Leslie: All right, everyone, welcome. Welcome to 21A2001B: "What's Next? How do I Convert ILT to VILT, The Basics," which is webinar two and NIC's 21A2001, "Where So I Start? The Basics of Converting Instructor-Led Training or ILT to Virtual Instructor-Led Training or VILT" sponsored by the National Institute of Corrections in partnership with the International Association of Correctional Training Personnel or IACTP. I'm Leslie LeMaster with NIC and I'll be serving today as your WebEx host the moderator for the webinar and one of today's facilitators. You'll notice as you join, that this is a listen-only webinar and the voices you hear are mine, as your host, and those of your facilitators. So, you're basically going to be muted. So, it's just one-way audio communication. Us to you. So, your way of communicating with us is via the chat function, which is located in the lower right hand corner of the WebEx webinar screen. So, to ensure that the chat function is turned on for you, I want you to take a look at the bottom right corner of your screen and find an icon that looks like a chat bubble or a chat icon that you'd see on a smartphone or a smart device. Just left click it to turn it on and that will turn on chat for you and open up that chat box in the lower right hand corner of your screen. So, we'd like for you to take a moment using the "everyone" drop down option on who to send your chat to tell us where you're joining us from today and what interests you about your webinar series. And just a reminder, please, do use the "everyone" drop down option to send your chat so that not only I see it, as your host, but our producers see it, all of our facilitators see it, and, most importantly, everyone out there, your fellow colleagues and participants here in the webinar. So, we want to let you know that you will have the opportunity for questions and answers, so please chat your questions as they occur to you all along the way during today's webinar so I wanted to mention also that the webinar series is being recorded and when each webinar in the series recording is ready, I as your WebEx host, will be sending you an email detailing how to access the webinar recording on our site and at that point, you can either view it online or you can download it for further staff development use. So, something new we've got for this webinar is actually a participant workbook. So, we want to make sure that you have that right there beside you and ready to go because the participant workbook is actually going to follow the flow of the slideshow and the different interaction and engagement activities that we are going to be doing here with you today. So, for those of you following along in your participant workbook, I think we're a couple of pages in right past the table of contents and we're right here at our welcome and introductions. So, I am gonna move us forward here. And, today, as I mentioned, is webinar two in our three webinar series and we're going to be focusing today and we're taking a deeper dive than we did in webinar one on the basics of converting from in-person or instructor-led training to virtual instructor-led training or VILT. And, as in webinar one, we're going to be using ADDIE as our road map for conversion and some folks were calling it the "ADDIE snake" and I absolutely loved that. So, I know you're probably wondering, we've seen a lot of you joining and I've tried to meet and greeted many of you as I possibly can, but now, it's time to meet your facilitators who'll be guiding you today through today's webinar activities. So, Jeff, you're up first. Jeff: Well, good morning, everyone. We're excited that you were able to join us today. This webinar series has been in process of being developed for a little while as we heard from agencies all around the United States that we needed some assistance with converting to virtual and as NIC's been creating a lot of our own training and shifting it to virtual. We thought this was a great opportunity to get the word out and see how we might be able to help and then learn from each other because we're always picking up nuggets of information from you probably more than you're picking up from us. So, we're excited that you're here and we hope you enjoy this webinar. And please let us know if you need anything. Leslie: All right, Thank you so much, Jeff and Ashley introduce yourself to everyone. Ashley: Hello, good morning and good afternoon to everyone. My name is Ashley Kerr. I'm with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. I approximately have about seven years going on eight with the department and I was nominated as the ICCP trainer of the year in 2019. I am so excited that everybody's joining us that we can actually share our story of Ohio's experience of switching over to virtual instructor- led training. So, just excited to be here. Leslie: All right. Thank you so much, Ashley and Jeff there. So now, we're gonna move on to hear from another two of our facilitators. Archie. Archie: Hey, good afternoon, everyone or good morning from wherever you're coming from. My name is Archie Weatherspoon IV. I'm with the National Institute of Corrections in our Academy Division. I'm a correctional program specialist and I oversee and am the program manager for the Thinking for a Change curriculum. So, all of the T4C questions that may come up today. I'd love to have a conversation with you all offline, but overseeing our curriculum, our training programs and all things related to Thinking for a Change. But, I'm really excited to be here with you today because I'm here with one of my besties, Leslie LeMaster. So, I'll kick it back to you. Leslie: All right. Thank you so much, Archie and it is mutual. So, this is really exciting. This is one of the first times that Archie and I have been together on a webinar and doing virtual training together. So, this is fantastic. So, for those of you who don't know me, I'm Leslie LeMaster with the National Institute of Corrections and I'm a correctional program specialist in the Academy Division. I wear many hats at NIC and one of the most pertinent to this one is I am NIC's WebEx administrator, which is our virtual platform. I also am a trained virtual designer, virtual facilitator and virtual producer. Yes, those are three roles that you really need to have as you actually not only design, but deliver and evaluate training. So, I'm very happy to be here and I'm going to be running some of the mechanics in the background, such as the polling function when we get , but I'd also like to let you know that we have four incredible NIC producers here today and they are here in the background to help you. Just send a chat to everyone if you're actually having any technical issues when you join the meeting. And we have Evelyn Bush from our Prisons Division, Belinda Stewart also from Prisons, Scott Richards from our Prisons division. Woohoo! The prisons division is represented today and my colleague and Archie's colleague and Jeff's colleague, Case Dent from the Academy Division. So, you can either private chat them, but I think what would be great is if you just chat if you're having any technical issues to everyone and all of us here in the webinar will see that, very specifically our producers and some of our facilitators, as well. So now, let's take a look at what we're going to focus on today in our objectives. So, if you have your participant workbook out, I hope you are following along there in the participant workbook. So, we have two objectives that we're going to be looking at today, where we're deeper diving into how you convert ILT to VILT. So, the first objective is we're going to be comparing and contrasting agency conversion examples demonstrating best practices. And then, the second objective is we'll want to be hearing from you all along the way how you're going to be applying those best practices and conversion stories to a segment of your training or a curriculum that you are training on in your own agency from in-person or ILT to VILT. And so, I see several folks actually saying they don't have the workbook. So, I sent out the workbook last night to all registered participants for today as well as this morning, about an hour before the webinar, but never fear, if you don't have it right now, when we post the webinar recording, we also will post the participant workbook. So, go back and look or an email from me, LLemaster@bop.gov, sent last night around 8 o'clock mountain time and this morning around 8:30 mountain time. Search your email system if you'd like to still grab that particular workbook. So, we are off to an interesting ADDIE road trip today as we take our deeper dive. So, just like we talked about in the first webinar, we're going to begin with the end in mind. So, shout out to John Eggers on that. All roads continue to lead to ADDIE as we analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate our ILT to VILT conversion plans and activities and then we begin the cycle again as we feed back what we've learned through our evaluation processes. So, ADDIE can also help you guide through your road trip journey to convert to in-person and instructor- led training. So, that's just something to think about. And as a starting point, we're going to reflect on our webinar one journey. So, this is kind of where we were going on our really big picture, high- level road trip back and on our first webinar on December the 2nd. And, by the way, I included the link to that first webinar, not only in your participant workbook, but also in your readiness email. So, as a part of analysis, we took a look at and interacted around what kind of outcomes are you wanting from actually doing virtual training, We explored four