What are your best practices when designing training that will be delivered using Microsoft Teams?

Like other organizations, we had to quickly moved in-person instructor led training to virtual instructor led training. Our organization uses Microsoft Teams as our delivery platform, and for meetings it works well. Our department delivers systems training that mixes systems practice in a simulated training environment with information on policies, procedures, and workflows. To deliver interactive systems/software training using Teams, we're struggling to find the balance of deliverying content and ensuring learners leave with a solid foundation of how to do something in system (ie: complete these fields, click the Accept button, enter XXX dollar amount).

Many of my colleagues have resorted to turning what once was an interactive 3 day in-person class into a 2 day lecture, with a majority of the "interaction" asking participants to type into Chat if they can see the screen, type into Chat if you're back from lunch.

What specific instructional design techniques have you incorporated using Microsoft Teams that you feel are successful?

4 Comments

Pamela Smith

December 15, 2020 09:01 PM

Internal meetings and training work well with Teams. However, using Teams for training outside of our organization has been hit or miss. Not all of our customers have headsets or monitors with sound cards. This has been a challenge when sharing screens when the customers logs in via phone. We are rewriting our requirements that customers must join via computer audio instead of phone.

Doreen Rambke-Hartz, CPTD

December 17, 2020 04:21 PM

Thanks Pamela. We have a challenge with having people join with computer audio because it bogs down the network, so we ask people to dial in on a phone and join the session on their computer. However, it leads to some people putting the call on hold instead of mute so we hear music.

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Mandy Deutsch

December 14, 2020 11:17 AM

We have been utilizing Microsoft Teams for our trainings and have found using the "share my screen" technique to be helpful. We will have participants share their screen if they are willing so we can assist them during training. Otherwise, we as the trainers are usually sharing our screen to walk participants through technical step by step processes. We like the chat feature and also have used the "forms" app for sending out little polls or questions through the chat channel too.

December 28, 2020 01:17 PM

Thank you Mandy!