How to Use This Site

Worker designed by Kris Khoury from The Noun Project — Before you start working on a webinar that you’ve been tasked to present or produce, use this website as a guide for how best to plan, prepare and deliver content to your target audience.

Here’s the rundown on how we’ve broken up the instructional components of the site:

The individual modules offer you a concrete plan for designing your session from start to finish. So, in order to maximize your learning, you should work through the modules with a particular presentation in mind. It could be a session that you are currently planning, or maybe one that you would like to hold in the future.
As you progress through each module, there will be a series of worksheets at the bottom of the lesson that will allow you to review the material presented and apply it to the design plan for your presentation.
Once you have completed all of the modules, you can take advantage of the online self-assessment to highlight any gaps between the presentation planning that you’ve completed and the best practices and recommendations offered on this site.
As you continue to design presentations in the future, we invite you to use the printable checklist to make sure that you are staying on target in your planning.
You are also welcome to share your questions and comments on effective engagement activities that you have implemented in your own presentations in the forum.

Terminology and Usage

As you read each module, you’ll see that we use the following terms interchangeably:

webinar
eMeeting
synchronous online presentation

Although the term webinar is often reserved for business training sessions held as professional development for non-matriculated learners, in this case, we are referring to any sort of learning material delivered online to a live group. As such, you can use this site to create lessons for the classroom, the training room or the meeting room, regardless of your topic, discipline or role.

Who Should Use This Site

Skills for Success — This site is an open space for instructors, designers and presenters of all disciplines, functions and backgrounds to flex their design and planning muscles with exercises geared towards effective teaching and learning.

If you are planning to design, facilitate or lead an online presentation, e-meeting or webinar, this website is absolutely for you. The following individuals will benefit from this site’s integrated approach to the hands-on application of education, design and communication theory:

Faculty, Instructors and Trainers
Instructional Designers and Technologists
eLearning and Online Education Specialists
Web and Graphic Designers

This website is geared towards users of differentiated skill levels and backgrounds. If you’ve used a particular eMeeting platform in the past and want to use it for the purpose of this lesson, that’s totally fine. The modules will simply help you fine tune your delivery strategies and usage of the tools available.

If you’ve never created or led a webinar before, that’s fine too. We’ll take you through the steps of choosing the software that will best meet your learner needs.

How Much Time Do You Have?

Although this website is a series of sequential modules, you might not have the time to leisurely explore each section of the site. If you are looking to cruise through a few of the modules and time is limited, consider tackling the following:

I’ve Got a Week or More

Complete the Pre-Assessment Exercise
Print the entire set of accompanying worksheets
Read through each module and complete the worksheets
Construct and implement the design elements for your webinar
Complete the online assessment
Complete a summative evaluation of your session after the presentation is complete

I’ve Got a Day or Two

Complete the Pre-Assessment Exercise
Read through each module and complete the worksheets for sections that need extra attention
Construct and implement the design elements for your webinar
Complete the online assessment
Complete a summative evaluation of your session after the presentation is complete

I’ve Got an Hour or Two

Complete the Pre-Assessment Exercise
Read through each module and complete the worksheets for sections that need extra attention
Construct and implement the design elements for your webinar
Complete the online assessment

I’ve Got 30 to 45 Minutes

Complete the online assessment first to illuminate areas to study
Browse through each section highlighted in the online assessment and complete the related worksheets
Construct and implement the design elements for your webinar

I’ve Got 15 Minutes or Less

Complete the online assessment first to illuminate areas to study
Browse through each section highlighted in the online assessment and complete the related worksheets

UP NEXT: PRE-ASSESSMENT
Before you begin your first module, you’ll want to run through this Pre-Assessment to get an idea of what you’ll want to focus on in particular through the course of the lesson.

Pre-Assessment Exercise