very popular platforms and took a look at the things you wanted to be able to do, that's the required functions, we took a look at how important it is to take to examine and analyze your IT infrastructure and do you really have leadership support and commitment to virtual training because a lot of times, people pay lip service to that, but they're not exactly committed because they don't fully understand everything that's really needed to do it. Then in the design phase, we took a look at in-person to virtual, Is there a blend of both based upon the outcomes you're looking for or are you going all virtual? And what platform is going to have all the functionality and tools that you actually need? Then we also took a look at development. the time to convert one hour of training, from instructor-led to virtual instructor-led and we sent you a resource on that. And also in this development phase we're looking at training trainers and learners in that virtual platform. So, the learning can be effective for them. Then as we looked at implementation. What kind of delivery time frames are you looking at and what about rehearsals and coaching and getting your trainers really used to that virtual platform? And are you going to do virtual coaching? Are you going to coach also participants on using that platform? And then, lastly, the last step on our road trip was evaluation. Are you actually designing evaluation strategies and implementing them? How are they going to be deployed and what is the process that you are going to design and implement to then put your evaluation results back into play before the next time you deliver your virtual training? So, that was kind of a quick summary of where we went back on December the 2nd. So, this is what we're really concentrating on this time. What are the basics of converting virtual instructor-led or ILT to VILT or virtual instructor-led. I think I said that backwards, but forgive me for that. So, today, we're gonna go deeper into the basic nuts and bolts of converting and just like we did in webinar one, we're gonna begin with the end in mind. So, first of all, we would like to hear from you. So, Jeff, I'm gonna be opening the poll, right now and the poll is open. Jeff: All right. So, just like any training, we're going to try to engage our participants and make sure that we're doing a variety of activities. First one is a poll for you to take an answer on and you'll see the little poll collection there and tell us how you are doing with ILT to VILT conversion. Where are you at? And if you take a look on the right hand side, you should see a poll question that popped up with a multiple choice answer. So, go ahead and give the multiple choice answer and hit your submit button to make sure your answer's recorded and if you don't see the poll answers up above where it says "participant chat," you should see a polling with a little arrow. If you'll click that arrow, it will open up your poll for you. Leslie: All right. Thank you, Jeff. Yeah, I'll give you about 15 more seconds to complete your poll we've got lots of participants who have completed the poll. We have over half of our participants. So, I'm going to give you a five second countdown in a couple of seconds. So, I'm going to be closing the poll in... five... four... three... two and one. And hurry up and get your poll answers in. I still see people responding so I'm closing the poll, right now. And so, while we're waiting for the poll to calculate its results, don't forget that I will be sending you the webinar recording and the participant workbook for this webinar if you don't happen to have it available to you. So, the poll results are available and, yes, there they are. Jeff: All right, Leslie, looks like we've got pretty much answers across the board. Most of the answers are in 'D.' "Don't know what we'd like to learn them and how to apply them." So, we're glad you're here. Fantastic. The second one was -- 'D' was the second most answered, which is yup, "had to educate and get trained." So, we've got a broad variety of responses here today. Leslie: Okay. Fantastic. Well, everyone, it sounds like you are in the perfect place to be. So, thank you for sharing where you and your agency are with knowing about and applying conversion practices because I know where we were for a long time as we knew about it, we just didn't convert everything. So, let's see how we can begin our road trip with diving into the best practices for the conversion of ILT to the VILT. So, Jeff, Jeff: Well, Leslie, I'm just curious what are ILT to VILT best practices? Leslie: Well, Jeff, I'm so glad you asked that question and let's explore them all together. Jeff: Well, like we did in webinar one, going to perform analysis as the very first step of our road trip while sharing best practices for converting ILT to VILT so our first step is just to take a look at the curriculum that you're going to convert. So, let's take a look. So here's just a few considerations to analyze as you look to convert. So, what you want to do is take a look at the curriculum that you're going to try to bring virtual. Do you have lesson plans for each module? If not, you're going to need them. What about performance objectives? Do you have good performance objectives for each module? You can't really move forward without your performance objectives. And do your objectives drive the instructional strategies that you're going to be utilizing? And what about the duration for each module or module segment? So, there's a bunch of different things that you have to think about and figure out, but first, what is the status of your current curriculum? Do you have these things laid out or is it just a slideshow? And that's something that you have to consider. Leslie: Yes, so, everyone, if you're wondering. Yes, it's true. To effectively convert from ILT to VILT, you first must have an existing curriculum package and materials to work from. Now, of course, all bets are off and it's different if you're designing straight to VILT and that's a whole other course because what we're talking about here is converting an existing ILT curriculum package to a virtual instructor-led curriculum package. So, now, we would like to hear from you. We got a question for you. Jeff: Yeah, so, what's the status of the curriculum that you're converting? This is also found in page 10 in the participant guide if you're following along and making notes. And what state are your lesson plans, your participant guide, your workbook your handouts, your slideshows? What about your job aids performance objectives? The list goes on are you ready to convert or do they need some work? And if they need work, what do you need to work on? So, chat some ideas, where are you at with your curriculum, what are you thinking, where do you need work, where do you need help with? An,d let's see some of those chat responses. Make sure you're chatting to everyone so everyone can see them. So, just make sure in your "to:" block that the "everyone" is selected. You got some responses coming in, Leslie. Leslie: Mm-hm. Yeah, they're starting to come in. Jeff: Beginning stages, yep. Curriculum is still geared toward in-person training. They need to work on a transition so we can do more than just slides. You know, that seems to be a common theme. Leslie: Yeah, and thank you everyone for your honesty, here. I know that with our curriculum, too, that we've been converting, there were some and I'm speaking very specifically from my personal experience with the curriculum I work on here at NIC, definitely we had to do some work and tighten up and polish some of our ILT versions and then we could get ready to actually convert them to VILT. So, what are you seeing there, Jeff? I'm seeing all kinds of different responses. Jeff: Yeah, we're seeing everything from some people are ready to convert to some say yeah we're not ready at all. A couple of Covid responses in there and that seemed to be kind of what NIC was working on, as well. Covid hit and then all of a sudden, hey we got to move all this stuff virtually. And then you start to figure out well, we're ready on this curriculum, we're not ready on this one. So, Leslie: Yeah. Jeff: It looks like we have questions in there. People are asking for some assistance on some so we'll go back and... Leslie: Yeah, and I think that we are going to be able to answer some of those questions actually as we progress through the webinar and activities. I do know there was one question there though about do you have a curriculum format? And sure we can share ITIP or instructional theory into practice. In fact, we do have -- thank you very much. Elizabeth posted the link for that. So, in there is a guide for using and working with ITIP for curriculum developers. So, that answered that one question there. So, I want to let you know, this is your first best practice about converting from ILT to VILT. The ILT curriculum you're converting needs to be complete to be able to effectively convert to VILT. So, let's take a look now at the next best practice. And so, this is one that I personally get lots of questions about and we get it all the time. What about the number of live hours of ILT like the number of hours we would have in-person in the classroom versus live online VILT hours is it a one to one ratio when you convert? Ashley: You know what, Leslie? I often thought about that myself and I really truly wish it was. So, let's take a look at it. Leslie: All right. Perfect, Ashley. Thanks. Ashley: Let's consider this. Does one hour of ILT really truly equal one hour of the VILT? That is definitely a great question that a lot of people are asking themselves. Leslie: Yeah and it is, Ashley. That's a fantastic