One of our marketing taglines goes like this:

Still using meeting software for your training needs? It’s time you …

I cut it short just where it starts to pitch our product because this is not the place for it. We have seen and still see hundreds and thousands of trainers use tools like Gotomeeting, Gotowebinar, Gototraining, and Webex to conduct Live online training. It was not a bad idea when it all started. These tools were heavily optimized to ensure the video feed, the screen sharing, and the audio worked without any problems. More so because the tools were originally built for Businesses to run meetings.

Since globalization, businesses needed such solutions to connect with customers, vendors, or even employees who could not meet in person due to geographical constraints. Because these meetings would mean serious business, customers of these tools needed a flawless experience. So companies like Cisco and Citrix went all out and put technology to work and got that experience.

It did not take long for people to get inspired from the idea of online meetings and apply that in training and education. Especially in the professional corporate training space this felt like a natural way forward because we are talking about people who would likely have got used to similar experience with their business meetings. More importantly, for organizations this meant savings in costs, and for the professionals this gave freedom from travel.

The point of inflection came in when training companies started to pitch this as a better alternative to classroom training. Traditional training companies found huge success in classroom training and they latched on to Live online for obvious savings in venue costs. This would be a win - win - win situation for the training company, the corporate sponsoring the training, and the professional attending the training.

Well, that sounds like a fairy tale! Why did I decide to pick holes in it? Having found success in the online meeting space, companies like Cisco, Citrix, and even Adobe now started to believe there is a market big enough in the training space and wanted to grab it with both hands. Very smartly, they made minor tweaks to the meeting tools and started to brand them for training and pushed them into the training market. These tools have the color and the smell of a training solution, but inherently their DNA is of a meeting solution.

For the professional trainers embracing these solutions, this meant they had to run their training more in the lines of meetings or at best as webinars. We see a growing frustration in these trainers about not being able to run the class the way they liked. Below are some of the common points of frustration among professional trainers listed by them in no order of priority:

Painful software installations - most solutions either use java or some technology that needs to install something upon the first use. For the trainer it is fine to bear with as it is a one time thing. However providing support for the students who attend classes is a big pain area. Again, this is where the DNA of these solutions gets exposed. In organizations this support is handled by the IT personnel, so the real end user is not pained by these as much.

Structuring the training - a meeting solution does not allow you to structure your course; so you have to pick up an LMS and then connect the webinar solution to it. Not impossible, but cumbersome for sure. 

Clunkiness of the software - at times the software is very sluggish and you keep clicking on the same option unsure if the earlier clicks were effective. 

Test of patience - the time it takes to get into a class and get a recording in the form that you want is enormous.

Recording of class - once you get the video, making it available to participants is a pain unless you can afford solutions like Wistia. 

High bandwidth requirements - on lower bandwidths there is a common issue of the video/audio breaking off. 

Lag - finally, an irritating issue that comes with traditional meeting solutions is the lag that people experience. This is more pronounced when you get your participants use a different phone line for audio.

So, I am back to my question. Do you train Live online? Have you found your mojo working with these tools yet?

Posted on Fri, 05 Jun 2015 by Naren