It’s been a year since RSC Wales started using an online environment as a medium for delivering learning directly to the desktops of its customers. Much of this time has been spent honing our skills as remote presenters trying to make the sessions as interesting and relevant as possible.

Always looking for ways to improve and enhance this service and my own professional development, I decided that accreditation would be a positive step forward. In October 2011 I embarked upon the Certified Online Learning Facilitator (COLF) course. This is an insight into my journey.

The course is accredited by The Learning and Performance Institute http://www.learningandperformanceinstitute.com/ and consists of 9 on-line sessions compressed into 3 weeks with a final live on-line peer assessment 3 weeks later. Each session lasted almost 2 hours and was supported by off-line tasks that had to be uploaded to a Moodle in advance of the next session. Typical tasks included keeping a learning journal, viewing videos, reading articles by subject matter specialists and undertaking critiques of other presenters’ performances. If you are interested in doing this qualification I would recommend a flexible work schedule for the first 5 sessions if you want to devote the time and do the course justice. Sessions 6-9 were somewhat more relaxed as we were encouraged to concentrate on the presentation for our final assessment.

So what did I learn that I didn’t know already? Simple answer – lots. We started as a group of 8 professionals who currently work in some capacity or other in learning and development and  quickly bonded into a tight knit group as we stumbled along our journey. Sessions 1 & 2 concentrated on promoting the value of online training within organisations and a general introduction to making the online classroom engaging, interactive and fun. I suppose it’s important to emphasise here that this course is tailored specifically for a small online classroom environment of up to 10 learners rather than the one-to-many sessions that are often used by learning providers. Session 3 concentrated on mastering the finer points of WebEx Training Centre, the medium that we would use for our final assessment. Having used Blackboard Collaborate for a year it was refreshing to use a different web conferencing system that afforded many of the features on my Collaborate wish-list. Session 4 saw us tackle the question of gauging body language online and using the response facilities to communicate in the online environment. Session 5 was probably my favourite and involved designing engaging visuals along with a master-class in using PowerPoint by Garr Reynolds who teaches global marketing and multimedia presentation design and is the author of the excellent Presentation Zen http://www.garrreynolds.com/Introduction/index.html. Session 6 involved session planning and setting up a typical session. Session 7 looked at the dos and don’ts of opening and managing your session including how to deal with common technical issues. Session 8 looked at maximising learner engagement and finally session 9 concentrated on closing your session and follow-up.

Was it all worth it? A resounding yes! The experience has given me the impetus to move to the next level and become even more proficient at delivering in an online environment.

I am pleased to say that I passed the course and I am now looking forward to incorporating my new skills into future on-line presentations.