A case study of testing interactive tools for live virtual learning sessions
Brathay’s Emerging Talent team recently started working with a group setting out on their Level 3 apprenticeship. The 12–15-month programme would take a blended approach — virtual and face-to-face, synchronous and asynchronous learning environments.
As part of Brathay Trust’s 2020–25 strategy and 2021/22 business plan, we stated that we will “develop, promote and deliver distinctive programmes containing a blend of residential, local and digital elements, which will have maximum impact and safeguard against future disruption to our ability to deliver to our clients”.
This apprentice programme is an example of us deliberately and purposefully designing a blended learning offer — rather than a re-active solution to disruptions caused by Covid-19. We’ve taken insight from the problem solving we had to do in the pandemic and carried out programme modelling of what different blended offers could look like.
The virtual induction training day for this apprenticeship programme was a fantastic opportunity for us to test some of the digital delivery tools we had ‘sandboxed’ as part of previous Catalyst programmes.
In a previous blog we showed how we had certain digital tools agreed for testing through a compliance checklist. This allowed us to test the following tools:
Slido — Word clouds
As we started to get the group to think about their personal development, we asked them the following opening questions:
One word about how you feel about the day right now
Next word: How do you want to feel by the end of the day?
We could have done this in the meeting chat, but it’s just not as exciting, engaging, and interactive. Plus, we wanted them to practice early on navigating away from the call, engaging with a task on a separate webpage, and then coming back to the call.
Slido — Ideas and upvoting
Again, we could have done this through discussion, breakout groups, or using the meeting chat, but Slido allowed us to send them off into small groups, anonymously add ideas — in this instance to the question: “Our plan for success should include…”, and then upvote the ideas they like best. So, everyone’s idea is on there, including people who may not have spoken out in a group, but the ones most people like come to the top.
Fab! Screenshot: share: make your screen saver: put on the (virtual) office wall, or as your virtual back drop!
We use the Comfort-Stretch-Panic model a LOT at Brathay — we love it! Sometimes on a flip chart, sometimes mapped out life sized on the lawn at our residential venue at Brathay Hall so people can physically stand and move about, and, as it turns out now, on an interactive Miro board. These are the basics:
1. Trainer shares their screen and takes participants through the basics of what they see when they enter the Miro board — it’s anonymous; navigating using mouse/trackpad; clicking and writing on sticky notes; etc.
2. Pop the Miro board link in the meeting chat and off they go (whilst obviously staying on the call)
3. Ask them to drag and drop a sticky note in answer to questions about their levels of comfort, stretch or panic (e.g. writing a blog = “panic” for some (me!) and “stretch” or “comfort” for others).
We also used Miro for people to share their story and see other stories. We asked participants to answer pre-set questions with sticky notes. We then put them into breakout pairs and asked them to share their stories (and share their screens!) We could have done this on a word doc’ that they downloaded locally and completed, but again, let’s face it, it isn’t as exciting, engaging, and interactive. We obviously had a word doc back up in case something crazy went wrong… forgive us, it’s early days and trusting the tech and my wifi still sends me into “panic”!
With this programme starting in peek holiday season (August 2021) we used Loom to do short recordings to summarise the virtual induction day. Yes, we could have just sent out the recording of the whole induction day, but who in their right mind wants to sit through nearly seven hours of recording and we certainly didn’t have time or resource to edit this down. We created four short recordings summarising each section of the induction (no recordings longer than 5 minutes because that’s all you get with the free version!)
What participants said…
The average score was 4 out of 5 for each of the three questions asked.
Positive feedback included:
“I love all the different tools you’ve introduced us to today, that we’ve used to add our thoughts and feedback”
“Some great online tools rather than death by power point”
“Really liked the Miro board, really interactive and helped with discussion points when in the breakout room”
“Really engaging day considering this is done through Teams virtually, good activities and break out rooms that kept me engaged and alert throughout the day”
“Really good use of tools and breaks the slides up and allows people to interact. I got the opportunity to speak to everybody on the course today due to these tools and break out rooms”
Less positive feedback we’ll pay attention to included:
“Miro got a low score due to the fact I couldn’t get onto the link” [Note: everyone else accessed the link, so this was potentially something local to this participant, such as the web browser they were using]
“Good session some good tools used but I did not get on the slido before we whet into the breakout rooms and the link is not in the room chat”
Overall, there was support for a blended approach:
“I thought all of the digital tools were very user friendly and made the session enjoyable. I think it is a good way [of] presenting with course with the virtual sessions, but I also think face to face meetings will be beneficial to help with what’s needed for the programme”
“I think this kind of programme benefits from face-to-face learning but it’s also nice to be able to work from home and not have to get up as early!”