question and so the reason why that slide has the header it does, is very deliberately. Not exactly is the answer to that. So, when you convert, it's not a one hour to one hour ratio, meaning one hour of instructor-led training equals one hour of live virtual instructor for lead training and that's due to how people learn, how they process content and activities, attention spans and specifically, attention spans while in a virtual instructor-led type of a setting and all kinds of other cool learning and performance research into practice. So, what we do here as we convert and we look at the number of hours from the ILT versus live hours in an actual live virtual classroom, it's really a dynamic combination of your live virtual sessions that feature vibrant engaging and interactive content delivery strategies plus offline asynchronous activities and assignments. We here at NIC, like to call it the "digital blend contact hours equation." So, that's why that plus sign is right there in the middle. So, just to let you know in case anyone has any questions and you're looking for, hey, what the heck does asynchronous mean? There is a glossary in your participant workbook and that is defined, but basically asynchronous is learning that involves participant- centered learning similar to self-studying approach with necessary online learning resources like e-sources, like discussion forums, like one-on-one coaching. There's all kinds of things that you can do and then synchronous learning is what we're doing right now. Synchronous learning involves a group of participants engaged in learning at the same time like this webinar, and like in a live VILT session. So, let's take a look at how to put the digital blend contact hours equation into practice. So, as you see here, on the screen, and a question about the workbook keeps coming up. If one of our producers could actually chat that the workbook was attached to the readiness email, we'll also be posting it to the webpage when the recording is ready. So, unfortunately, if you didn't get that or you registered very close to the session this morning, and you didn't get that email, I would suggest that you take pictures of the slides if you need this immediately with your smartphone or smart device. So, here's how this works, this digital blend equation. The pre-session assignments and activities, the number of hours you're actually assigning to that, followed by your live virtual session hours, the time you actually spend in the virtual instructor-led classroom and then you add that all into the third component, which is offline intersession assignments and activities and the hours you assign to that. So, that's how that it's not a one-to-one ratio. There's some activities that are best done in that live virtual instructor-led session. There's some activities that are also best done as pre-session and assignment activities so that we can actually do something with them in the live virtual instructor-led session. And there's some activities that participants, as adult learners, are really good and best done offline as intercession assignments and activities after the session is over. And then, they can build into your next virtual instructor-led session. So, now, I know you're asking -- "Well, Leslie, that sounds great. Looks great, but what kinds of instructional strategies? Can I design for the offline assignment activities and contact hours?" And I know that's a question people have, so, I'm so glad you asked about that. So, behold, a veritable laundry list of ingredients for your digital blend equation. There's lots of ideas here in addition to virtual instructor-led that you see in the upper left hand corner and any type of virtual sessions. Lots of offline assignment types of things and activities that you can do and this is by no means, a complete list. So, I want to let you know that too. This is just to get your thinking started and it's like oh I need to research some more. So, Ashley, what are two of these digital blend ingredients that Ohio is using in its virtual new employee orientation or NEO? Ashley: So, those that stand out to me is the discussion forums where we have our individual groups chat in the platform that we use some of their answers, questions, different things like that as well as simulations. We will put them in scenarios and give them different things to actually think about what they would do and so those are those who stand out to me. Leslie: And that is a fantastic kind of a statement and comment we've got coming in from Paulette. "Our state would not support any of these ingredients for digital blend with inmates. What about for staff training because we're primarily looking at staff training here, but when you think about it, inmates are humans too so any of this really applies to humans that we are training. So, I would look into some, hmmm, I would get some ideas from everybody here on the line. What if your state is not going to support any of these ingredients for the digital plan, not only with inmates with staff, what would you do about that? I know what we've done about it. We've been working for years to get some of these types of things in place considering the firewall that we actually sit behind. So, share in chat, if you will, some ideas with Janice and Paulette, who are asking questions about training inmates digitally and that means using, like, an iPad or some kind of digital device. So, thank you, Ashley, for sharing those and I know in the upcoming story, just a teaser for everyone you're gonna share lots more things that you guys also do in your digital blend. So, that's coming up in the Ohio new employee orientation virtual conversion story. So, now, we'd like to hear from you. Ashley: Okay, everyone, what I really want you guys to do is chat us what's your initial live virtual training hours? What your initial ideas are from your virtual live training hours? Plus, we also want to know any offline assignments or activities in terms of the curriculum that you're converting. What did you guys come up with? We also want you to think what ideas are you having on your virtual training blend from our potential ingredients list that we just went over a minute ago? Share your ideas and chat now. Leslie: All right, everyone, here's your chance to chat and I just want to point out to everyone, there's some great considerations and ideas going into chat about what kind of devices you can use with inmates as well as Khan Academy how to do that offline, and still use Khan Academy. There's all kinds of interesting kind of things happening in chat where folks are given some ideas in there. So, I do want you to take a look at that. So, we do want to hear you chat actually about this question on the screen right now and be sure and send your chat to everyone. What are your initial ideas on that live virtual training hours plus offline assignment and activities blend? All right. We give you some a couple of seconds to chat. It looks like our chat is diverting off into that inmate discussion. We actually ask you to come back here and join us thinking about staff training and answer this question on the screen. Ashley: I see some people discussing a mixture of classroom training with on the job, as well, for [inaudible]. Leslie: Yeah, so, I'm seeing people talking that they're doing this already I see google classroom being mentioned because I know people always wonder, well, Leslie and Ashley, you know, how can you be sure people are actually really doing the offline assignments versus saying they're doing the offline assignments? So, one quick and easy way we do it with our trainings is we actually have a product that comes out of whatever the offline assignments or activities are, whether that's an individual product or a team product. So, just know, there's all kinds of ways to monitor that other than just the fact that you've got it connected somewhere that it registers in your LMS. So, what are you seeing there in chat, Ashley? I'm seeing all kinds of things coming up here. Ashley: I saw some homework. Giving them homework making sure they're coming back in and participating with it. Also, WebEx was being brought up and then like you said, has the pre and post test assessments measuring how people are learning that's good. Leslie: Yeah, so, I see in here that there was a mention of somebody saying that participants actually push a button that says they have done whatever the offline assignment was. So, that's in chat, as well. Plus, I know that what we do here, there's all kinds of ways we do it. It's not just one strategy that's the be all and end all, we also have individual coaches for each one of our participants, at least in the leadership training that I'm a part of and we monitor that assignment through them, as well, and sometimes it's literally them submitting their assignments to us. So, all of those are ways that you can do. And someone is mentioning here, Paulette is asking what was the wand that was mentioned for participants to use? So, if someone mentioned a wand, if you could post that in chat, that would be awesome. So,that's our second best practice in converting ILT to VILT. It's not a one-to-one online hours ratio, as in comparison to instructor-led. It's a digital blend of live sessions and offline assignments and ingredients that leads to the total virtual instructor-led training package. So, let's take a look at our third best practice. Jeff: Now, when it comes to this third best practice, it's related to the most common questions around that conversion from your ILT to your VILT and that's the duration of that live virtual session. And how many sessions are needed to achieve your training outcome? Leslie: So, Archie, that's