So Why Did We Start to Train Via Videoconference?

So I think I have provided enough history about my company. The Claims Training department consists of 7 trainers in MA, 2 trainers in AZ and one manage.
The reason why I am teaching via videoconferencing is because our main Claims office is in Massachusetts and we had smaller offices in CA, OH, OR, AZ and NY.

During the last five years, the seven training instructors have either travelled to our other locations or trained over the internet on a platform called WebEx. Learning how to teach a class on line was challenging, but I love it. You can really be creative and have a lot of fun while training. Students seem more relaxed as they are at the comfort of their own desks, at their own computers and don’t need to travel to a training facility. The trainers received their Synchronous Design certificates after an eight week training class. It was great training and it really improved our training product. To give you an example of the differences between classroom and on-line learning, when you are teaching in a classroom, it is suggested that you change the activity every 15 minutes to keep the students engaged. In the online event, it is necessary to change the activity every five minutes. You can understand the need for this if you are the typical multi-tasker. Students are on their computers with the distraction of e-mail and the internet just a click away. To keep them from being distracted, the instructor has to incorporate quizzes, polls, games, and other activities into the online learning experience.

This past year we consolidated our Ohio, Oregon, and Arizona office into one office in Gilbert, Arizona. The plans are for that office to be a mirror image of the Claim facility in MA. This means over the next five years we will need to hire and train between 500 – 600 claims professionals. The office currently has about 70 employees of which 50 are new hires since December.

As I mentioned, we have two trainers in AZ that have been hired since December. However, they cannot handle all of the training classes themselves, as they need to get up to speed on our already developed modules.

The company understands that the training effort will be huge and it didn’t want all of the travelling expenses involved with sending a trainer to AZ for classes. In addition, since our parent company is located in Spain, the company decided to invest in teleconference meeting and training rooms. We have one teleconference training room in MA and one in AZ at a cost of about $100,000. They invested in the best equipment to make the training effective, even though the teacher and the students may not be in the same room.

It is weird to say the least. In each training room, there are two cameras and two flat screen televisions. Each room has a 65 inch and a 50 inch television. At first it was quite intimidating to see yourself on camera, but I quickly got used to it. There were other challenges than worrying about how I looked on TV. More on that a little later.