How to facilitate participation throughout a training pathway?

The challenge: adapt training sessions to remote work and humanize experience sharing

The objective of Caroline's training courses is to ensure that new air traffic controllers who are new to a zone are able to take up their positions smoothly, by facilitating their adaptation to their new perimeter. 

This course has to be followed by a practical training which can be long and complex for some. So these sessions allows air traffic controllers to simplify their transition and share their experience.

Until 2020, Caroline provided her courses exclusively in person. Most of the time, the attendees were from different geographical areas, and had to travel to be there.

However, the pandemic and the lockdowns led Caroline to rethink the way she was running her courses, and to find a solution to switch them entirely to remote work. 

She therefore chose Klaxoon to create a format for 100% remote training sessions. Below, she tells how this allowed her to stimulate the participants before, during and after the sessions.

The solution: a format combining synchronous and asynchronous interactions

The new format Caroline set up for her course for air traffic controllers offers two 2.5-hour video sessions. Apart from these synchronous times, participants (generally a group of 4) also have to carry out several activities asynchronously.

By working in an asynchronous way, they do not interrupt each other in the progress of their activities. Moreover, they can question each other knowing they will receive an answer as soon as the people they are asking are available. This allows them to remain focused and efficient. 

For the video part, the 2 facilitators of the session combine the use of Klaxoon and Microsoft Teams. And for the asynchronous part, the activities are available just on Klaxoon.

Before the course: first ideas shares and gamified pathways

For each new course, Caroline creates a Network where she invites the participants. This is a private group on Klaxoon, where you can add different types of activities for its members.

Caroline therefore feeds this Network along the sessions :

• With some Boards (online whiteboards) for the synchronous phases;
• With some Memos (interactive reports) and Adventures (gamified pathways) for the asynchronous phases.

Once they have joined the Network, the participants are invited to read a first Memo with the various contact elements, the context, the course schedule, etc. Inside, the trainers also include some Survey questions to better understand the learners' profile, where they come from, what characterizes them and whether they are already familiar with Klaxoon tools.

Then, they have to go through an Adventure introducing how to use Klaxoon. This Adventure is a gamified pathway with challenging mechanics to test the participants’ knowledge of what they have previously learned. Step by step, this Adventure familiarizes the group with the use of Klaxoon's visual tools.

At the end of the Adventure, a link redirects the learners to a Board. This Board allows them to continue practicing and understand Klaxoon’s different features:

• Virtual sticky notes
• Questions to interact in real time with votes, word clouds, etc. 
• Dimensions to better organize their ideas,...

On the trainers' side, Caroline and her partner can easily follow the progress of each participant in this Adventure. They also easily find out about the progress of the whole group and their scores, and can identify concepts to be re-explained or deepened in the workshop.

The day before the session, we can make sure that everyone has read the Adventure or the Memo, if not, we can ask them to.

During the course: visual management to foster participation

On the day of the workshop, Caroline and her training partner meet the participants for the first videoconferencing session. In parallel, the training Board is structured in 3 parts, following the metaphor of a tree:

• The roots: discussion on experiences and personalities;
• The fruits: the concepts and inspiration to be drawn from the course;‍
• The trunk: the key ingredients of the training.

The “roots”: ideation and group discussion

The workshop begins with an idea sharing around each person's strengths and constraints in this training. On the Board, the participants simply add their ideas in the dedicated area, categorizing them with a color code: 

• Blue for strengths
• Green for constraints

During the ideation process, Caroline can easily help participants group and categorize their ideas in real time, in the dedicated area of the Board. When it’s done, she reveals the next area, previously hidden behind a colored rectangle.

The discussion then evolves to address the topics of skills and performance, and this first phase ends with a discussion about the learning cycle. 

This gives trainers insight into how participants work, and their preferred method of assimilating information. They can use these insights to tailor the rest of the course and, as Caroline says, "fuel the discussions and make them visual."

The “fruits” of the training

Once Caroline and her learners have identified the root elements of the course, they review its "fruits". This includes what they need to learn, as well as what resources they can draw on to do so.

The group then conducts another brainstorming session on what it is to be an air traffic controller - with the notion of knowledge, skills and attitudes.

Then, the trainers conclude with the presentation of an inspiring video, directly on Klaxoon. Throughout this first part, the group uses three main features on Board: 

• A color code to qualify the shared ideas: a constraint, a strength, a situation to avoid, a general idea, a situation to re-evaluate,...
• Dimensions, to know who sent which idea;
• Categories, to assess the importance of an idea: to watch, to capitalize, ...

The “trunk”: brainstorming and questioning the team

At the end of this first training period, the trainers leave an intermediate time of 4 to 5 days, allowing the trainees to work autonomously on the remaining activities.

The day after the first training period, Caroline and her partner publish a Memo in the group's Network. This Memo contains screenshots of their Board and what they have produced all together, as well as the next steps.

When they meet again for the second part of the training, the group members focus on the “trunk” of the tree, i.e. the ingredients of the training: 

1. Motivation: trainers ask Word Cloud Questions in the dedicated area of the Board. For example: "What are the obstacles that can discourage you in the training?" The answers to these Questions are consolidated in real time, and this allows the discussion to continue in a very smooth manner. 
2. Emotional process: participants brainstorm on how emotions can be involved in their training. This is an opportunity for the group to discuss different situations they have encountered and share their experiences, whether pleasant or not. 
3. Finally, Caroline and her partner propose a card game based on real situations, where the learners must explore ways to get out of an emotional spiral.

After the course: knowledge assessment and continuous improvement

When the two synchronous group sessions are over, the learners are free to return to the Board whenever they need to, so they can use or reuse the available resources. 

Then, to conclude the course, the trainers send them a Memo with Questions and Quizzes to check their knowledge, share captures of what they have done, and receive feedback on the course.

The result: reduced costs and increased efficiency 

For Caroline and her team, Klaxoon was a real asset throughout this course organized for air traffic controllers. "It gave us a boost of motivation and interactivity," adds the trainer. By using Board, the facilitators are sure not to miss any information, as the content is automatically saved and remains accessible to the whole group.

The feedback from learners is also very positive. "They find it nice and concrete" says Caroline, especially concerning the possibility to interact on the whiteboard at any time, even asynchronously. The group can easily and visually share their ideas, and everyone finds the way that suits them best to express themselves.

Finally, Klaxoon saves trainers a lot of time, and money! The teams save on travel costs to get to the training site, without reducing the effectiveness of the work done during the remote sessions. Overall logistics are simplified, with content that is still relevant to the needs of the learners.