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Online Training – LEARNING APPS

Even for those of us who love face-to-face training, online learning is here to stay. If you embrace the latest and great learning apps, and make use of the plethora of playful online games and activities, you may find a new appreciation for online training.

When the pandemic first hit, I asked our LinkedIn group for their best suggestions to keep virtual meetings or learning event fun. I synthesized the suggestions and broke them into several categories: Ways to Connect; Prepping Attendees; and Learning Apps. This post focuses on using an array of learning apps to promote participation and engage learners in any virtual meeting or online training event. I continue to update this post as new tools emerge. Here you’ll find the most complete and useful listing of all our favorite learning apps for online training. Whether you’re working from home, conducting online meetings, webinars, or facilitating remote learning, these tips will serve you well.

Fun Facilitation Apps

  • Make it a game – Flippity has a bundle of free tools that let you create a quick game that can be modified and played using Google™ Spreadsheets. Make:

    • Flippity Flashcards

    • Flippity Quiz Show
    • Flippity Spinning  Wheel Name Pick or Randomizer
    • FlippityBoard Game
    • Flippity MadLibs – Enjoy these Get-to-Know-You MadLibs from Trainers Warehouse
    • Flippity Manipulative
    • Flippity Matching Game
    • Flippity Timeline
    • Flippity Bingo
    • Flippity Badge Tracker
    • Flippity Leader Board
    • Flippity Word Search
    • Flippity Crossword
    • AND TONS MORE!
  • Pick a person – use the Wheel of Names app to select a participant at random. Just type in the names and press a button. Confetti appears as soon as a name as chosen. Great for awarding end-of-session prizes.
  • Personalized Emojis – allow remote participants to create their own personalized emoji using Bitmoji.
  • Pull out the phones- welcome participants to pull out their phone for a good reason! To the extent that phones are security blankets these days, the group will be happy for a reason to use it.
    • QR Codes – if you want to show the group something quick, create a QR code. There are tons of free QR-Code Generators online including this one.
    • Photo sharing – have the participants upload a favorite photo and share a bit of themselves. Most whiteboard apps have an image upload function.
    • Digital Diary – ask the group to write themselves a note or reminder using a favorite app like Notes, Google Keep, Reminders, or Penzu
  • Trainers Exchange – make a game with conversation starters. Select up to 6 themes on TrainersEXCHANGE, then click “play.” Players can opt for a randomly-selected conversation prompts, or choose their preferred category. It’s fun, easy, and gets the group talking. Answers can be discussed or written in a chat.

The Learning App for That

  • StreamAlive – StreamAlive integrates easily with Zoom and lets you add slides to a presentation, with which participants can easily interact. Playful interactive tools include Magic Maps to see where everyone is from, Power Polls, Word Clouds, Quick Questions, Winning Wheel, Group Games, Jumping Jackpot, Pulsing Points, and Crowd Choice. These are super interactive and great fun. A wonderful way to maintain engagement during training.
  • Talent Cards – Talent Cards are a “micro-learning app.” They let you create a set of cards from your training material (AI can even help with this part). Then you add users to the platform and invite them to download the app. In an instant, they’ll have learning tips easily accessible on their smartphones.
  • Kahoot – trainers use Kahoot to make learning interactive by integrating polls, questions, and the like into their slide decks. For $17-79/month/host, Kahoot has tons of functionality for teachers and trainers including tests, polls, puzzles, self-paced challenges, and team competitions. To play, participants join the game using a PIN, then use their phones to answer questions. The app lets you:
  1. Test understanding with assessment question types, such as true/false, puzzle, and type answer
  2. Create interactive presentations by adding slides or importing a presentation and including question types
  3. Increase audience participation with polls and brainstorming tools
  4. Link a series of self-paced kahoots to create corporate training courses
  5. Assign courses via email for learners to complete anywhere, anytime
  6. Send automatic reminders (coming soon!)

