Adobe Connect, Webex and Microsoft Lync are amongst the tools that are used to deliver virtual training and they all have support for VOIP (the technology that allows you to “hold a telephone conversation through your computer”).
But is VOIP always best? Certainly it’s easier to have everything “under one roof” as you and the participants only have to log into a single system to attend the training. Where I work we predominantly use Webex to deliver virtual training, however, the VOIP support has been disabled. In order to hear each other, everyone dials into a teleconference.
How 1990’s. you may be thinking, but in fact, it has it’s benefits. Depending on the number of users and the network infrastructure, audio delivered via VOIP may be “choppy”, i.e. cutting out. Another advantage of having separate audio is that if somebody’s computer crashes, they can still hear what you are saying and can communicate to you that they are unable to see what you are doing.
Great post Mike and it is something that we frequently get asked on our COLF courses. I have shied away from telephones because of the cost but to be honest I’m not totally sure what they would be for say a 90 min course for 8 people. Have you any estimated costs for that?
Colin
Don’t forget Skype is perfect for such situations.
I regularly use Skype both as presenter and attendee. It’s either free or extremely cost effective if you have any of Skype’s call inclusive subscriptions, which I do. Even international calls are included.
You have up to 25 people in a Skype Conference Call and you will have integrated text chat and file transfer too.
A great tip for an ongoing course is to create a Skype Group for the attendees, this allows you to connect with all attendees with a single click.
Great tip Elaine. I’m sure that some corporate companies *cough cough no names* are a bit wary of things like Skype but now it’s owned by Microsoft maybe they’ll relent (a free Skype account with every MS Office licence?)
The company has a global contract with a teleconferencing provider (Intercall) but I don’t know what the costs are.
They do provide a toll-free number that we can dial into but although this is free, in terms of not being charged back to the person who makes the call, ultimately there is a cost to the company (we explain it as similar to a reverse charge call)
“Another advantage of having separate audio is that if somebody’s computer crashes, they can still hear what you are saying”.
Today I had the opposite happen. Twice. In 2 separate training courses, the teleconference system just cut me off. Each time, it was a message in the webex text chat “Mike, we can’t hear you” that prompted me to look at the phone and notice that the line had gone.
I must be very old fasioned but if I am training a large group of people I do prefer to use a phone plus Webex or Lync. Any bandwidth issues are exacerbated using VOIP and if your trainees experience this, they are more likely to be turned off the whole online training “vibe”. That said if I need to have a quick one to one meeting with a colleague, Lync voice and video is pretty cool.