A good online accompaniment complements your seminar. With your accompaniment, you want to support the learning and practical application of your methods. Just as you prepare a seminar, you should also proceed with your online accompaniment. You consider a rough concept for your seminar. This concept records what goals your seminar will achieve and which exercises and methods you will use for it. The same applies to the online accompaniment. To ensure your participants also benefit between seminar sessions and after the seminar, you have prepared and compiled some supplementary online content. This online content includes worksheets, some quiz questions, and the presentations from your last course sessions.
Participants who attend your seminar sessions should have access to your supporting online content during the course. You provide this online accompaniment via the blink.it App (Curious but have no idea how your solution could look? Just contact us. We are happy to help you https://www.blink.it/kontakt/).
This is how your online accompaniment could look:
Think about which online content could be helpful, for example, between seminar session 1 and seminar session 2. These could be reflection questions or a knowledge check on a topic from the previous course session. If you introduced a method in the course, then address your participants in a short video. In this video, you address the questions: “What is particularly important about the method?”, “When is the method applied?” Finally, give the participants a call to action (e.g., “Consider how often you used this method in the last week? When you apply the method next, what will you do differently?”). Linking online content and course sessions is also possible. You could send your participants a short text as preparation for the next course session and ask questions about this text. In the next course session, you discuss the results in the group. The blink.it App sends this online content to your participants at the right time. This means you can automate your entire online accompaniment from the beginning of the training.
Explain to your participants why your online accompaniment exists
I want to show you various ways to make your online accompaniment noticeable. After all, you want to make access for your seminar participants as easy as possible. This reduces losses due to “process losses”. This means participants do not use your online accompaniment because they do not understand, for example, how to log in or operate the platform. When you explain the purpose and aim of the online accompaniment to your participants, you additionally increase their willingness to participate and their motivation to practice.
The first contact via email before the first course session
Send your participants an email before the first course session. In this email, explain what your online accompaniment is all about.
An example email might look like this:
Perhaps you noticed the curly braces. These are called placeholders. A participant in your course is named, for instance, “Maria Müller”. In the email, it will be replaced with “Maria” and “Müller”. This way, your participants are directly addressed by name (“Hello Maria Müller,…). The placeholder should definitely be in your email. It is the course link. Without this course link, your participants cannot access your online accompaniment.
Introduce your online accompaniment personally in the first course session
If your participants have Wi-Fi in the seminar room, ask them to access the online accompaniment on their own smartphone or laptop. This way, the participants will have the first contact with your online accompaniment while you are present. If there are questions, you can answer them directly. The good thing is: your participants have already seen the platform when they access your online content at a later time.
To access your online accompaniment, your course participants will need the course link. You can copy this course link into your presentation slides. Then, the participants can write this link down. It goes faster if the QR code of the link is scanned with a smartphone. You can also insert this combination of link and QR code into a handout.
This is how a handout with a link and QR code could look:
You create the QR code online. There are countless QR code generators on the web. I use these generators (free and with little advertising):
Simply enter your course link in the textbox. The QR code will be generated. Right-click on the QR code and select “Copy Image” (alternatively, use “Save image as” or the “Save” button on the page). Finally, insert the QR code into your document (e.g., PowerPoint, Word, etc.). Your course link can then be scanned with a smartphone.
Connect your blinks with your exercises and tasks
If you provide worksheets or other printed materials, add a note about your online accompaniment (e.g., in the header or footer).
You can link your tasks to the corresponding blink (e.g., “…you can find more information in blink 4.3 “Formulating Feedback”). Explain in a short video blink what the task is about and why the task is important. Participants learn more motivated when they can understand the purpose of your tasks. Answer these questions for your participants: “Why is this task important? How will the task help? In what situations should the acquired knowledge or behavior be applied?”. Another advantage of a short video is that your participants see you again weeks after the course and receive a personal address from you. You can make your effect as a trainer fully effective via video. Participants will also be reminded of the seminar sessions and content.
Provide the course via NFC code
NFC stands for Near Field Communication (overview article on NFC from Chip). Many modern smartphones can read data via NFC, including a web address. For example, you can describe an NFC sticker with your course link. You stick the sticker on your business card, your worksheets, or your handout.
I have created a short video showing how the course link is transferred wirelessly:
What do you need for this?
An NFC-capable smartphone (unfortunately not possible with Apple devices, as NFC can currently only be used for Apple Pay)
An NFC app. I described the sticker in the video with the free app NFC-Tools.
NFC stickers. This sticker will be used to transmit the course link. I ordered my stickers from this shop.
Recently, the business card printing company Moo.com has been offering NFC business cards. You could have business cards printed that directly integrate a link to your online accompaniment. All information about NFC business cards can be found here.
We are happy to assist you in creating your online accompaniment! Leave us a comment if you have any questions or suggestions.
