Delivering Better Webinars

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176891779I recently participated in a webinar facilitated by a large elearning group that was delivered to about 1,000 people. It’s been a while since I sat in on a webinar of that size, and given the group’s industry and audience, I expected a really polished session that I could learn from. What surprised me most were just how many easily fixable issues still pervade webinars, even at the top levels.

The problems started during the introduction. The facilitator was clearly reading notes from a script and stumbling through them as admin activities were taking place in the background. For scripted content, why are people still not prerecording everything to ensure a polished performance? If there’s no video and no audience interaction, the people on the webinar will never know the difference; they just get a great delivery.

With the introductions out of the way, the problems shifted to the presenter and her interaction with the moderator. First the presenter had trouble gaining control of the webinar to show her materials (wasn’t there a run-through?). Then the lack of an audio check meant that the moderator had to interrupt the presenter to see if abandoning the headset and going with a different microphone would yield a better result. This is all, of course, while 1,000 people listened and waited. And, once again, the presenter fumbled between reading a script, showing materials onscreen and talking through what she was doing. Periods of scripted demos could have easily been prerecorded to make things better for everyone; it’s only when there are interactions with the audience that live teaching is needed.

There were, fortunately, such opportunities for interaction. And, unfortunately, they went poorly too. There were awkward delays while the moderator took back control to enable voting and then waited for more than a handful of people to participate. The technology platform, GoToWebinar, was also annoying during this time; I work on multiple monitors and had the webinar on my 2nd monitor in the background, but every control change moved it back to my primary monitor. The opportunities for audience interaction also didn’t make any difference to the session; the results didn’t affect the session flow (responses were easily predicted) and it could have all been prerecorded.

Maybe there are some people who appreciate a haphazard webinar more because they know it’s at least live and it’s potentially more relatable. For me, I’d rather see the polish and people who execute well. I also see it as something of a market problem. There are great tools that make webinars easy, but there seems to be a lot less interest in how to do them well. Users fend for themselves and, all too often, come up short on delivery.

So what can you do deliver better webinars? For starters, I think a lot of the guidance we have over on Grade Hacks about delivering presentations comes into play. Try to practice the session in its entirety at least 3 times before you deliver it, preferably on the same equipment and platform as you’ll use for the live session. Sign in early and test the audio, changing control and presenting interactive elements. Record things that don’t necessarily need to be live if you can get away with it. Get a few other people to sit in on the practice session and give you feedback. Record it and watch it yourself to see how everything comes together for the audience. For important webinars, put the time in up front to get things right.

Screencast Workflow Best Practices

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Female hands typing on comuter keyboardWe recently created a number of screencasts for clients to support software training. As public-facing screencasts for enterprise software, the standards had to be very high. That meant 1 single person couldn’t do everything; we needed a professional voice actor, a software SME, and someone from our team to take care of instructional design and editing. While we’ve certainly created many screencasts, I looked online for workflow best practices for creating high-quality screencasts with multiple resources.

Unfortunately, very little guidance and a lot of complaints were all that I could find. For this type of screencast you can’t wing it; having the SME record the video and then building a script around it just doesn’t work. And getting the voiceover work done prematurely, without proper planning, tends to mean rework. So what’s the best approach?

While it might not work for every situation, we’ve developed an approach to screencasting that generally works well for Uncanny Owl. Here are the steps we follow:

  1. Plan everything. We start off by looking at the planned outcomes and objectives. What does the learner need to get out of the screencast? What’s the best way to achieve it using the software? This certainly requires a lot of collaboration with an SME and production of a draft script. We can have the software up on the screen and walk through exactly what the learner needs to see and how best to explain it.
  2. Record the video. The SME does the actual interaction with the software while someone from our team observes the recording to do initial script reconciliation and verifying that the pace is appropriate. With 2-3 good takes, there’s typically enough video to perform a more detailed reconciliation and to tailer the script as needed. If anything needs to be recaptured, it can be done almost immediately. It may even help to have someone read the script while the SME is performing the activities.
  3. Finalize the script. This needs to get as close as perfect as possible before it goes to the voice actor. Try recording it yourself and listen to it both with and without the video to make sure it flows well and is straightforward to learners.
  4. Record the audio track. Since the voice talent may not have the video context to work with, include directional cues in the script as required.
  5. Put everything together. Cut the audio up and add it to the video, syncing everything so it seems like the person interacting with the software is the same person speaking. Add or shorten the video as appropriate, and make sure any edits don’t hurt the pacing or cause problems with mouse movements. Once that’s all done, the screencast is ready for publishing!

That workflow has produced generally good results for us, but we’d love to hear your tips for better screencasts in the comments.

How to Save Money on eLearning Projects

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Business reportSometimes the elearning solution you want costs more than you want to spend (or more than you can spend!). Balancing budget and scope is always a challenge, and the cost of elearning can vary widely depending on the context and requirements. According to a 2010 research report by the Chapman Alliance, the cost of a 1-hour elearning course might average as little as $10k for a basic, linear course with static media to as much as $50k for a highly interactive and dynamic program. In this article, we’ll look at some ways to keep your project costs lower when you work with elearning vendors.

Make sure your goals and objectives are clearly defined before including any outside parties in an elearning project. What do you really need and what are the expected outcomes? Risk and unknowns are going to increase quote costs and potentially lead to expensive rework late in the project. The more you can define and prepare up front, the less you’ll need to spend.

Keep everything as simple as possible. Use animation and interactivity sparingly to improve knowledge transfer, not just to look good. Think about what really needs to be custom and what existing resources can be leveraged.

Compile all of your subject material and organize it for easy hand-off. This step can  save a lot of time by eliminating expensive research and review cycles. Where material does exist, but may not be in a format suitable for easy incorporation into elearning, make improvements. Make everything as simple and straightforward for the vendor as possible (if they can see what will be provided up front to better assess their effort, they can lower the price accordingly).

Reduce review and testing requirements. Maybe 1 or 2 reviews with 3 people in a room is enough rather than 3 rounds with 6 people that’s conducted by email with updates in between. When it comes time to test the elearning, maybe testing on 3 platforms is enough with a handful of users rather than significant cross-platform testing and a large pilot group.

All of these ideas should help lower costs while not significantly changing the scope and outcomes of your project. Try doing whatever you can in-house and make the vendor experience as easy and straightforward as possible.

If you have any other tips, feel free to add them in the comments below!