a question that we get a lot and just to let everyone know, it's also where a lot of us start when converting rather than looking at the bigger picture of our curriculum status and the digital ingredient blend. We want to go right to, well, how many hours is it going to be when we do the live sessions and how many do we need to do? So, there actually are some real best practices around this, Archie? So, let's take a look. Archie: Yeah, this is like really complex, so, we're gonna unpack these bit by bit to these considerations for this digital blend. First, if you look at the top of that green bubble there, what is the duration of your existing ILT modules, right? That's a very key data point. So, what's the duration of it already? Now, if we kind of go down that blend over to the right, how have you converted your ILT performance objectives from those objectives from your ILT now into your VILT objectives? This will help us figure out what content and activities to do online versus offline. Now, we all know our performance objectives not only drive the content of what we teach, but it also is what our choice of instructional strategies are. So, are we going to be doing this live or we're going to be doing this online or offline? So, what will that be? Now, down towards the bottom, the content and activities. What content and activities will be a part of our digital online or offline blend? You can't just figure out this until your performance objectives have been converted to your virtual objectives. So, we have to keep that in mind. You're not going to be able to get anywhere with this until those performance objectives have been converted to these virtual objectives. And then, finally, have you applied best practices for seat times? You know, those booties in those seats, right? Have you looked at that? What are you going to be doing for your live VILT sessions? This is the most common question we get and typically, it's the place where we start. Leslie: Yes, Archie, those are some really great questions for us to ask ourselves and we look at this in a very deliberate conversion process. So, let's take a look at that last question there in purple. What are the best practices related to the duration or length or seat time of live virtual instructor-led training sessions? Archie: So, what are best practices regarding to the duration or length of your virtual sessions? So, for those live virtual sessions, what's the duration or the length of it? Also, the number of sessions needed to either meet or exceed your performance objectives in your training outcomes for your curriculum. And, finally, what about breaks, huh? So, what you got for our first one, Leslie? Leslie: So, the first one is a primary recommendation that you see out there in a primary best practice used by a lot of current virtual instructor- led providers, and that is a two-hour live session duration. So, you'll notice there when you do two hours, there's a 15 minute break at the midpoint approximately and an interaction engagement or collaboration activity every three to five minutes during the live VILT sessions. So, notice you cannot get away with, and this is something I've seen going in chat, you know, it takes a lot out of participants when they're in this virtual instructor-led classroom mainly because they're having to focus on this screen and it's a very different kind of a focus and environment than our in-person trainings. So, that is a best practice, an engagement or an interaction every three to five minutes. So, think about that. Do you have -- and an interaction can be we ask you to do a chat if we were in the virtual instructor-led training room. It give me a green check, a red 'X,' it could be a poll, it can put be putting people into breakout sessions. There's all kinds of things we can do and, by the way, just as a teaser for our third webinar, that's what we're going to be concentrating on How do you actually design in interactions, engagements and collaborations into your virtual instructor-led classroom. So, that's a teaser coming up for webinar three in early February. So, Archie, what about three to four hours? Archie: Well, yes, three to four hours we take some of the same practices that we looked at for the two hours. So, if we're gonna be going three hours, we're gonna have one 15-minute break somewhere at the midpoint. So, about an hour and a half in, right? Now, if we're going to be going for four hours, we're gonna take two 15-minute breaks. That's really important. I mean, some of you guys probably have already stepped away for a brief moment and jumped right back in and that's kind of what we want to make sure that we have happen. Then, that interaction/ engagement/ the collaboration, just like the two half hours. We're gonna see that about every three to five minutes. So, every three to five minutes, you want to have some type of engagement going on there and then just like before, but what was another, we have our pre-session or post-session activities that are recommended for that continuity and continued growth. But, how about this over four hours, Leslie? Leslie: [Laughs] Thanks, Archie, because this is what I know a lot of us are doing out there in the field and actually, it's not recommended at all because when we reach about three to four hours, you know, there's that glass half full and then my glass is full and probably overflowing. And that has to do with the attention span research and very specifically attention span research in actually designing, developing and facilitating in virtual instructor-led training. I mean, people will do it if they have to, but you start getting diminishing outcomes in your performance objectives once you reach that four-hour point. So, if you're gonna do it, here's what we recommend you do. If you have a five or six hour long VILT session of course we recommend, at a minimum, 15 minute breaks every hour and a half. And then, we also recommend a longer break at the approximate midpoint, about 45 minutes to an hour, but no longer than that because then you'll probably lose some people completely. So, we really don't recommend going over six hours. I mean, we don't recommend it at all going past four. And research bears that out and our own practice bears it out too at NIC. We've tried it, but it's not the best. It works, but people really start getting tired in the last couple of hours. So, I know some people really are saying in chat,"Hey, we've got a mandatory eight hours." Again, we would recommend you go back and take a look at that digital ingredient blend. I know for a lot of us, it feels like, "Oh, my god. I'm giving up control. I'm giving up being able to monitor," and that's where excellent design come in and how you think about that. So, if you're interested in learning how to design training, we have a whole nother course about that called "The Learning Designer," but this is about converting ILT to VILT. So, now, I can hear you saying, and I've seen it in chat, "Great, Leslie and Archie, but can I effectively train someone without doing a one-on-one correlation between that live online class hours time and ILT time? You know what we're used to doing in the classroom so let's not forget about the ingredients for your digital blend that can serve as the basis for all of your instructional contact hours and strategies when you're offline. So, we're going to be telling you about how that works in some of our own courses. We've got three conversion stories for you coming up and we'll show you how we've designed it and what has happened. Archie: Right, but that's a great response because that second best practice, it's really about that digital blend what's your ingredients that you're going to put into this when it comes to your content, activities for your offline assignment and activities. Because if that digital blend equation in practice here is what we're looking at the session duration or its length. Now, the number of lesson sessions needed and also with our virtual performance objectives, those are what drives us. So, best practice one and two come in play before we ever start this third best practice. The duration of our live online sessions are dynamically connected to our offline assignment and those activities, which are all connected back to our performance objectives that we've been emphasizing from the jump. And it's with our performance objectives that help us decide what the content and what the activities are needed for our live online sessions or for our offline activities and assignments. So, now, I think we're going to be talking to you, Jeff I know we got a activity for the group. Jeff: Yeah so, I was wondering what your initial or preliminary thoughts are on the live virtual session duration regarding this curriculum that you are going to be converting. What about your digital ingredient blend for offline assignments and activities? Have you considered those? Are you using them chat out some of your responses. This is also in page 16 in your participant guide. If you're taking notes so curious to see what you think about your digital ingredient blend. Are you going to be incorporating some of those and it's something you have to think about. A lot of agencies just want to say no we only count the hours that we're sitting in front of the computer or the hours at the instructor standing at the podium, but your curriculum package and this is why it's so important to have that complete curriculum package. If you're building and designing this into the curriculum, it's a part of the curriculum package and once that's approved, now, your hours are counting. So, if you have them doing some of these offline activities as a part of that blend, you're