Online courses follow an adapted format of the physical courses.
First of all, where a physical course lasts a full working day, the same online course consists of two 3-hour sessions, one delivered in the morning and one in the afternoon. Each session is in 3 sections with a 10 minute break in between. We try to go for sessions 8:30-11:30 and 12:30-15:30.
To compensate for the shorter exposure time, the participants are required to do some homework before the course. Each of the courses either has an accompanying “Birds’ Eye View” document that we ask the participant to read or a video to watch beforehand. We also ask participants to take a small survey that covers the content of this material to improve imprinting the learning. This is required for a successful outcome of the course. As additional preparation we ask each participant to bring 3-5 questions to the training regarding topics he or she would like to discuss.
Our online course content is compact and focused, but we always prioritize activities that focus on dialog and interaction as well. We assume the participant has read the Bird’s Eye View and has it available for reference. So, in John Wayne’s words “we ride hard and fast!”.
About a week after the training course we offer participants a one hour online retrospective for follow-up questions and clarifications. It is not mandatory, but it does provide a space for people to ask questions before taking the online test.
It is our experience that the format of 2 x 3 hours of course sessions for online courses represent the absolute maximum participants can benefit from in a day. It is therefore important that participants prioritize time for preparation as well to get maximum benefit from the course. In order to ensure sufficient interaction between the instructor and participants please note that we either limit the number of participants 10-12 people for a course, or we choose the option of adding an extra instructor for classes of more than that number.
