Hybrid Learning: Improving the Virtual Elements

Welcome, you made it to the Secret Society of

Success! In this not-so-secret podcast, we interview L&D

changemakers about how they approach the evolving corporate

environment and cultivate their own careers. We hope that from

their stories, you find lessons and inspirations to make

yourself, your people and your organization's more successful.

In this first season, we're exploring topic of hybrid

what that means at different organizations, why it

is increasingly important, and how L&D leaders can invest in

the right resources to best leverage it. Today, we're

discussing what good hybrid learning looks like. Cindy

Huggett, author and virtual training expert is joining us to

discuss definitions what most organizations are doing today

and where L&D leaders need to invest in order to make sure

their hybrid programs actually achieve their learning and

business outcomes. Cindy, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me, Tom.

So Cindy, you know, before we jump into the

podcast itself, could you just share a little bit about your

background?

Sure. I think the thing your listeners will be

most interested in is that I've been doing hybrid and virtual

learning for the last 20 years. I was working inside an

traveling but still provide training to my global audience.

So I started using a really early version of WebEx to

provide training. And I ended up going out on my own thinking I'd

do some HR and training consulting. And I kept getting

asked Cindy, how are you doing this virtual thing? And so I

started writing and speaking and teaching and consulting on how

to do virtual well. Needless to say, the last two years have

been very busy. And it's been a lot of fun to work with clients

around the globe and helping them do virtual training and

hybrid learning really well.

That's great. I'd like to start to just level set

this conversation with some definition. So let's start with

hybrid learning. What does that mean to

you, Cindy?

Well, for me, hybrid learning in a workplace

setting means a synchronous event, a live event, where some

of the participants are in person, and some of the

participants are remote. And I think it's important to start

the conversation here, Tom, because as I've been talking and

researching and writing about hybrid for the past several

years, in just the last few months, I've had a number of

people say things like, Well, what about the assignment? Or

what about the self led part? And it's led me to realize that,

especially in a university setting or a college setting,

that in that context, hybrid means a curriculum that has some

synchronous and some asynchronous. So when we say the

word hybrid, it's really important to find out what's

your definition of hybrid? Are you talking about a curriculum a

journey? Are you talking about a single event that happens to

have an audience in different locations? And so I refer to

hybrid, as that latter definition, the synchronous

event that has audiences, some in person, some remote, and

let's let's refer to hybrid that way.

That's great. Blended learning. What does that

mean to you?

Oh, there's definitely overlap, because

blended learning in a workplace setting is a journey. It's a

curriculum that happens to have some self led and some in person

or instructor led could be online, and more likely than

not, is online. But it's this intentionally designed

curriculum that has multiple modalities. So for example, if

I'm learning how to be a customer service agent, I might

do some self study on my own, I might go to some classes, I may

do some practice and some coaching. And it's the

combination of all of that, that creates the dedicated blended

learning curriculum. Now, like we were just talking about in a

university setting, they call that hybrid, but we in the

workplace or corporate learning setting are going to call that

blended.

And the last one I like to dive into is hybrid

classroom. What does that mean to you?

So it's an interesting term, hybrid

classroom. There are certain vendors out there and especially

recently who have become quite popular who offer technology

packages that are dedicated hybrid classrooms. It may be a

camera or a camera bar, or maybe an audio system, or a wall of

video screens where the hybrid classroom a dedicated room that

makes doing hybrid easy. One small example of that is zoom

rooms. When we think of the product zoom that we're even

using right now to record this conversation, we think of it as

a synchronous event, there's a product, Zoom rooms, most of the

major software vendors who create virtual or video

conferencing are coming out with this type of technology. So when

I think of a hybrid classroom, I think of a dedicated classroom

that makes doing hybrid learning or having hybrid meetings

easier.

If my notes are correct, for the purposes of our

conversation, hybrid learning is a live event, right, where you

have an audience that might be physically in front of you and

an audience also might be distributed. Whereas blended

learning, that's really about your curriculum. It's the

curriculum journey, which is different than an actual live

event. And then the classroom, as you put it, is really kind of

a product or a tool or a location that's designed to make

facilitating that hybrid learning as easy as possible.