getting credit for those. You don't have to stand at the podium for that length of time or have them sitting in front of the computer for that length of time. So, consider that as we're talking about this and so give us a chat. What are you doing for your blend and what about your offline assignments and activities? Archie what are we seeing? Archie: Yeah, so, just seeing kind of, you know, talking about people talking about breakout rooms or polls, pre-test and post-tests are really coming up in the chat right now. Just some people are just kind of expressing, like hey, you know, it is what it is, but four hours or longer, it just sounds fatiguing for everyone involved and just trying to figure out the ways to break it up. So, I think Chantelle talked about a new new schedule for the virtual day. Jeff: Yeah, that was great, Chantelle. Archie: Yeah, just bringing that in and offline assignments, which could still count towards the hours, but can be done offline. So, those are just some of the things that are coming up in the chat, Jeff. Jeff: Yeah, appreciate that, Archie. Yeah and what we're what we're starting to really kind of figure out there is no one right answer. This is something you have to build. You have to tweak you have to make sure that this is doable for you and your agency. So, don't get fixated that there's one right answer. Jeff: Yeah, so, thank you for sharing all your thoughts. And, Leslie, I know we have to give the people what they want. I think it's about time for us to start talking about some conversion stories. What do you think? Leslie: Absolutely. I agree with you, Archie. So, we are off to the races here with the first of our three virtual conversion stories. So, you're going to hear two from NIC and one from the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and each story has a unique curriculum to convert and there are lots of lessons of experience that we're going to be sharing with you, as well as ideas on what it actually looks like and is like as we deliver these converted programs. So, first up, we're going to take a look at how NIC converted its correctional leadership development training series from ILT to the VILT. So, a thing I actually see all the time, people ask me this. "Oh, Leslie, you know, are you sure that you can do leadership training virtually?" Well, yes, you absolutely can. Again, it's all in this road trip we're taking here spending time and analysis not only at the higher level, but also digging down in this. And so, I'm so glad that John Eggers is on here because he has been with me and our correctional leadership development team as we have actually converted correctional leadership development to from a blended program to now an all virtual program. So, just to give you a little bit of information about NIC's correctional leadership development. The blended ILT version it consists of two 32-hour in-person phases and then a four to six month space that we call an intercession period in between phase one and phase two. We have pre-session work leading into all facets of it, meaning before we ever start phase one in between phase one and phase two and then after phase two is over. Some follow-up and support. So, some key things that we use in instructional strategies there are active learning projects, which is a fantastic research-based transfer strategy of classroom learnings back into the classroom and these are developed for real agency practice and learnings on the job by these CLDers. And, they are created by and sponsored by agency senior level leaders in these as we call them ALP teams. We also do individual leadership development coaching. That's a one-on-one coaching relationship that starts even before we ever meet participants face-to-face for phase one. And then we also have individual leadership development plans based upon multiple assessments, content and activities during the ILT. So, it was a really kind of interesting proposition, you know, how are we going to do this because we do this as an agency-specific program and what we mean by that is we work with one agency at a time to do this to develop that cadre of senior-level leaders in an agency. So, here's what we came up with as we practiced the steps in virtual conversion. And we looked at our performance objectives, we converted them to virtual performance objectives and we realized there was no way, again, following that best practice that we could do 32 hours, four eight hour days of VILT. So, what we came up with is a pretty cool blend of live online sessions and we settled on eight three hour sessions, two a week. And we're gonna have seven intercession periods, which are going to feature both individual activities and ALP activities offline. So, we have 24 hours of live VILT contact hours and eight hours of offline VILT contact hours. And then, all intercession assignments and activities and pre-work are debriefed at the next live VILT session. So, here's how it's going to work for us. But, we're going to be working with two agencies coming up. We've got one starting in February and this is what you're seeing in the right column. We're going to start a multi- session live virtual instructor-led training sessions on February the 4th. We're going to have VILT sessions every Tuesday and Thursday from 1 to 4 PM. We're going to conclude virtual CLD phase two on February the 29th. And the pre-session work for this actually started back in mid-November. So, individual coaches were working with each participant. We were working and continue to work with our ALP teams, working with senior-level leaders and the leadership, and we're pretty much all ready to go except for some last tech checks that we'll be talking about this Friday with the first agency we are working with on this. So, I know a question you're probably having is that looks fantastic, Leslie, but what does an actual session look like when you're doing the VILT? Can you give us a breakdown? So, here's a look at just kind of the entrance into this virtual phase two. I'm just giving you some high-level ideas here and overviews and we have facilitator guides that help us with this facilitator guides are our lesson plans. We have corresponding participant guides. We have all the types of things we need for ALP teams. So, as you can see, we've got a variety of things that we do. We do have online assessments that are completed prior to the session and thanks, Alan. I am not good with numbers. Alan, is saying the 29th of February. It's probably another date, but I was guessing from my brains. Thanks for bringing that up. Me and math and calendar dates are not good, sometimes. So, whatever the last Thursday in February is, is when we're done. So, we start with pre-session work then we go into VILT One. There you see the overview of what we're doing with VILT One. Then, Intersession One, you see it's a combo of individual and ALP team assignments. And then, what the agency has agreed to and the leadership is, they are going to have time either prior to the start of each one of our VILT sessions or after for the ALP teams to work together because I know that's probably a question people are having. And thank you, John, for putting it in there. Thank you. He always has my back. So, that's just kind of a peek at how we are doing and how we converted CLD, but it's taken us about, I would say, quite a bit of time to get there and get our agencies also ready with their technological infrastructure. So, I do believe, we have another conversion story we'd love to share with you, but, first, we have an activity for you, here. Jeff: Yeah, just a quick chat. So, thinking about you listening to the CLD story that Leslie gave, what can you apply from this example to the curriculum that you're converting? So, hopefully, as you were reading through those different slides that she was showing, you're thinking about some of the stuff that you're going to be considering. Did you pick up on anything that you think you can incorporate or what would you like to do in using anything in your curriculum that you're going to be working on? So, chat us anything that you may have picked up on. We would like to do this to see if we can get a few nuggets in there that maybe somebody else may have missed and then they can jot them down. Page 19 in the participant guide, if you're following along. So, anything you saw in that conversion story that you thought might help you or that you might be able to apply to your curriculum. Leslie: Yeah and I'm seeing a couple of responses coming here. Max, thank you um for putting that in there. We actually went back and forth about how many sessions, how long and we've settled on three hours as we converted the training. And, yeah, I see, you know, taking the steps in order and don't try to jump around. So, yeah, that's some of that analysis and development work up front and design work where we had to really take a look at what do we really need to do online versus what we wanted to do online. And, again, our performance objectives helped drive what really needed to be online versus what we thought needed to be online. And it could be offline as an assignment that we could then debrief. So, Jeff, what are you seeing in those responses? Jeff: Yeah, same thing. I'm seeing kind of just split up the trainings make sure that we're not giving them too much information at once and I just kind of put in there in the chat, yeah. You don't want to have your participants drinking from the fire hose. You don't have a lot of retention that way and they're not going to remember to be able to take some of that application back to the job. So, the smaller chunks, as Chelsea said of, with assignments in between. And that's the way that we're giving this to them in just bite-sized chunks. So, they're able to process the information. So, great responses, everyone. Appreciate that. Leslie: Mm-hmm. So, that is our first conversion story everyone and I hope that one of the questions I see being asked about, "Well, what about something where we need to be able to see people demonstrating new skills or that's a part of the performance objective. How can you do that and that's a part of the blend and I think Archie can address that in his conversion story, but coming up, let's see what Ohio was able to do. So, Ashley, can you convert an in-person new employee orientation training to VILT? Ashley: You know, what, Leslie? I asked that question about 11 months ago, myself. Yes and you sure can. So, I do want to share my conversion story about pets. All right. So, obviously, due to the Covid-19, it threw a wrench in pretty much everyone's game plan for when it comes to delivering training. Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, we were forced to transition a four-week program, an in-person program at out of our residential academy to a two-week program and it was to be virtually. We were given about a week to actually change this over to complete or the analysis stage. And so, when it comes to the analysis phase, what was limited. What we were limited was by many barriers that popped up and some of those initial barriers included the lack of familiarity with Microsoft Teams. That was with staff at the Academy in the field, as well. And that was something we had to work around getting them familiar and us familiar with it. Also, the lack of support from facilities. Unfortunately, sometimes, there's that disconnect between the field and the higher-ups, the academies, different things like that. So, we can't do this mentality and issues and mindset when it comes to that lack of equipment, and the stats, as well. So, those were some of our barriers. How are we going to transition this four week program you know into two weeks? So, we had to assign the question. Okay. How is the old way going to change the new way and we had to do that with a multitude of activities and hands-on training just like you had just mentioned and so the curriculum designers have limited time to extract that necessary information that we needed those student performance objectives and such to be delivered in that virtual platform in a short period of time. So, with the development stage, it evolved over time. Obviously, we had figured out things that worked that didn't work. We were in connection and communication with the field. Hey, what are some of your suggestions to change this? Or how is staffing? What would work better, switching the schedule around, different things like that. So, academy staff, as a whole, we were semi- familiar with using Microsoft Teams. That is the platform that we use, presently, before we were lucky enough to have an administrator and an advisor and a boss that kind of read the writing on the wall. And said, "Hey, I want you guys familiar with this before we actually have to put the physical effects. So, they were implementing a time to actually test it out, watch videos, use quick guides. Our actual IT department was nice enough to send us videos and different things. So, that was wonderful getting us ready. So, one of the biggest challenges that we had, getting the facility staff on board that field, getting them to where they're comfortable and they're confident with that technology. So, obviously, we did have some activities in our lesson plans and different things, but, obviously, instructor-led training is different from virtually time-wise. We had to transition those activities to possibly... either be shorter on time where it doesn't give you the availability to do what you can do on the virtual platform. So, while it's not ideal for everyone and some situations are different than others. we have academy staff that embrace, that was ready to learn and take this challenge on and change and made the best of it for our students because that's who we're there for, our students. So, while this may seem a bit backwards, all of our forms activities, policies and other reference material that we have were all already on tablets for our students use at our in-person academy. And due to limited resources, facilities had to revert back to paper forms, student manuals and were not permitted to use the computer resources that had already been created. Unfortunately. our hands were tied. So, the first two classes were used to learn what not to do essentially and, boy, did we ever learn from those. The processes have been modified over time. Like I said, we've been doing this for about 11 months now to reflect direct feedback from administrators, the students and also our field staff because honestly, they're supporting us by doing what they do out in the field. So, we typically evaluate our curricula annually. The sudden transition from the classroom to the virtual platform has forced us to re-evaluate our courses monthly so through that, we do evaluations, as well. Over time, we've been able to take feedback from the end user, ensure our performance objectives are met and those audit standards are met agency policies and we've worked hard to gain science from the field from that facility staff and to ensure the training and the mission of our organization is being completed for all of our employees and we're there for each other. So, that was our story and our process when it comes to that. Leslie: Well, thank you, Ashley, so much for sharing the Ohio NEO story and there's lots of tidbits in there. We're just kind of giving you the highlights of these transition stories, but I see people asking questions in here. We've got some really great ones for our Q & A time, but before we go to our third and final conversion story, we have an activity for you, and, Jeff, what is it? Jeff: Well, again, just like we did with the last activity, chat us anything that you heard on this Ohio conversion and see is there anything that you could take away from the example to apply or is there anything you could think to enhance what we've already heard? So, go ahead and chat some ideas and we saw a few questions and things come up, Leslie, but like you said, we'll save those for the Q & A. Leslie: Mm-hm. And I'm seeing the post training evaluations. I saw a little kind of chatter going on about how important that evaluation piece is and we have a tendency, as humans, it's not just in the corrections field, it's in general, to focus on the design development and delivery or implementation aspects of our training rather than spending time on the analysis and the implementation and then being able to tweak and change and revise our training. So, I'm seeing all kinds of things coming through. What are you seeing, Jeff? Jeff: Yeah, big, big hit on debriefing. Deborah mentioned it's essential and absolutely, and we make sure we do our debriefing, as necessary. Let's see. Also seeing candid recognition. Yep. Yep, feedback incorporated in. Good. Yeah... remember setting the path forward here on this and they were one of the first ones out of the gate that were assigned this conversion. So, they've done a good job with this and they've really figured out how to get it pushed through and running even multiple classes at the same time. Leslie: Mm-hm. So, just to let you know, you know, really the ADDIE format, I always think about it as a cycle. So, really, the first time out of your gate is your pilot because we know that you need to pilot any kind of curriculum, whether it's an ILT/ VILT blend or a VILT. And so, there's ways of actually gauging your progress all along the way. Don't wait to the end. You know, start getting your feedback on how things are going after your VILT sessions and after your intercession assignments. You don't want to wait to revise and fix it, if you will, until the very end. I know we're used to doing that, but with VILT, it kind of changes that process there. So, we're getting all kinds of great feedback here. So, I want to let you know, that's our second story and we have one more about a very interesting training program that's all about soft skills. So, hey, Archie, you have a great conversion story to share. I'm all eyes and ears. Archie: Yeah, I definitely have a story to tell. So, let's get at it. So, one of the things that I wanted to make sure I put out here first is that if we remember back in the time when we were all in the office every day and then it all stopped, I want to bring us to that moment. So, within the first couple of weeks of that time when we didn't know when would we be going back. So, we made recommendations for people that were hosting groups. Now, for those that don't know, Thinking for a Change is a cognitive behavioral program that's used for justice- involved individuals to help them understand their thinking patterns and to ultimately reduce the risk in their thinking to reduce recidivism. So, real quick, just for all my folks that are out there. If you are familiar with Thinking for Change either as a facilitator or trainer or know a lot about it, can you go ahead and just give me a symbolic note? So, go ahead and put up just one put up one quotation mark in the chat to everyone that's gonna symbolize our two fingers to our head that we are thinking out loud. So, if you see these coming in, this is our two fingers to our head, everyone. So, just to give you an idea about Thinking for a Change. So, the reason why I like this is because we put out these recommendations before the end of March for folks that wanted to either resume their live groups with their offenders or whatever the people on probation or parole or to