Article Insight:

 Live Virtual Classrooms (LVC) are reshaping education and professional development by offering convenient, accessible, and engaging learning experiences. This blog delves into the key elements for creating effective LVC content, their role in the hybrid workplace, and the booming virtual classroom market. These insights empower educators and organizations to enhance their LVC offerings for impactful learning.

---

Advancements in technology have certainly greased the wheels of education and workplace dynamics. Learning and professional development have undergone remarkable changes. Learning has become more convenient and available for learners. Now, learners can get training from top experts without leaving their houses. The rising trend of live virtual classrooms has made it possible. The live virtual classroom (LVC) is an online platform that allows learners to have real-time interaction with educators by using a microphone and webcam on their computers.  

To facilitate written communication between learners and instructors, it also includes chat and online discussion boards. 

No matter what location the learners are in, these platforms provide a better learning experience by creating memorable LVC content and mirroring traditional classroom settings that offer video conferencing, screen sharing, and collaborative tools. The easy availability of the internet played a big role in making virtual classrooms well-received. Now, businesses can explore digital alternatives for learning and collaboration. 

The hybrid workplace model has remarkably transformed employee learning and professional development. In this age, no organization can conduct conventional in-person training programs as employees work from different locations. Setting foot in virtual classrooms provides an adaptable solution to continue training in a hybrid work environment. 

The Importance of Memorable LVC Content: 

With the rapid evolution of industries, continual upskilling and reskilling have become crucial for a skilled and versatile workforce. Virtual classrooms allow organizations to provide focused training programs, addressing skill gaps and making employees ready for the varying demands of their roles.

Many organizations have already switched to virtual training and successfully invested in live virtual classrooms for their employees. and reaping positive results by executing LVC properly.  

Organizations that switched to virtual classrooms saw a 45% jump in employee engagement, contrary to conventional training methods, according to a study by the Brandon Hall Group. Because of its flexible work arrangements, virtual classroom learning has become an appealing option for employees, whether they are 100% remote or working in a hybrid environment. 

Enhancing LVC engagement for learners is possible by creating well-structured and captivating content, and you can also provide an excellent experience in the virtual classroom.  

Market is growing; The global virtual classroom market is expected to reach $9.3 billion by 2026, with a CAGR of 10.9% from 2021 to 2026, states a report by MarketsandMarkets. In this situation, creating captivating content to produce a high-quality live virtual classroom experience is very crucial. 

Let's look at some key elements for generating a high-quality live virtual classroom experience: 

Create anticipation for your virtual classroom: Strong branding and creative ideas are crucial to fostering anticipation for your synchronous virtual classroom. You must make your learners understand the benefits of the virtual classroom and why participating in online training is worth their time. 

Pre-launch learner packs and microcontents that can be downloaded can help you do that. This is not just marketing; it serves an educational purpose as well for your audience. This way, the participants will know what they can expect, and it will boost their excitement too.  

Visual design: Effective visual design in LVC plays a major role in its success. Most of the participants look at the screen instead of looking at a physical presenter. It becomes more important to see what learners are visually taking in. So, your slides should be more appealing to seize the attention of the learner, and more importantly, they must involve learners and trigger questions and discussion.  

The best thing about virtual classrooms is that they often bring participants from across the globe. So, they have their own idioms and expressions. But images are universal, and by picking a proper image, you can say what a 300-word slide can say and will be understood in virtually every language. 

Tips for designing virtual classroom slides: 

• Use words on your slides just to back up your topic. Don’t use words as a script for what you are saying. 

• Whitespace is important; use it. Blank space is as important as what is on the slide.  Learners focus more on what is important because of whitespace. 

• Make slides interesting, and images should be on target and relevant to the message you are giving. 

Interactive and collaborative activities: 

• High interactivity: Interactive activities in live virtual classrooms foster the active participation of learners rather than being passive listeners to the content. Interactivity establishes productive learning as it triggers critical thinking and knowledge retention. To make your virtual classroom more effective, you can make use of several communication channels, like online virtual meeting software, messaging, conferencing options, voice calls, and chatrooms. In this way, learners with diverse tastes will equally benefit. 

• Collaborative learning: The best thing about collaborative learning is that it provides an opportunity for instructors and learners to get involved in shared efforts to search for meaning and find solutions to complicated concepts or issues. Instructors can promote learning activities that stir up students to interact and assess their points of view with others to probe course materials in different ways. Instructors can help learners discuss and execute their learning beyond course lectures and outstretch purposeful discussions in and outside of the classroom by using collaborative learning activities. In a virtual classroom, you can encourage collaborative learning between students through digital whiteboards, chats, and virtual meeting applications. This also mirrors the real-time environment of classrooms without being present physically. It also strengthens higher knowledge and learning retention.  