Absolutely. And the one thing I would add for

the hybrid classroom, even though there are dedicated

vendors who are creating certain rooms that make it easy, you can

also do it on your own. If you have any conference room, right,

any conference room where you set up with a laptop, or an

audio connection, or a video connection, you can make that a

hybrid classroom, but it's a dedicated space.

I love that idea of a DIY hybrid classroom, I

think we'll get back to that later in our conversation. So as

you shared with the audience, this is your space. This is your

area of expertise. It's where you've been working and living,

research, you know, in the state of virtual training report that

you've shared, sounds like most organizations who say that

they're doing hybrid learning, are really delivering classroom

training to a blend of people remote, kind of that your

definition of hybrid learning, right? They're calling it

blended, some are calling it hybrid. I want to really, really

focus the entire discussion on how do you maximize the

delivery? In that setting? How do you make it as effective as

possible in terms of achieving that business outcome? So first,

maybe you've got an L&D professional who's trying to

balance that decision of, Hey, should I deliver this with a

hybrid learning event? Or should I deliver this with in person?

What are some of the benefits that they'll get from choosing

So I have a big smile on my face. Because back

the hybrid?

Templates book, I wrote about hybrid learning, and I actually

wrote, don't do it, I wrote, this is something that if you

That's great. It's a... It's not the entire I think

can avoid it, avoid it. And if though you have to do it, then

here's how you do it well. Here's here's what we can do.

my recommendation that if you have an audience that is in

person together, co located, and you have an audience that's

remote, if you have the time, the resources, the energy, the

ability to have let's take a training class topic, any

training class topic, and to do an in person version of it, and

to do an online or virtual version of it, do that. Now the

reality is most organizations don't have those type of

resources. We're not able to say, "I want to offer the

management development program in person. And I want to offer

the management development program online." And so the

reality of how we're working today with work hasn't stopped,

but work location has changed. Some people are in an office,

some are remote, some are always from this point forward, going

to be remote or have the choice of whether or not they're

remote, you have a good strong internet connection and a

laptop, or access to the programs you need. You can work

from anywhere. So when we talk about maximizing what should we

do to embrace hybrid learning is let's recognize just like you

can work from anywhere you can learn from anywhere, and we're

going to get deeper into more of the how, but recognize that we

want to allow our remote audience those who are working

remotely by choice or for whatever reason that is that

they can participate in the learning program as well. We now

have the technology that allows that to happen. Facilitators who

can get the skills to do that well designed that can be

effective for those dual audiences so we can embrace it.

We just need to recognize that it is a dedicated effort on

behalf of many stakeholders to make it worthwhile

most people were expecting. But I love that I think that the,

you know, the reality is that, you know, as you said, faced

with other options, this wouldn't be your first choice.

But faced with the reality of many people's circumstances,

given the fact that much of the workforce or some parts of most

people's workforces will now be and likely remain remote for

some period of time. But you've got an audience, you've got to

be able to reach. Right. And I think that now, as you've you so

beautifully said, the benefits are a growing skill set and

toolset, to be able to do that and deliver it well, in a way

that's impactful, that creates an outcome. So let's get into

that. But I want to start, maybe not with what works. But what do

you see that doesn't work? I feel like sometimes that can be

a more actionable takeaway. So what are some of the big

mistakes you see, in hybrid learning delivery?

I see two big mistakes in hybrid learning

delivery. And the first one is facilitators who pay attention

to the audience right in front of them if they're in the room,

they're co located. And yes, they have the remote audience,

and they know that they're there. But whether consciously

or subconsciously, they don't put the emphasis on them. Which

really leads me to the second mistake. And when we think about

preparation for an event, many years ago, when we only did in

person events, your preparation was on your content, your

preparation was on what's the topic, whether my outcomes, what

are the activities? Are we really focused in on that. And

then when everyone went virtual, when when we started doing

virtual training, the preparation was on the

technology on what software will I use? Does everyone have a

webcam or headset? Right? both hardware and software, the

technology was the focus, content was still important, but

the focus became technology. Now that we're in a hybrid learning

environment, where we have audiences in different

locations, the focus of our preparation needs to be on the

participant experience. We with empathy, think through what's

the audience experience going to be like our in person audience,

are they going to have devices to connect in? What's that going

to be like in the room? Can we get them on camera? My remote

What's the experience going to be like for them? Are

we going to ask them to be on camera? Are we going to modify

activities to ensure that they feel included? And again, it's

not that the technology is not important? It's not that the

content is not important, but our shift in focus. So the

mistake that I see made is not shifting focus of where our

preparation needs to be, and especially as hybrid is new for

many organizations. We're getting used to it the

preparation that goes into it being successful. There needs to

be emphasis on that.

