At Curren Environmental, we are consultants and educators. We provides classes, talks and seminars on environmental topics for a variety of professionals. Prior to Covid-19, in person attendance was 100%, now, we are dealing with a mixed of 100% remote classes and in person/live streaming to people who could not attend.
Did you know that education is something that people are willing to pay for and are willing to get nothing out of it? It's the hand stamp mentality, and its a real statement, go do an internet search on it.
So where do we find that you will get the most out of a education? Well assuming you want the knowledge provided, in person is hands down the winner. I say this as I am actually trained and Arello certified to teach remotely, but I much prefer in person. I compare in person to going to the movies vs watching a movie at home. I will give a run down as to why in person hands down beats remoted hosted classes.
1. As an instructor you read the group in front of you. You know who is and isn't engaged. There are points where you can lose the whole group, as environmental talks can be boring for sure. By knowing how the group is engaging, it's the instructors responsibility to bring people back into being interested and actually learning. Yes, the instructor who is in front of the group can create engagement when the attendee engagement is lost. Trust me - we know when you are listening when you are in front of us. Hey does a bartender know you need a drink? We see that you are going rogue, but when you are not in front of us? It is immensely harder to read your interest level (Oh and not showing a live image of you is pretty much a slap in the face saying, I have other things I am doing that are more important). So If I don't know your bored, I don't know how to bring you back to engagement. A common practice in live classes is to toss in some humor, trust me if people in the group laugh, the uninterested perk up to see what they missed, I have seen it countless times. You know when you go to the movies and the crowd erupts in some form of emotion? Well that group reaction helps with engagement.
2. In person also allows an instructor to pull a group together so knowledge is actually absorbed. Case in point, at times the blank look on people faces tells you they missed what you said. At that point you propose a question to the group which re-engages attendees. Trust me it's nearly impossible to perceive this in remote learning situations, in short, you all look like zombies. Just go look at the person next to you watching television, do they look enlightened? That is your look as you stare at your computer screen.
3. Reading a group is easier in person. Think about looking at your computer monitor with 40 little faces of attendees to periodically scan to evaluate engagement, it is hard and distracting - oh and larger groups are absurdly small to view and to read faces.
4. I took a public speaking class some 30 years ago (actually longer, but I don't want to age myself) and a facet of speaking was to spread your view slowly across the class, from right to left and then back again. The point being looking at people engages people, also when you move your brain is tricked into following the motion and thus engagement.
5. When you instruct you want questions from attendees. The reason being if you have a question on a topic that we thought was clearly discussed and explained, as instructor we have to do a self evaluation that perhaps we were not that clear and the presentation needs to be tweaked. We do this constantly and maybe as simple of a slide or photo not being clear. We gauge how many questions we get and the amount for remote learning is about 60% less than in person. Nearly 100% of the time for in person classes, at the end of the class stragglers will pose a one on one question. Typically it relates to them personally or they just wanted to be polite and pose the question which can be slightly off topic and not burden the group with it. Clearly we don't see this with remote learning.
6. You cannot discount group interaction. Questions commonly get asked during presentations. These questions may represent a group question but only one person is bold enough to pose the question. Answering questions in real time helps bind the information to the attendee. Sometimes the question posed is responded to by saying "that question will be answered in about 10 minutes". I say this because we get the same question over multiple seminar, we make sure that information is clearly integrated in future classes. Remote classes are handicapped by a dearth of question which limits future improvement of the presentation.
Clearly remote learning has a practical aspect relative to both travel and a pandemic. Not to tout the advantages of a pandemic but the pandemic has made great strides in increasing the functionality of distance learning. From an instructor standpoint where you want attendees to absorb the material, in person instruction continues to be the clear winner.
What type of format class would you rather be in?