Delivering impactful online trainings can be challenging. Whether it’s because people are unfamiliar with the technology, or because learning from a distance makes it difficult to focus, people sometimes dread the idea of having to host or attend an online training.
To help you with hosting successful and engaging online trainings, we listed 5 tools that include video conferencing, whiteboards, and engagement tools to use with upcoming trainings.
1. Welo
Photo from @RoninPixels
Wello is an interactive online space where people can collaborate. On the platform, you can have different rooms for each project, and seamlessly include Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Using the same window, you can be working on a whiteboard platform such as Miro and a Google doc at the same time, which helps you be more creative while you deliver your training.
Our favorite feature on Welo is the ability to choose the style of the space - you can go for a park, a salon, or an office! - and set the tone for the type of facilitation and training you are hoping to deliver.
2. Miro
Miro is a whiteboard tool that allows you to brainstorm with others synchronously or asynchronously. They offer different templates, such as mind maps, flowcharts, concept maps, and many others that can help you visualize your information. The sticky note feature is practical, and allows attendees to participate easily (just like post-its in in-person trainings).
At Cosmic Centaurs, we enjoy using Miro during workshops and trainings but also with fun rituals, where we can add not only sticky notes but use it to create collaborative scrapbooks to help commemorate an event or milestone!
3. Stormboard
Stormboard is a digital whiteboard for collaboration in distributed organizations. It has a breakout room feature, templates for design thinking, brainstorming, and process mapping, among others. The platform also allows for task management, which is useful if your training includes exercises for attendees. While both Miro and Stormboard have sticky note features attendees can participate with, Stormboard allows you to add documents such as PDFs as sticky notes. We find this to be very practical if you want to enrich your training with resources.
4. Butter
Butter is a tool made for online collaborations through videoconferencing.
With Miro, Google Drive, YouTube, and Whiteboard built-in, you can smoothly switch between these applications during a call to explain different concepts. We especially love this aspect of Butter, because it removes the redundancy of constant screen sharing
In addition to the typical features such as setting an agenda, breakouts rooms, and polls, Butter has fun features like flash cards, advanced engagement through emojis, Gifs, and a hands-up queue.
5. Kahoot
Kahoot is a game-based learning platform. The platform allows you to create, share, and host learning sessions with games or trivia quizzes. It’s a great option if you want to gamify your training! The platform also includes videoconferencing, and their plan for trainings at work has integrations with Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Hangouts, and Zoom.
A nice feature Kahoot has is that you can add audience participation features in your presentations. We used it in one of our trainings about company values as we created a quiz about what each value meant, making the session a lot more fun for the attendees.
6. Mentimeter
Mentimeter is a platform where you can create presentations, and get real time feedback. Meaning, as you create your slides using their presentation builder, people can answer polls and share data and opinions directly on them.
What makes Mentimeter special for us is their ability to show data in a fun way. For example, if the question people are answering in your presentation is about a specific word, the results can show in the form of a word cloud, in real-time.
We hope this list helped you find the ideal tool for your next training!
For more help on running an online training, check out our list of tips here.