The Synchronous Trainer's Survival Guide : Facilitating Successful Live and Online Courses, Meetings, and Events

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Summary: Just like it's name says - a survival guide!
Review: A concise, well written guide to this new medium for training delivery. Simple format, simple language - makes this somewhat scary technological field easy to understand! This book really put my mind at ease. Thank you!

Rating:
Summary: A rare and excellent resource
Review: I have been managing a synchronous language learning program for the past two years. When we first started, I wasted a lot of money (and time) on e-learning books which had nothing at all to say about synchronous virtual classrooms. Two years ago, the most anyone had to say about synchronous was that it would be "the wave of the future." I needed practical, tested suggestions for best practice in setting up, preparing for and conducting live classes over the Internet, and these books gave me exactly zero input.

Hofmann's Synchronous Trainer's Survival Guide" is exactly what I needed two years ago. It's sufficiently general to accomodate differences in platform design and functionality, which a focus on best practice in optimizing the enjoyment and learning value of online classes. It's a slim book - you can easily read it in an afternoon, but filled with concise and informative bulletted lists with titles like "Using your voice", "Language tips", "Gauging participation", "Reading participant cues", etc.

Some of our teachers have had trouble making the transition from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom, and I've been looking for a resource like this to give them pointers, and to let them realize that the frustrations they're experiencing are not unique to them. I'm ordering copies of this book for all of our teachers and I expect that they'll be going back to it again and again.