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Boosting online learning After over a year of pandemic lockdowns across the world, IRM trainers and students find themselves in a changed landscape of online training and risk workshops BY JOHN CRAWLEY
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rom the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, I and my fellow risk management colleagues put in place a model for online training for IRM events. This model has been refined and perfected over the many training sessions held during the year and has been universally embraced by participants. So, what are the tips and lessons learnt?
Lead differently All presenters – both trainers and risk meeting facilitators – have needed to learn how to lead differently. The biggest change from face-to-face interactions to the online environment is the loss of non-verbal cues. A huge percentage of our communication is non-verbal. This is a significant loss to any presenter and needs to be replaced with alternative methods of checking in with participants to ensure that the content and messages are understood. The simplest and most effective way to do this is verbally to check in with participants frequently. Train the Trainer expert Annie Clarke, of Annie’s Training Company, says: “You need to regularly (and by regularly I mean every five minutes) engage your [participants]. Speaking at them doesn’t cut it in this new virtual world.” We have found the use of two presenters to be very powerful. You can open up two lines of communication with your participants: one presenting while the other answers
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The biggest change from faceto-face interactions to the online environment is the loss of nonverbal cues
Enterprise Risk