Varsha Manga attests, “I’ve been using Kahoot quizzes as my game to recap on the training of the day before. You design the quiz with multiple choice questions or true/ false. You also set how long you have to answer each question. It’s super fun, quick, and very competitive. After every question you get to see the leader board.”

  • Quizalize – Designed for teachers,  Quizalize lets educators engage their students with fun quizzes while instantly obtaining valuable mastery data. It automatically differentiates learning based on student performance and generates reports about how each student answered.

Whiteboards

Most online training and meeting platforms now have whiteboard functionalities. Use them! You’ll find that each has basic functions that let users add lines, boxes, text, sticky notes, and more.

  • Miro – a stand-alone system that has tons of templates, which you can use during a virtual meeting hosted on any platform. Miro‘s hundreds of templates are tailored for icebreakers, emotional check-ins, retrospectives and debriefs, brainstorming and ideation, team alignment, voting, and lots more. Free and paid subscriptions are available.
  • Mural – a stand-alone system that has 100+ ready-to-use templates that you can use during a virtual meeting on any platform, like Miro. Mural also includes features like a time, voting, private mode, celebration confetti, and more. And, it’s free.
  • Zoom – the whiteboard function within Zoom‘s meeting tool is easy to use and has a bunch of free templates. Not nearly as many as Miro and Mural, but they do include a range of icebreakers and team consensus tools. Zoom does have a free subscription, however, it limits meeting times to a maximum of 45 minutes. For longer meetings, go for a paid subscription.
  • Microsoft Teams –  a whiteboard function is available for free on this platform too. I haven’t used it, but others find it useful
  • Google – Google’s whiteboard tool is called Jamboard. The simple interface includes the usuals: pen, eraser, selection tool, sticky notes, image upload, circle, text box, and laser.
  • Padlet – this visual board lets you organize and share content. Padlets start out blank like a whiteboard and let you add text, images, videos and more. Share the padlet so others can chat and collaborate.

Course Creation and Content Development

  • iSpring – create courses and launch training in a few clicks using iSpring.
  • Slido – with Slido you can create polls, Q&As, WordClouds, Quizzes, and Surveys. Pricing ranges from $0 to $200 per month depending on your intended number of users.
  • Pixabay – find tons of free images using Pixabay
  • SimpleShow – SimpleShow is a super easy and affordable way to make animated videos
  • Bensound – pick up royalty-free music and sound files on Bensound. Download fees apply, but you don’t have to sort out and pay royalty fees, which can be hefty.
  • Canva – Canva is a free design tool that can be used for creating presentations, videos, and social media. It also allows for online team collaboration and LMS integration.

AI-Powered Training Tools – artificial intelligence for trainers

  • Gamma – Create a presentation, document, or webpage using Gamma‘s powerful AI generator
  • UMU – Umu provides AI-powered tools to create training exercises, videos, articles, infographics, audio narrations, word clouds, and shows.
  • Soapboxify – Soapboxify is an online tool that allows you to create virtual training sessions and face-to-face training presentations with accompanying materials (facilitator guide, PowerPoint slides, exercises, handout templates) in as little as 10 minutes. Soapbox’s AI-generated training content may not be perfect at the outset, users report that it has gotten them 50%-80% of the way to their final training presentation, saving hours’ or even days’ worth of development time.
  • Vyond Video Animation Software – Use Vyond to create professional-grade animations and videos to engage and educate your employees and customers.
  • And tons more… – There’s an AI for That has oodles more AI Apps.

Additional Resources for Virtual Meetings and Online Training

Read More

Hybrid Teaching Strategies that Should Stick

Connect:  Spice-Up Online Meetings STEP 1 – CONNECTION

Prep: Spice-Up Online Meetings STEP 2 – PREP ATTENDEES

Involve: Spice-Up Online Meetings STEP 3 – PARTICIPATION – learn more about MentaMeter, Poll Everywhere, CloudVote, and more.

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