I think that that specific takeaway on shifting

the focus to the participant experience is a fantastic one.

Let me ask you one follow up question. The first mistake is

the facilitator, the facilitator, not giving the

right focus or engagement with the remote audience versus the

audience, right for what can facilitators do? What are some

tips or tricks you might have for them to try to ensure

they're better balancing addressing their complete

audience?

That's a great question. And there are a couple

of things that facilitators can do when they've got a hybrid

audience. Perhaps, first of all, we should just call out the

assumption that the facilitator is in the room that they're co

located because in some organizations, it may be the

facilitator who's remote. So if you have that scenario, you want

to designate an in room moderator or somebody who is co

located with your audience, and they can be your eyes and ears.

So let's assume that the facilitator is in the classroom

in with the co located participants. What are some

things that they can do number one, keep a remote first

mentality? By that, I mean, if there's a question that's asked

that they get the remote audience to respond first, or if

they're using the camera to present a short segment that

they're looking at the camera screen as opposed to looking at

the in person audience. It's not that you never look at the in

person audience but we pay attention to the camera lens and

we focus our eyes so that the remote audience feels like

they're part of the conversation. If in person

audience members starts speaking to one another, and they can't

be heard on the audio, the facilitator could either pause

that conversation to make sure there's a microphone or some

other, perhaps repetition of what's being said. So the remote

audience feels like they're there. And to, to follow on a

sports analogy, when you think about any type of big sporting

event that you're watching on television, that you're not

actually there, you listen to the announcers, who are talking

about it. And the goal of the announcer, is to help you feel

like you're there. They describe the crowd, they describe the

scene, they describe what's happening, they use colorful

language, to paint the picture of what's happening. And that's

the same idea of what an in person facilitator can do to

help the remote audience feel like they're there. For example,

if there's a long pause, the facilitator could say something

like, "Jane is getting ready to load some slides up," or "we're

waiting for Adam to come back into the room," just that idea

of helping the remote audience feel like they're there. Tom, I

could keep going. I actually teach a workshop in how to

facilitate hybrid events. And hopefully, that gives you an

idea of a few quick things that take a little extra intention, a

little extra effort, but go a long way to helping the remote

audience feel like they're part of the class feel like they're

part of the learning experience.

Cindy, that's great. I love the energy, and I

love some of the takeaways. Moving on. So we've talked about

some of the common mistakes, we've talked about some things

that you could do to address them. So let's say you've got an

L&D department there, they know they're going to be serving a

population that is a mix of in person and remote learners. Why

should they consider adding other content delivery methods

besides just the hybrid learning event into the mix to move

towards a more blended model? Why is that something that they

should consider given the context in our audience?

