent training to be based on best practices unique to the audience segment being addressed.

Recently, Class partnered with Training magazine and Microsoft to conduct a survey of over 650 training and learning and development professionals, addressing issues such as:

• learner engagement and training evaluation,
• the tactics and technologies training professionals are prioritizing,
• and the shifting workforce expectations and strategies driven by digital native (Gen Z) employees.

This survey, in addition to the webinar series exploring the findings, provides real-world insights and actions that can take your virtual training methodology to the next level.

Knowing your learners

Before implementing a virtual instructor-led training, it’s important to ensure your approach aligns best with your audience. By better understanding the specific nuances of your audience segments, your training can reach new levels of effectiveness, resulting in deeper engagement and further knowledge retention.

Over half of the participants noted they leverage VILT for onboarding, leadership, upskilling, and more. Familiarizing yourself with the specifics of these audiences will enhance the overall experience and yield better results.

Segment your audience

Interacting with your audience segment, even setting expectations in advance, can help you create a learning program that best meets their needs.

Lorri Freifeld, editor and publisher for Training magazine, notes, “I think explaining to learners ahead of time, before they're in the training, what they are going to get out of the training, what you're hoping for them to get out of the training, is important in setting the expectations for what they can expect during the training. Also, this is very helpful when it comes to engagement.”

Offer multiple learning formats

By communicating upfront with learners, not only can you set the expectation for training, you can also identify ways to adjust your VILT to best serve how that particular audience segment learns. Without understanding your learners, you risk providing a training that is generic, ineffective, and lacking in engagement. In fact, 62% of respondents noted offering training in multiple modalities to accommodate diverse learners.

Freifeld adds, “You want to find out how all the different generations in your workplace want to learn. You want to also segment your audience based on their level of experience and their role.” By identifying your audience segment’s experience level, role, and learning preference, your training can align more effectively, resulting in greater engagement and knowledge retention.

Personalize learning journeys

Once you’ve created a personalized identity for your audience segments, it’s important to then personalize their learning journey, as well. By using AI-driven recommendations or self-paced tracks tailored to learners’ needs, you can further enhance the learner experience, driving engagement even higher while ensuring even better retention of knowledge, moving from Kirkpatrick Levels 1-2 (Reaction and Learning) to 3-4 (Behavior and Business Impact).

Encourage practical application

With a personalized understanding of your audience and a personalized learning journey created around their unique learning needs, it’s important to also provide real-world application of their training and education. By using role-playing, case studies, and scenario-based exercises to reinforce knowledge, you are helping to solidify the learning experience, yielding higher retention and increasing the ability to apply the knowledge obtained in useful and dynamic ways.

Practical application is essential, from interactive workshops to coaching and mentoring. 44% of survey respondents noted that they provide ongoing coaching and mentoring to support long-term learning.

Putting VILT into practice: One organization's experience

Virtual instructor-led training helped Global Credit Union transform its small training staff into a powerful company asset capable of assisting the company’s geographically diverse team, from Arizona to Alaska. Leveraging practical application, including coaching, Global Credit Union has been able to provide more training, even with a smaller dedicated training team.

“We have created a new hire onboarding program for the department that covers content common to all roles and delivers it virtually,” Darci Haydukovich, Consumer Lending Training Manager, explains. “We include the support of a local on-site coach who is a subject matter expert (SME) in the role the participant has been hired for.”

The company operates in different time zones, so virtual instructor-led training has allowed the company to utilize overlap hours for virtual training and the remaining hours are dedicated to on-site coaching from the subject matter expert. Those coaches also receive specialized training.

“We require the coaches to attend a Train-the-Trainer (TTT) prior to serving as a coach. It covers an introduction to adult learning theory, planning training, facilitation skills, and providing structured feedback. It also covers the new hire training schedule, including the activities the coach is expected to do with the participant each day,” Haydukovich explains.

Making it work

Virtual instructor-led training has proven to be a successful means through which organizations can enhance their training, as well as learning and development processes. By segmenting your audience, offering multiple learning formats, personalizing the learning journey, and encouraging practical applications, not only will your company demonstrate it knows its learners, but engagement and knowledge retention will be positively impacted, as well.

Want to discover how the right approach to VILT can transform your organization’s training? Reach out to a Class team member today, and let’s take your onboarding, leadership development, and upskilling and reskilling efforts to the next level. Want to discover more about solving the virtual training paradox? Check out our webinar series (Part 1 and Part 2).