I was a few minutes into my mass casualty incident response presentation and already several participants had raised their hands and submitted questions. I had also gauged their MCI response experience and learned different ways we define MCIs in our local jurisdictions. We were not meeting face-to-face.
Instead we were at our home or work computer and using a webinar to present and receive information. I was receiving feedback and questions throughout the presentation at a rate greater than I ever get in a classroom presentation.
Webinar technology, like GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar, has long been used by software vendors to demonstrate product functionality to remote sales prospects. Corporate trainers have also long used live presentation tools like Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro for web conferencing. Webinar and web conferencing tools have common features like audience polling and question asking, screen sharing of the presenters screen to the audience, audio from the presenter by phone or VoIP, and capturing of audio, video, images, and text chat for archival playback.
EMS educators, because of the low cost, ease of use, and need to reach dispersed audiences, are now using webinars for education training. A Skype group conference call can be recorded for distribution, like the EMSEduCast podcast, or used to bring a guest speaker from anywhere into the classroom. If you are considering a webinar or web conferencing tool for your organization or training center these are considerations to make during the purchasing process.
1. Determine your goals.
What type of content do you want to present? Who is your audience? How often do you want to deliver web based training programs? Do you want to capture and archive those presentations for playback? A multi-station EMS and Fire Department that wants to use web conferencing for monthly CE programs has different goals than a software company that wants to demonstrate features of its electronic patient care reporting system.
2. Ease of use.
A web conferencing platform should be easy to use with few start-up tasks other than registering for a free trial account. Using a web based webinar product will free you from having to do a local software installation, but make sure you understand software requirements for pop-ups, flash streaming, and Java scripts. The account owner should be able to schedule webinars that start immediately or in the future with an easy to use system for inviting presenters and audience members. Once registered all the audience should have to do is click on a link that is emailed to them to launch the webinar.
3. Identify webinar content.
This starts in the needs assessment phase. Most webinar content is either screen sharing or importing files into the conference platform. Screen sharing gives a lot of flexibility to show anything on the presenter’s desktop and gives the presenter the ability to modify their presentation slides up to the moment of delivery.
4. Assess presenter technology comfort.
Delivering training online to a live audience requires some basic technology skill to use the web conferencing platform. I like to do one or two short training sessions with presenters to show them how to share their screen, use presenter tools, launch polls, and privately chat with the host or moderator.
5. Know your audience.
The tool you select should be well suited for the estimated audience size and their desire to participate. Is your audience 15 sales prospects of 1,000 department members? I have found that webinar audiences are much more likely to type in questions during the presentation than a classroom audience is to verbally ask a question. I usually plan for at least 15 minutes of audience question and answer for every 30 minutes of content presented.
6. Cost of use.
Finally understand the costs associated with the web conferencing system. This includes a monthly or annual fee to maintain your account which may vary based on the features you select for customizing the webinar platform, registering participants, archiving webinar audio and video, and playing back webinar presentations. Don’t forget to budget for possible presenter hardware like audio headsets, web cameras, and even honorariums.
How are you using webinars and online technologies to train EMS professionals about your products, patient care protocols, or continuing education topics? What features do you seek in a web conferencing system? What topics would you like to see covered in an EMS1.com webinar?
