Photograph your flip charts and send them to your participants after the training. But not via email, rather as part of an online course: Only then can you achieve real learning transfer. Take a look at a specific example of how to create such a photo protocol in the online course!
Info: Two years ago, my colleague Hans Peter Ludescher described in the blog how to quickly and easily create a photo protocol. Today, I want to show you how to upload your photos for your participants in the online course.
Poor learning transfer: Sending the photo protocol by mail
In a seminar or workshop, colorful notes and content are often generated that you, as a trainer or coach, want to capture. Be it for your own documentation, for future trainings, or as a reminder for your participants. For the latter, many trainers still send the protocols via email today.
Do you also use photo protocols to send them to your participants? Then I ask you now: What goal do you want to achieve with it?
Experience shows that trainers send photo protocols to their participants so that they can remember the seminar and better internalize the content in the long term. Therefore, it is about learning transfer. But unfortunately, this method using email is poor. There are several reasons:
Random timing
Your participant cannot choose when they receive the email from you. It’s quite possible that they do not have time to open your photo protocol exactly at that moment – and later they may not think of it anymore.
Overused medium
Most email inboxes are full of emails. Opening and reading them becomes a daily burden. The danger: Your valuable photo protocol gets lost in a flood of other messages.
Poor presentation
Multiple images are often sent as a .zip file. With some email providers, you see a small preview image, while with others the attachment gets lost even faster. Either way, your participant has to search for the individual photos of your protocol, open them, and ideally save them somewhere. This is extremely time-consuming and discouraging.
Note: Photograph participants only with their consent
Since the implementation of the GDPR, you should photograph your participants only with their explicit permission. So make sure when documenting your workshop or seminar that you only capture the contents, such as cards or flipcharts.
You see that a photo protocol sent by mail is sadly not enough to enhance learning transfer after the seminar. The modern alternative: Make your photographed content available through an online course!
Documenting Photo Protocol 4.0 in the Online Course
Invite your participants to an online course after the seminar – or ideally even before! This way, you can share your photo protocol online and at the same time leave room for comments, additions, and further discussions.
The previously mentioned disadvantages of photo protocols via email become advantages in the online course:
Timing
In the online course, your participant can choose for themselves when they have a few minutes of time and peace to view the photo protocol.
Medium
Unlike email, no personal or work-related messages distract from your content in the online course. Also, SPAM is of course not found here – only what matters: Your content from the seminar.
Presentation
You can remind your participant about the course via email – but they do not have to painstakingly save the content themselves. There are various online platforms that offer you diverse possibilities: For example, with the blink.it platform, the presentation is in tile format. In an overview, the participant sees all the content you have made available to them. Just a click on a tile is enough, and your participant can view your photo in a large format.
Example photo protocol in the online course with the blink.it platform
The most important thing: With a photo protocol via online course, you have hardly more effort than by email – but a much higher learning transfer!
Example: Sharing Photo Protocol in the Online Course
The image above shows you how a photo protocol made up of four photos can look in the online course. If you work with the blink.it platform, you can create such a simple course in less than five minutes!
For setting up the photo protocol in the blink.it online course, four steps are important:
Enter a title.
Upload the photo.
Add a call to action (it can be the same for all photos).
Set the sharing options.
Check out here in two short screencasts how I created the example course with blink.it. In the first video, you will see how I set up the four contents (“Blinks”) – that is steps 1-3:
Now the course is almost ready. As you can see from the duration of the example video, it took less than two minutes to set up the contents!
What is still missing is the setting for sharing. Consider when your participants should see the content and when they should be reminded about it:
In the example, you can see that the sharing setting with the blink.it platform takes a maximum of two minutes.
Info: The two screencasts were created based on real examples from a workshop. Thanks to Normen Ulbrich for providing the sample photos in the course!
Of course, you can use your new online course not just as a pure photo protocol. Create content just as quickly and easily, for example, to prepare for your seminar or workshop!
For more tips and information on how to use an online course as an accompaniment to your training, we created 7 sales tips for you as a PDF.
This way, you can achieve real learning transfer with a simple photo protocol and a handful of other contents in the online course!
