Richard Middleton explores the training video revolution.

Reading time: 3m 30s.

If you’re over 30, you will likely remember your schooldays – fondly or not – as characterised by the shrill squeaking of pens on whiteboards and lessons copied laboriously into textbooks; of long lectures to quiescent classrooms, ink spots and perhaps the smell of chalk dust in the air.

Perhaps, if you were lucky and the teacher needed to catch up on their marking, you’d get to spend an hour watching an educational video on an old VHS tape.

Times have changed. Today’s classrooms are abuzz with technology, from interactive whiteboards and learning apps, to tablet computers, libraries of online resources and homework submission platforms. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that our younger employees don’t greet the prospect of traditional training – perhaps comprising an hour-long session in front of a flipchart – with unbridled enthusiasm.

Ask any educator and they’ll tell] you that teaching has to be engaging to be effective. Of course, this requires lesson content to be exciting and, where possible, interactive. However, it’s also about accessibility.

With organisations across the globe and in practically every industry facing an unprecedented skills shortage, it seems extremely shortsighted to trust to the methods of yesteryear. 

People are now used to accessing education, whether academic or career-focused, on their own terms and at their preferred times. Yet many businesses still cleave to old-fashioned training regimes which are based on face-to-face instruction – a model that is inefficient, inconvenient, unengaging and costly.

Optimising the way they train employees should be right at the top of every business’s agenda. With organisations across the globe and in practically every industry facing an unprecedented skills shortage, it seems extremely shortsighted to trust to the methods of yesteryear.

Instead, businesses must go back to school, as it were, and embrace the power of video conferencing for a much more engaging, flexible and effective learning experience. 

The video revolution

In the last decade or so, the workplace has undergone as much of a revolution as any school. Thanks to new communications technologies such as instant messaging and video conferencing, changing attitudes to office culture, and the rise of the professional gig economy, the workforce is increasingly decentralised.

While the office remains an important hub and headquarters, workers are likely to be spread in numerous locations, from those taking advantage of work-from-home policies to freelancers operating in a different country.

This employee diaspora is making it much harder to schedule and conduct training and skills sessions. This is especially problematic when an organisation needs to teach large groups simultaneously, at short notice, or when uniformity of training is a key consideration. 

Businesses, including specialist training providers, are beginning to solve these problems by harnessing the power of web-based video conferencing technology by creating virtual classrooms that anyone, anywhere can attend at any time.

Take the Swedish IT training provider Addskills. Unsurprisingly in a country that’s 1,000 miles long and with towns separated by vast distances, many students have trouble attending classes – a time consuming and expensive enterprise for those who live far away.

Even though technology training is often complex and detailed, Addskills found that using high-definition video conferencing technology enabled it to deliver the same high quality of instruction across sites in Stockholm, Uppsala, Linköping and Gothenburg.

With just a handful of cameras, microphones and a modern, web-based video-conferencing platform, trainers can stream live lectures to other training locations, making them far more accessible to learners while also significantly removing the need to travel long distances to the classroom.

Teachers have been surprised at the levels of intimacy that HD video enabled, and how they could monitor each student’s reactions – for example, to see if they understood a concept or were paying attention. Students, meanwhile, told how they felt they had more control over their learning, what courses they could access and when, without any sacrifice in the quality of teaching. 

Connecting everyone

When it comes to providing remote training, there’s a temptation to use existing platforms and technologies, such as Skype. There are several problems with this approach, not least the fact that this often results in choked data connections and internet ports, leading to poor video performance that damages the effectiveness and intimacy of training sessions.

But just as importantly are the additional benefits of having an effective video conferencing platform in place.

This is an excerpt from a piece in December’s TJ Magazine. To access the full article, click here for three months’ free subscription.

About the author

Richard Middleton is country manager for UK and Ireland at Lifesize.