Tom, I think that's the golden question for

us to answer because our goal as learning departments is to help

our audience learn, right, that's an obvious statement. But

the reason we do any learning intervention in a training

program, any sort of formalized learning effort is to help our

audience to do something better to learn a new skill. And if we

want that to happen, then we need to be thinking about the

best way for them to learn. In my work in virtual training,

something I hear over and over and over again, and I've heard

it for years, is that "when my participants are multitasking,

they don't answer questions." They're not paying attention,

right? It sounds different in different contexts. But the

general idea is how do we engage our remote audiences. And

whether it's virtual, whether it's hybrid, we have when we

think about the workforce today, a very capable set of adults who

can do work and can can do work on their own right, the the

future of remote and hybrid work is really asynchronous, allowing

people to do things on their own. We've got overloaded

plates, we've got overloaded schedules, we have so much. And

part of the reason why people are multitasking or not engaging

is that we're bringing them together for a live event, when

what our goal is of trying to get them to learn what we're

trying to do they could do on their own. Like, for example,

are we bringing people together just to lecture ask them, why

not record that and let them watch it on their own time, and

then bring them together for q&a, bring them together for

some practice, or discussion or dialogue about that topic? Or

instead of bringing them together to do a demonstration,

could we create a job aid? Could we create an asynchronous

elearning? And I think, most learning departments, we need to

think about how much learning can we create, that our learners

can do on their own or in small cohorts, according to time that

works for them in their work schedule. And I'm not saying

make them do work on I don't know, after hours or the middle

of the night, but things if this is important for their job and

we're building an accountability, then we want to

honor and respect the fact that they're adult learners and that

they can take accountability for learning and so we're bringing

them together, for collaboration for communication, for

discussion, for practice, for feedback and we're making it

count. So to answer your original question, why should a

learning department be looking at creating other assets blended

learning, because blended learning is largely self led

asynchronous where we bring people together for the

collaboration in the conversation.

The interesting thing about that, that I was

writing down as you're sharing your thoughts is it's it

actually goes back to the biggest mistake that you

mentioned just a moment ago, right? You mentioned, the second

biggest mistake is not putting the participant experience

first, specifically in the hybrid learning environment, and

that in that event, where you've got a mix of remote and in

person learners, but it almost sounds like you're saying, if I

could make a leap here, the biggest mistake is not putting

the participant experience first, also, as it relates to

content design, because that's what I took from your, from your

answer there. It's really about understanding, hey, you've got

to a group of adults, you've got to deliver them content to

achieve an outcome that fits in their schedule at the time that

they need it. And maybe part of the way to think about that is

think about their experience with the content first. And is

this the right content experience, not just as direct

classroom experience?

Absolutely, absolutely.

So I want to go back, you know, you are the

expert. Of course, as they say, I want to go back to two teams

that are kind of doubling down on delivering training to a

hybrid group. So there, they know that they're going to

deliver hybrid learning, they're going to do it consistently,

they're going to invest in it, because they know they have this

distributed workforce, it's going to be a mix of in person,

and remote. So what I'd like to do is understand as that team

exists today, where do they invest the most? Right, so I'll

give you some categories, I'd like you to try to prioritize

these three categories, where are some terms of investment for

the L&D team. So one would be course development. The second

would be technology that are better helps facilitate the

delivery of a hybrid learning environment, or the third would

be facilitation skills for the people who are actually

facilitating. So if you had to prioritize, you know, an order

of importance, one, two, or three, because, you know, not

everybody can do all three, unfortunately, how would you

prioritize those? And then how would you maybe help the

audience think about how they should in the context of their

business?

It's so interesting that you asked this

question, because in my annual State of Virtual Training

report, one of the questions that I've asked over the last

few years is, "what do you wish your organization did

differently about virtual training?" Over and over and

over again, I hear, "I don't have enough resources." And I

hear that from designers, I hear that from facilitators, I hear

that in multiple contexts. But the idea of resources for a

designer that means I need time to develop training, develop

learning experiences that are significant and meaningful and

valuable. In other words, I can't just take a classroom

training program and a slide deck and slap it into an online

learning program and call it like, there's the... I need

resources, I need time for do that. So that's a very important

priority. The facilitators will say, "I need time to learn the

technology, you're going to put me in a room with these

technical components, I need to learn how they work, I need

practice, I need the time to upskill myself." And they're

also going to say we need to equip our participants, they

need webcams or they need quality headsets, or they need

better internet connectivity. Because the participant who

can't stay connected to a learning program is obviously

not learning. They're spending all their time and energy trying

to just reconnect to the program. So the answer is

resources. The resources that matter are going to depend on

your organizational structure. Do you have a team of

instructional designers or are you asking facilitators to do

the design? What kind of infrastructure do you have for

your participants? So when you think about the the

infrastructure of the resources, if I had to pick a priority, I

would invest in your facilitators, they're the ones

that can make it work in any learning environment, but they

need the skills to effectively engage remote audiences and in a

hybrid environment to effectively engage both

environments. We also want them to be so comfortable with the

technology platforms where you using. For example, if they're

using a collaboration whiteboard, we want them to be

very skilled and able to explain it to participants so that

participants can just use the whiteboard for the activity, and

not be bogged down in trying to learn how the whiteboard works,

right? It's not about the whiteboard, it's about the

learning that's behind it. So if I had to prioritize facilitator

upskilling facilitator technology, the next place I

would go is to look at are my participants equipped with what

they need? And do my designers have the skills and the time and

the resources to create good quality, interactive learning?

