The world around us has transformed rapidly due to which companies are focusing on employee and customer-centric solutions. Synchronous learning, which is the focus of companies, is an expensive proposition when organized offline, however it can be done online without incurring many costs through video conferencing software. But it has to be decided when it must be implemented because employees must devote their precious working hours. Synchronous eLearning includes allowing learners to connect with their trainers in real-time through video conferencing for clarifying their doubts. The students can also connect through trainers with emails who respond to them quickly. Many occasions warrant such training:

• Onboarding 

It is one such event where synchronous training is mandatory by the company HR (Human Resources). It’s because employees can have some concerns about policies and customized explanations are needed as per their queries. Employees must give their introduction simultaneously due to which VILT (Virtual Instructor Led Training) session is needed for onboarding. Also, when multiple employees must be onboarded at the same time, asynchronous sessions cannot be held for them. 

Employees can have friendly chats with each other during such intro sessions, talking about their job roles and providing full forms of company abbreviations. Managers should lead such sessions, where they should make sure that new employees are familiarized with the team and provided with clear descriptions of their job responsibilities. Hence, in such sessions since interacting with seniors is involved, they must be synchronous. 

The employees can be given all the benefits of classroom training without spending as much. The employees do not have to travel to a place to meet their teacher and the companies do not have to spend so much on booking hotels for them. Since the VILT sessions can be held on a large scale, they can be used to train more employees than in classrooms and at much lesser costs. 

• Departmental training 

Employees must be trained in their job profiles. It is necessary that employees are told about such sessions, and they are synchronous because if they have any troubles with their job roles, they can get them resolved. Employees also require a better understanding of new compliance rules, due to which they must be present at the same time. When a coterie of employees must be trained, it is better to provide them with synchronous eLearning so that none of them is oblivious to policy changes. It is because employees delay learning in asynchronous training, but any lapses in adherence to such rules can cost the company heavy fines. 

The employees also require certifications for them to be working as per laws. Such certifications are mandatory in many domains such as the arms sector, pharmaceutical, security, healthcare, and engineering, etc. Hence, when employees of the same department must be trained, then it is better that such training is organized in the form of synchronous sessions. 

• Product training 

Companies must focus on customer-centric training also because otherwise, they might refrain from using the product. In such training, customers must be taught about how to use new products and to clear any apprehensions they have about using them. The customers can be disseminated information in groups about any products which are relevant to them. This kind of technique is incredibly useful in product marketing for companies. In fact, during such sessions, new products can be given to customers and their feedback can be gathered about any problems faced during use. The clients also appreciate it when screencasts are shared with them about a product, enabling them to use it easily. For example, this kind of training is crucial when the company has introduced new software on the market. 

A company has sales partners too and hence product training is necessary for them to convince customers. This kind of training can help them reap more sales and profits, leading to a mutually beneficial association. 

Product training must also involve sales reps, who must be shown demos which can help them to deal with customers in a better way. 

Attendance tracking is easier with synchronous eLearning

Another advantage of synchronous elearning over classroom sessions is that the participants can enter any time without disturbing the trainer.

The trainers can know during the meeting if an attendee has left because a notification is generated. If they have disabled sounds to be played when a participant joins/leaves the meeting, no noise is produced and hence the session is not disturbed. The trainer can, however, make sure that he knows which participants had left the class by tracking attendance later.

If the trainer has a doubt that a learner is doing some other activity during the session, the former can send him a prompt to unmute. But the learner might still not unmute himself, in which case the trainer can unmute him provided he has enabled the “enable pre-approved consent to be unmuted” option, allowing the former to unmute the learner without taking his consent.

Video conferencing software such as Zoom allows you to check attendance for invitees who had confirmed that they would be attending the call. But to enable this feature you must have anyone of the Zoom Business, Education, or Enterprise accounts. You can easily manage when the attendance of participants during the session because you can search for their attendance during a specific time duration chosen by you for a maximum time of 12 months after the meeting was conducted. The software produces the report including the times at which the participants join and leave the session, letting you know how much time they were in the session.

If the students/learners lose internet connectivity this is also recorded because due to weak connection, they are no longer present in the meeting. Such attendance reports can be used by trainers to detect which learners have weak attention spans and how training content can be modified to make them stay in the session for a longer time.