• LVC Storytelling for memorable experiences: Storytelling can be very effective when it comes to engaging and connecting with your online learners. This influential tool can help you create a sense of community, interactivity, and, more importantly, purpose in your virtual classroom. Let's look at some tips to effectively use storytelling in virtual classrooms.  

• Establish rapport: Make a story to introduce yourself and cover the topic and learning objectives as well. This will help you build a rapport and create interest among your students. 

• Explain concepts through stories: You can use stories, scenarios, or examples from different sources to explain complicated concepts in the course. This way, you can clarify the key points in an engaging way and make your content memorable. Effective use of storytelling in LVC can also trigger interaction and discussion among students. An interesting story can raise questions that prompt your learners to share their points of view. This encourages debate and collaboration among your students. 

• Challenge your students: LVC storytelling can challenge and inspire your learners by using compelling stories. This will create a sense of motive and applicability among the learners. Stories can also help you acknowledge the success and transformation of your learners. This way, you can create a sense of pride among your community of students. 

Integrate Real-world Application Scenarios: 

Your learners need skills and knowledge that can help them outside of the virtual classroom. You can do this by providing them with impressive and captivating eLearning scenarios. These eLearning scenarios help them understand the real-world applications and advantages of the subject matter and how to use the knowledge when it matters most. 

Let's look at some ideas to create real-world application scenarios: 

Make it lively:

Don’t just tell your learners a story, and ask them to pick from multiple paths in a branching scenario. In lieu, you can make it a vibrant and interactive discussion. You can do this by placing multiple characters on the screen and asking your learners about their talk. You can help learners who are learning management skills by designing an eLearning scenario featuring multiple conversations, including an impeccable method of communication that a manager should exhibit when speaking with an employee. 

Encourage learners to create scenarios: 

This idea can benefit us in many ways. Firstly, it's very helpful in knowledge retention as learners will practice the knowledge, they have gained to put it in their own words. Moreover, when they work as a group, it will build their collaboration and communication skills as well. This way, learners will also get an opportunity to use tech tools and show their creativity. You can give them the idea that they can transform it into an effective eLearning scenario. By doing this, they will have a thorough understanding of the concepts involved. 

Gamification in LVC sessions: 

Gamification is not a new thing. With the tremendous technological progress in learning and development (L&D), instructors can use the latest gamification methods to enhance virtual classrooms. Engaging the learners in LVC is crucial, and gamification helps you do that. It helps you maintain the spirit of in-person classroom interaction. Gamification is a method of applying game designs and notions to training scenarios to make them more interesting and fun for learners. But gamification is not just about including games in your training. You must take full advantage of the mechanics of games like points, competition, and rewards to perk up the result of the training. 

Let's shed some light on some engagement techniques in live virtual classrooms through gamification. 

Set a goal: 

Setting a mission can make a difference instead of just plain training. Once the goal is defined, segregate the sessions into milestones. This will help in pacing the sessions, and learners will have something to accomplish while they cover each milestone. 

Help your learners collaborate: 

Collaboration plays a big role in gamification. By making your virtual sessions social, you can allow your participants to collaborate and share knowledge. Encourage learners by designing creative assignments like self-shot videos and blogs on appropriate subjects to post on their social media profiles. Tell them that the winner will be the one with the most views, engagement, and likes. 

Rewards and Recognition: 

This will create a sense of accomplishment in learners whenever they cross a landmark. You can use a leaderboard to highlight the top performers in LVC. 

Game ideas for the virtual space: 

• You can break the tediousness of assessment questions and make learning enjoyable by using puzzles, crosswords, quizzes, and word searches. Use them after each learning milestone. 

• Strive for applications that can empower you to design and implement puzzles, social maps, and crosswords. This will allow you to assess learners' performance by having reports in the form of PDFs and spreadsheets. 

The best thing about these gamification examples is that there are more activities and nadir lectures. Try to create activities based on your learning objectives to get the best results in your LVC. 

Participant-centered-approach:  

A participant-centered approach to virtual learning is vital, as it allows participants to engage in a personalized learning experience. The instructors can customize content according to individual learning styles. This provides great support to every learner. Participant-centered learning encourages a profound understanding of the topic and also improves the retention of knowledge. 

Provide Feedback:

As it's very beneficial for the learners. But it must be counted on and constructive. To give the learner a clear picture of their performance, you should deliver action-based and valuable feedback. You can also make feedback cards with focused messaging and phrases for participants who struggle to give or receive feedback. 

Summing Up: 

With live virtual classrooms (LVC), you can take learning to new heights. It provides innovation, flexibility, and standards of physical classrooms when structured properly. By using the engagement techniques mentioned above, you can craft and deliver an impactful learning experience for your participants and bring LVC content to life.