I like that's Cindy, I really appreciate that.

I think that that's a path that I think would make most people

successful. So I appreciate the the really clear framework and

focus there. I do want to get back to something that we talked

about way earlier that I loved as a term. I did want to make

sure we picked your brain on before we wrapped up this

conversation today. The DIY hybrid classroom. Let's let's

talk about that a little bit. How do we how do we get you on

HGTV doing DIY hybrid classrooms?

Great idea. How fun would that be? So when we

think about the equipment that you need, number one clear

audio, creating an audio connection where everybody can

be heard, and you've probably seen on TV, maybe work for an

organization that has a room where there's a microphone and

every seat. And that is a fantastic yet rare luxury to

have. But we do want to think about where's the microphone

placement? Where do we pick up the audio, number one. Number

two, video? Do we have a camera in the room that everybody who

is in person can be seen. And if not? Well, we have mobile

devices, we have tablets, we have laptops with built in

cameras, where are we going to position them? Now thinking

about room positioning, if you place the camera at the front of

the room, and you have a presenter or facilitator or

speaker who is standing at the front of the room, it's probably

going to pick up the back of their head. So thinking about

the positioning of the camera where that camera is going to

pick up anyone who is speaking or presenting. So perhaps you

put it in the back of the room, or there are cameras that will

swivel and turn based on where the audio is coming from.

There's some pretty cool technology out there that could

be employed or used. But can it take time to set up the audio

and the video correctly? Now, I believe it's important that

anyone who's in the room, a participant who's joining co

located together has the same device or the same access to the

technology that the remote learners do. So if I'm inviting

learners and participants in person, I'm going to ask them to

bring their laptop or bring their mobile device so that they

can respond to a poll question or type in chat or use the

electronic whiteboard. The catch is they can't connect to audio,

if they connect to the audio, we're gonna have echo problems

go lower. So little bit of a tech check, making sure that

it's just one audio connection in the room, and then everyone

else on equal playing field, but the same tools that everyone

who's connected into the hybrid learning will have.

So the DIY hybrid classroom sounds like making

sure you've got your clear audio, camera, both quality and

positioning. And then if you've got if you need to be

resourceful with that, you know, don't be afraid of the good old

cell phone, right. And then last, which I like as a

takeaway, because I don't think it's always emphasized enough,

I'm even thinking back to a hybrid learning session that I

did for one of my teams in December. And that's the

universal access to the technology. I think that's a

great one. I think that ultimately, going back to your

earlier takeaway, which is putting the experience of the

remote learner first, you can't really do that if you don't have

the full classroom engaged in the same places do the same

technology. So I love that tip. I think that's a really good

one. Cindy, before we wrap up, are there any closing thoughts

or ideas or takeaways that you'd like to leave the audience with?

You know, as it relates to the goal of delivering good hybrid

learning?

Tom, I can think of so many things I would love

to keep talking about. But I know we have limited amount of

time. And I think I would leave the listener with this. And that

is to remember it's about the learning and it's about the

learner. And if we remember that if we put ourselves in their

shoes and think through what do they need to learn and how can

we help enable that learning, then we're going to create

value. And that's our goal as facilitators, trainers,

presenters, designers, anybody in an l&d department, our goal

is to add value to our learners. And so let's make sure we're

doing that regardless of the environment that we're working

in

Create value for your learners. That's a perfect

closing statement. I love that. Cindy, if our audience wants to

learn more about you, where can they find you?

The best place is to go to my website, which is

Cindy huggett.com. I'm sure we'll put it in the show notes.

I have a resource library out there full of different

resources that are available, you can download, I facilitate

workshops, I write books, I have a new book coming out later in

2022, called the Facilitators Guide to Immersive, Blended and

Hybrid Learning. So you want to be on the lookout for that. And

I can't wait for everyone to see the resources that I've been

working on specifically related to that. You'll also find me on

Twitter and Linked In. Cindyhugg is my tagline. And you'll find

me out there in both places.

Cindy, thank you so much for your time, it's been

great. We'll definitely have links to all your social

avenues, as well as the website in the show notes. And thank you

so much for your time. I hope this has been very impactful. We

appreciate it. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day.

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