It’s safe to say that remote working is here to stay. Because of this, virtual training has become essential. But how you create your interactive virtual classroom will determine its success. Webinars and web conferencing tools like Microsoft Teams or Zoom are often thought of as a way to replicate in-person traditional training experiences. But these experiences lack many of the interactive and hands-on characteristics that would exist offline, both for instructors and trainees.

It’s time to expect more from virtual classroom software. There are now plenty of technological solutions that can help. Here are a few ways that technology can support you when creating a virtual classroom.

Over-the-shoulder functionality

In a physical classroom, an instructor might wish to peer over a trainee’s shoulder to view their screen. For instance, sometimes they might want to engage with a trainee following a request for assistance. This would be done without involving other class members. Webinars cannot facilitate this. The trainee would have to share their screen with the whole group.

Virtual training tools can recreate real-life training experiences where trainees are able to raise hands virtually, chat with the instructor one-to-one, and engage in classroom chat. If a student requests assistance during a session, the instructor can easily access the student’s environment without the need to grant privileges or share screens.

Engaging + interactive = hands-on

Where participants are learning to use enterprise systems, administration, or development tools, showing rather than telling is key to knowledge retention. But to do this, it requires safe, stable, and seamless replications of IT environments for technical hands-on training. This takes a tremendous amount of time and resources when organizing virtually.

The next generation of virtual classroom platforms can facilitate this. For instance, CloudShare allows instructors to fire up training environments with all the necessary configurations in minutes. It also makes it simple to set up, clone, and change complex computing environments on the fly, so that training can be tailored in real-time to meet the requirements of the class or for particular trainees.

Monitor usage with analytics

To provide engaging virtual classroom experiences, you need to monitor users’ activity. Whether it is to optimize training schedules or curriculums or to see how trainees are actually using your virtual classroom software – you need built-in analytics to help provide real-time data.

When investing in virtual classroom technology, look to find a solution with an analytics module built-in. CloudShare’s analytics provide a direct view into usage trends, activity and growth. You can also identify which environments are the most used, as well as metrics around costs, so that you can optimize this crucial factor.

These are just a few areas to consider. To learn more about creating a virtual classroom and the benefits of virtual classroom platforms, get in touch with the CloudShare team.