Finding Confidence in a Challenging and Virtual Time
For this week’s virtual training post, Virtual Training Associates wants to report on some exciting research that has just come out of Sweden’s Linköping University. According to the university’s research team:
“Teacher training students who practiced teaching virtual pupils developed greater confidence in their teaching ability.”
Furthermore:
“By teaching virtual pupils, the students felt that they were better prepared and had more confidence in their ability.”
Training Methodology
Reviewing the information presented by the researchers, three training methods were compared (obviously with identical material). A group of teaching students were divided into thirds. One group taught in person to real students; one group taught to their peers (classmates) and the third group taught to virtual students.
The study found:
“[that] training with virtual pupils was more efficient than training with real pupils.”
The chief bonus of training virtually was that the students could get “direct feedback” from the students. They could improve techniques and discuss ways in which they could manage their classes more efficiently. While it was conceded that the study needs expansion and that a completely virtual experience cannot (in their opinion) replace some real-person to person teaching, virtual training is very encouraging.
Why This is Important
This seemingly minor study by a “smaller” Swedish University may not seem important on the surface, but it is an essential study to the work we do at Virtual Training Associates (VTA). Our focus is teaching ethics and sports ethics along with issues such as the prevention of sexual harassment and workplace bullying.
Teaching such vitally important information requires that the material being taught does not stop there. It mandates that those who are being trained, in turn, train and nurture others. Therefore, when VTA works with groups we encourage a high level of interaction and we assume that what is being conveyed will in turn be conveyed to other members of the greater organizational team.
The major problem with management ethical training on a virtual or in-person basis is usually the lack of ability to pass the information along, or even to incorporate it into the corporate culture, a lack of confidence.
In this failure, is how fraud often occurs due to a lack of proper oversite or “the center” not being able to monitor remote offices. If we can properly and virtually train leaders and corporate influencers on ethical behavior – and then reinforce it in person or with follow-up remote sessions we can achieve a substantial success rate.
We can virtually set a good teaching example using state-of-the-art technology, excellence in presentation and a high degree of interaction.
One last caveat to the potential of virtual training and its ability to influence corporate “teaching” is that it must be embraced at the highest levels of management. Nothing is gained if “C-Suite” executives are disinterested in ethical training and “abdicating” the training to lower levels of the organization. Good ethics, virtually taught or in-person, is everyone’s business.
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