VILT: Four Important Strategies to Enhance Your Training

Is your organization using virtual instructor-led training (VILT) for training remote employees? It is likely the answer is ‘yes.’ According to recent Gallup surveys, almost half (45%) of full-time employees are working remotely at least part of the time – and that number increases to almost three-quarters (67%) for white-collar employees.

As a result, many teams are conducting training remotely as well. But moving instructor-led training to the virtual environment isn’t as simple as just using video. Learning and development professionals know it is important to create the right content for VILT learning to improve the user experience and get employee buy-in. Otherwise, you run the risk that your employees don’t get the full benefit of your training experience.

How To Use VILT To Engage Learners

Here are four important strategies recommended by L&D professionals to improve the VILT experience for learners. These tips will help you to make sure the training time invested in employees isn’t going to waste.

Demonstrate the technology. Is your video platform up to date and intuitive for users? To engage your learners, you must either be certain that the technology is immediately user-friendly and simple, or you must build into your content easy how-to instructions to ensure that your video is easy to access, load and download, watch, and stop, start and replay.

Use gamification to encourage participation. Ice breaker activities, fun Q&A style competitions, and scoring activities or tracking completion of supplemental material are all useful to keep learners engaged during VILT. Whenever possible, build interactivity into your videos. Learners asked to participate in training are more engaged, which makes learning more effective.

Keep it modular. Shorter training sessions make it easier to fit training into a schedule, increase buy-in and motivation by reducing the opportunity for video fatigue, and encourage learning retention. Also use facilitator and participant guides, written activities, and on-the-job guides to personalize and supplement the training.

Conclusion

The most important method to use with any learning solution is the one that will engage your learner and motivate them to fully acquire the skills they need to be effective in their role.

However, VILT is just one method of training that may be used in remote work environments. (Of course, you may also make use of digital training in person, as well.) For other ideas beyond VILT, be sure to read this recent article from AllenComm, and don’t hesitate to reach out for more information.