I’ve worked in the training space my entire career. With more training programs moving online, I’m often asked at the beginning of a cohort:
“How do I stand out virtually?”
While most of the advice carried over from how courses were conducted in the past, my > answer has changed significantly over the past year.
Here’s the agenda
- Participate early and often
- Check your syntax
- How to ask questions
- Lab
- Supplemental Resources
- The Mentals
Participate early and often
The person that unmutes their mic is the most memorable!
By adding to the conversation early, I can guarantee your instructor will appreciate you. Sometimes you need to take the onus to be the person who breaks the silence. I’ve noticed that the groups with greater communication tend to have better results.
Some simple strategies to employ are:
- Utilize all of the communication tools - use the chat, use the raise hand feature, collaborate with others
- Put topics in your own words - it’s one thing to digest the information. It’s another to say what you learned.
- Be okay with saying the wrong thing - you remember the things you say wrong so much more than the stuff you immediately get. Also, training is the time for you to be wrong. I’ve never thought less of a student that got an answer wrong.
There is only an upside to active participation. Your trainers can go from instructors to advocates.
Check your syntax
I’m an instructor for a cybersecurity boot camp, and “check your syntax” is my motto for the first month of class. I’ve noticed that we’ve been conditioned to skim documentation rather than poring over the material.
Read carefully! Finish the activity files all the way through to the end. It’ll help you avoid that nightmare scenario from elementary school. It’s that one handout that has a list of instructions to draw all over the paper, and the final instruction is to ignore all of the previous steps and write your name at the top of the paper.
If you read carefully, you’ll begin building a strong foundation to build on.
How to ask questions
There’s no such thing as a dumb question, but some questions can benefit you more than others.
Put questions in your own words. Since most questions are asked in a chat, I’ve seen many “What does this mean?” (Insert screenshot of the question).
When you CTRL+C and CTRL+V the question verbatim, you’re not engaging that part of your brain trying to understand. If you put the question in your own words, it’ll help shape your thought process, which will make a much bigger impact.
Lab
Hands-on tends to be the best way to commit things to memory. If you can recreate a lab, that’s great. If you’re inspired to create, that’s even better. While creating, document. Once your document, be sure to share your work.
Supplemental Resources
Find sources you enjoy reading, watching, and listening to. Find edu-tainers you like and join discords and subreddits. Find ways to make learning fun.
Finally, share that information with your peers. If your trainers can become your advocates, your peers can become your network. If you find information that helps, you should share it!
The mentals
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. The secret to success is failure. Training environments is the place you want to make mistakes.
Another observation from instructing – rather than solely focusing on finding the solution to a problem, carve some time to analyze your process. Asking how someone found an answer can often lead to the most helpful advice.
Is there anything I missed? Is there a topic you’d like me to cover? Feel free to shoot me a message or leave a comment!
Thanks for reading!