Remote Workshops: 21st Century Training

What is a Workshop?

Workshops are activities that are highly interactive and apply specific training/teaching to actual projects in your business. This results in a much deeper understanding for participants and also generates specific output or deliverables that can be applied to real business needs.

Workshops are team-based and project-based. They require co-operative planning between Livonia Technical Services (LTS) and your firm and are very flexible in terms of presentation and the number of people that can be trained in a single workshop.

Remote Workshops

The use of remote meeting software (Zoom, Google Meet or another app) makes it possible to train people in different locations at the same time. In addition, it doesn’t require travel expenses for the LTS facilitator, and so total training costs are lower than with live, face-to-face training.

Client Responsibilities

While LTS will work with clients to plan a remote workshop, there are some things that client firms must take responsibility for. These include:

• Choosing teams and projects, and properly preparing teams for the first session
• Ensuring that adequate bandwidth and stable internet connections are available
• Making use of output or deliverables to benefit your business

LTS Responsibilities

• LTS will provide all training content—material suitable as a working reference for the topic—in electronic form that may be freely distributed to all participants
• A highly experienced facilitator will lead all on-line sessions and review team results
• LTS will assist clients in selecting teams and projects for each workshop

Format & Times for Workshops

Most workshops require 10-14 hours of on-line meeting time. The specific number of hours will vary by workshop topic and specific client needs.

LTS has found that it’s difficult for participants to maintain the level of concentration needed for active learning for more than 2 hours per on-line session. As a result, each workshop will consist of several 1-2 hour sessions that will explain the ideas that participants need to learn.

Each session includes an off-line assignment for each team. These assignments, which should take 1-2 hours to complete, will then be reviewed at the start of the following session. LTS will be available by either email or electronic meeting format to aid teams in completing these assignments.

A final question and answer session will conclude the workshop.

Scheduling of sessions and the total time frame for a workshop will be developed jointly between LTS and the client. In general, completing a full schedule of  sessions for one workshop should take about two weeks. This can be accelerated or stretched out, but we have found that a two week schedule leads to good results.