Virtual Training Producer Stories… Participant guide? What participant guide?

July 2022 (Carrollton, TX) – Recently one of our producers was getting ready for her next virtual classroom. She had the Webex Training Center ready to go, with participants privileges assigned, the session options set, and she had prepared the polls to run at the start of the virtual training. She even had prepared a few groups of participants on a cheat sheet, which she would use when creating the breakout rooms later in the class.

She met the facilitator online thirty minutes before the start, and everything looked ready when the first participants started to join the training. Soon after the start though both the facilitator and producer found out that none of the participants had downloaded the participant guide, let alone read through it. The guide identifies among other things, the key take-aways of the training and contains just in time information like how to test your computer to see if it meets the technical requirements of the training tools used. The participants were lacking access to this information.

To make things worse, most participants were using their work computers which were behind a firewall, and they could not access the content they needed.

The Webvent producer thought quickly on her feet and started reaching out to every participant, collecting private email addresses, and sending out instructions how to join from a private laptop or mobile device, while sharing the participant guide with everyone. The participants slowly but surely started to join the training session one by one, and within an hour or two of the false start the class was on its way.

This first training session was part of a larger program, and on day two of this training the facilitator and producer had another surprise: they found out that the participants had a company celebration planned and had to take a 1-hour break in the middle of the session. The facilitator and producer quickly adapted the training material to meet this new challenge and none of the participants ever noticed that the company celebration wasn’t part of the schedule.

In hindsight we had a great laugh about all these last-minute changes in the rhythm of the training. “I could not have done this without you”, the facilitator shared with our producer. And that is true both ways!

Webvent virtual training producers are indispensable for virtual training success.

Do you want to outsource your virtual training production, or learn more how you can make your virtual training a success? Please contact us at service@webvent.com and we’ll share some of our success stories.