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

I am a corporate trainer and a Professor of Management, and I have been actively involved in online training for 7 years. I regularly conduct training, make presentations, and teach classes in multiple delivery modes (classroom, asynchronous, and synchronous). For learning to be effective in these different environments, there are some unique requirements in the design and delivery of the training or event that must be met.Jennifer understands the distinctions of these different approaches! She avoids imposing a one-size-fits-all approach for training design and delivery. Instead, she provides practical tips and tools that are specific to synchronous delivery. Individuals can use the information she provides to make their synchronous events successful. She provides an effective overview of what it takes to be successful in the live, synchronous environment. I appreciate the practical approach of Jennifer's book.

I have been a trainer for 10 years. As we began exploring on-line training I understood that the development and facilitation of on-line training was going to be different and require a different mindset (in spite of what others within my program believed). This book provides a great starting point. I have found it useful in my designing and facilitation, and I have shared it with my training partners who thought they could simply take the materials they previously taught face-to-face and stick it in Live Meeting and call it training. They then were able to put on some very affective sessions.This is not the be all end all. I also suggest Live and On Line by the same author as a resource with even more detail.

This is a good book for instructors and trainers who use an online delivery platform. The author included several helpful tips about how to conduct a live meeting online, how to teach online students and manage an online class, and other live online events. I found the book to be very informative and it met all of my expectations. The books is helpful if you are new to teaching or training online and to established online instructors and trainers. Everyone who is an online teacher or trainer can glean some helpful tips from this book.

While I develop online learning I haven't conducted synchronous learning in quite a few years and needed a book to give me information on how to develop for more advanced products than I'd used before.

Everything you need to know about virtual training and making it a great experience for your audience. Well organized and practical.

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.

Jennirfer Hoffman offers practical, easy-to-implement advice for anyone using a synchronous online tool. Her writing is matter-of-fact and convincingly authentic.