have some ideas around that. So, that came out first, but see, Leslie, if you could pass me the ball real quick. Leslie: Okay, Archie, just give me a second to do that. I'm having a little difficulty here. Hold on. Dang technical issues. All right. There you go. Archie: All right. Thank you. And so, when we put out those recommendations at the same time, this is kind of that timeline. For our training, we had just announced that we would be hosting facilitated training with host sites, which meant we would be going to different locations traveling out there and everything. Literally, the day before the ban happened. So, on March 13th, our Bureau of Prisons announced a 30-day travel ban. So, that kind of let us know, like, hey, we're not going to be going anywhere soon, but at that time, we thought, you know what? After 30 days, we'll be able to travel again. Well, we were wrong. Also, I just wanted to note that commodity corp is our contractor provided through a cooperative agreement that hosts our Thinking for a Change facilitator training. The reason why that date's important because by the 23rd of that month, we had really worked to revitalize this blended learning training into a full virtual training. And by May 5th, we had delivered the first training,. But what does that training look like? So, here's what the full conversion was all about. If you look to the left of your screen, you'll see this is NIC's model of delivering T4C training for all different agencies around the country. We have six VILTs and if you look, there's one VILT. Each the VILT is two hours and 15 minutes in length and then it's generally intercessional work whether there's either one-on-one coaching, self-directed practice videos to watch in our intercession work or things of that nature or they get together with a partner. And the reason why is because Leslie mentioned their soft skills. It you look after the last VILT for number six, the next thing, which I crossed out now, was the two and a half day or 20-hour ILT. So, the instructor-led training where they do the models and teachbacks? Well, that was the biggest piece because that's what we would use to go to our whole sites and deliver. So, how we modified that, it made that full conversion is now on the right side. So, we put that into five different days if you look we had two weeks of that... each session. So, there's a morning session and an afternoon session. The morning session goes from 9 a.m to 11 a.m and there's always a break in there and then we come back for afternoon session from one to three. You can see after five days, that end up equating to 20 hours, but it wasn't a full 20 for 20 hour conversion. There's different things, different elements that we're able to do, but I saw John Egger's in the chat talking about coaching is important. One of the nice things about this modality is that in each day, if you look, it could be a Monday, Thursday, Friday. There is more time for participants in the training to reach out to the coach and follow up on the work versus if we look at that two and a half day. You just kind of go bang, bang, bang and then you're out of there. So, that was one of the nice benefits of our full conversion was more time with the participants or the students with their trainers. And then, finally, here's how we made it all work just by going like this. We had to turn our webcams on. Our webcams were important. How do we do those skills? How do we show that for all those people that put that, you know, equation mark, we had to put our fingers to our head. You can't see me if I can't do this and you can't see this, right? So, we had to make sure that everyone had access to webcams, which you all know, sometimes when you have, you know, people on the corrections floor, they don't even have a laptop, let alone a webcam. So, we had to work with agencies to make sure that it can provide that for their staff or else, unfortunately, they could not be in this training. Dealing with all the different firewall issues, restrictions and things of that nature. And then, how do we engage that? So, we talked about the duration of training sessions, break times and how many. And so, we were very cognizant. We wanted a morning session and then a two hour delay so they can go back to either their office or to their loved ones or to their kids who are doing online learning and then come back in the afternoon for two hours and do that. And then, that adjustment period. So, again, If you remember at the beginning of March, where maybe some agencies didn't even have a online virtual platform to discuss like Google Meets or Microsoft Team or WebEx or assume all those things. As the trainings went on, more people started getting more comfortable with being online and doing online learning and that really helped. So, just that adjustment because we just wrapped up our last training about three weeks ago, but then, also, practicing with the team because our team of trainers were really good with virtual training, but, now, we had to learn how to navigate with cameras on and bandwidth and things of that nature. So, those are all valuable learnings that we took away from that. So, Leslie, that is my time. I'm going to throw the ball back to you. Leslie: I have got it thank you so much. Archie: Perfect. Leslie: So, as we've kind of been going back and forth here, you can probably guess we want to hear from you. What did you learn there? Oh, this is Jeff and Ashley. Sorry, you guys, I'm stepping on your toes. Jeff: No worries. All right. Thinking for a Change. You heard Archie's story. You heard the different things that he had to contemplate to figure out how to implement. What are you thinking? Can you apply anything from soft skills conversion examples or anything that you might have heard to bring into your curriculum conversion for virtual? Chat us your ideas. Let me know what you're thinking and we'll see if we can get some responses in here, Leslie. Yep, webcams. Looks like everybody was it was kind of loving that one. That we have to make sure the webcams are out there and webcams are great when you're doing a small training, but one of the things you notice now is we'll turn our webcams off and on here throughout the day a little bit when we have such a large number of connections, it really drags the bandwidth down. So, when you're doing the smaller classes, definitely the webcams are the way to go. And it's okay to break up the day, as Sharon said, Leslie. That's a great point and that's something that we can't be afraid of. There's so many times that we just want to cram eight hours in and not do anything else, but it's okay to break it up, for sure. Ashley: It also helps develop that connection, Jeff. I know that when we... Leslie: And, Ashley, you're breaking up a little bit on your audio. Just wanted to give you that heads up. I'm seeing lots of interesting things here I know that Karen Albert is on the line here and here at NIC, she worked with Mike Jackson, who I believe is also on the line and they converted a primarily face-to-face training virtual how to open a new institution. And what they used webcams for and, Karen, you can jump into chat, is not only during the actual, you know, facilitation of the training, but they also use that for virtual coaching of the transition team. So, they literally could see and hear what was going on in a socially distanced setting. So, Karen, if you want to add to that in chat. So, that is fantastic. So lots of ideas coming in here. So, that actually is our last conversion story there and now, let's begin to pull this all together and pull together our basics that we've been exploring today. So, here's our ILT to VILT basics road trip that we visited today and with lots of considerations and three conversion stories. So, to summarize, we start on that road trip always with analysis. And so, what is the status of your curriculum, your performance objectives, lesson plans, slideshows, job aids, all of those things. That's the first place to start. Archie. Archie: Now, the next area in our road map or ADDIE snake is designed. Now, we talked about those performance objectives. So, when we're converting it, how do we convert that from our ILT instruction to our VILT instruction? Leslie: Jeff. Jeff: That brings us into development. So, thinking about the development, how are you going to develop this? What type of digital blend are you going to use? There's an endless amount of activities of interaction and different things you can build in offline and online. What are you going to do to develop this? And I'll kick it to Ashley for the next one. Ashley: So, next, is our implementation. Session duration is huge. How long they're going to be? Do you have breaks in there? Do you have that blend that's talked about? And then, schedule, whether you schedule multiple sessions or not, break it over a time frame. They're all good things to look at. Leslie? Leslie: All right and thank you, Ashley, which brings us back to the end, which is also the next beginning of your ADDIE cycle, if you will. Evaluation, do you have evaluation strategies that are developed and deployed not only during the actual VILT sessions and afterwards, but even in the intersessions How do you do that in between multiple sessions, as well as at the end. And what about during and post VILT because we always think about evaluation happens after, but when you do these multi-session VILT trainings with offline assignments, evaluation needs to happen in more places all along the way so you can tweak and adjust. So, we started analysis and then we take it through evaluation. So, here's as we pull this all together. What is one initial of -- I'm sorry. I'm stepping on you guys, but I'm gonna go ahead. What are some of your initial steps or ideas for converting a segment of your own training from ILT to the VILT based upon our ADDIE conversion road trip today? And, Jeff and Archie, what are we seeing in responses? Jeff: So, well, I just posted make sure we have a curriculum package to convert with. Archie: Right. [Laughs] Leslie: Yeah and that's a that's a thing I want to point out to everybody right now. So, you know, just like in-person, there's a delay, anywhere between a 10 to 12 second delay between when you ask a question and when people start to respond. And with VILT training and webinars, sometimes that delay is even longer. So, know that there's probably going to be a silence and then you'll start seeing things coming through like they are for you guys right now. Archie: Yeah, I'm seeing this coming through. It looks like shorter lessons or kind of splitting things up realizing that that doesn't need to just, you know, be a full conversion at you know one crack at a time. You can break it up and think of that future -- impulse test is coming in strong though And just kind of -- I saw Nikki talk about the platform and he's like what is our platform? What can we actually do with our platform because WebEx is different than Zoom, Zoom is different than Adobe and things of that nature. So, figuring out what that platform's gonna be. Leslie: Yeah, so, I would actually recommend if you weren't a part of that first webinar we did back on December the 2nd, yeah, we had some analysis activities for you to help you make the decision of not only what can your platform do, but what functionality do you need to carry out your VILT training. So, now, it is time for the magic Q & A and it looks like we've got about five or six minutes for that. And, I want to go back to one that was asked earlier and that was about sharing lesson planning formats. Right now, those are actually available on NIC's learning and performance web portal. There's all kinds of instructional theory into practice or ITIP resources there, including different curriculum formats. It's really up to you and your agency to decide how you want to lay it out. There's probably some regulations, some rules about what needs to be in your lesson plans and curriculum packages. You might have a criminal justice training and standards commission or a post board that kind of also speaks to that. So, that's all places to start with that. Other questions, I know that we're seeing. I saw something about coaching and, Archie, do you want to talk about coaching that you do in T4C and then I can briefly mention how we do it in CLD. Archie: Coaching is huge. So, in our blended learning so if we were to go back before 2020, we always had a coaching element that would help participants understand the curriculum better on how to deliver and how to facilitate it. They would also give facilitation tips. Now, what the coaching has been as just even during their actual training sessions, they give them feedback. It's just like, you know, playing a sport. So, I'm a basketball coach and a basketball trainer. I use, you know, Zoom to do basketball training sessions with the same thing. I'm able to turn their cameras on, watch them, give them instruction, give them feedback and then watch them make those corrections. So, that's what we're doing in our Thinking for a Change platform, as well um and it's just been helpful because we don't want them to think that they have to figure it out all by themselves. Leslie: And, thank you, Archie, and in correctional leadership development, you need to know that one-on-one coaching is a instructional strategy that we use and it's very deliberately designed. So, it's something where, you know, John and I and Jim didn't just say, "Hey, let's just do some coaching here." So, just like any other instructional strategy, you design how you're going to do it. So, we have laid out how many times we're going to coach folks, what we're going to coach them on, which in the case of CLD, is their individual leadership development plan, we have certain questions we ask every time. They actually send in their individual leadership development form to us prior to the coaching session that we do. And we do at a minimum, two coaching sessions during intersession, we also start coaching them before they ever even come into phase one. They know who their coach is going to be. So we try to get to know folks before we start coaching them because someone has to want to be coached to be able to be effectively coached. So, that's just some high-level things there I know I saw a question in chat also, everyone, about hey, what about this idea on how do you do something like defensive tactics in VILT? I mean, can you or can you not? I know I kind of have my idea. There might be some kind of way depending upon if you can make it work technologically where you're actually using webcams as a method to coach and support, where there's a webcam on the primary facilitator who's demonstrating the technique. And then, you have webcams set up at socially distanced locations and you actually watch and then coach. You have multiple facilitators or instructors coaching people and what they see people doing in defensive tactics. I know that all of you are here online so we can be our own learning community of practice. So, have any of you done physical skills type of training virtually? And, if so, will you put your ideas on how you actually carry that out in your agency in chat. Another question we got early on was are we going to be able to get the chat? Yes, I will send you out the edited chat with this. So, never fear and I'll send that to you attached to your verification of participation in today's webinar. So, all these wonderful ideas will not go to waste So, there's that chat provided with recording and you know, Lincoln is asking a great question. When you look at one of the evidence-based practices about learning transfer out of the classroom, whatever kind of classroom, it is coaching, actually increases skills and knowledge transfer up to 95 percent as opposed to just the classroom alone. So, yeah, it's something I know that we struggle with in some of our classes, but we tell people up front that coaching is going to be a part of it and what the coaching is and what we're going to coach them on. And, yeah, I'm sure there's some people who don't want to be coached because they think they're doing great, but they wouldn't be in our case, my case and John's case, a leadership development plan unless if they were not needing to work on some things. Now, I'm trying to look here for some other questions here. I saw another one about do you recommend having technical support? Absolutely. So, not only do we have WebEx FedRAMP technical support, our technical support that we have online with us today is our producer team. So, I would recommend that you take a look at some of the InSync resources that I included in the participant workbook because they have a whole training program on how to be a virtual producer. And a virtual producer actually works with a lot of technology. You'll notice, also, in all of that readiness information, I came back over and over again to you about checking with your local and agency IT due to some kind of technical, unique issues related to your internet setup, firewall issues, pop-up blockers, all of those things are things to work out in the analysis and testing phase as you're looking at virtual training. So, Jeff, do you see a question, another question here that we can answer? We can do one more question and then it's time for us to move on towards the end here at the webinar. Jeff: Not seeing anything specifically. I think we kind of ran through most of them. Leslie: Okay. Thank you, Scott, for posting some of those questions. And so, again, I'm going to put out there. We have someone who's interested in whether any agencies conduct physical training in a VILT format such as physical restraint training. I know how I would design it, but I'd love to hear from others and you can put that in chat. How about templates for creating lesson plans? We've got some of those. I will just send you a template, also, when I verify attendance. So, that's all the time we have for today and, Archie, what about resources? Archie: Leslie, there's so many resources out there. We can only name a few. So, if you look here, you can see just a few resources that they're there, but just know there's a vast array of resources to choose from related to conversion and digital blending. Leslie: And, by the way, these are located on page 33 of your participant guide. We put in there not only the resources for our first webinar, but also specifically for this webinar and other available NIC resources. So, we do hope you've added some conversion basics your toolkit during this session. So, Jeff, any final comments before we move to closure? Jeff: Oh, I mean, just on behalf of NIC, our producers, our facilitator team, we just want to thank you for coming to this and the next webinar will be on February 3rd, 2021. You'll see that on the slide, right there. Same time and we hope to see you back. We'll have a registration link that will try to get posted up in the chat, if we haven't already. And one of the other just final points is the next slide. We will have our contact information. I saw that a few times in the chat about contacting panelists. And there you go. We'll leave this up for you to take a picture with your phone or screenshot. Grab this and then you can contact any of the panelists there and that's about it, Leslie. Leslie: All right. Thank you, Jeff. So, on behalf of NIC and myself, I want to thank each one of our facilitators we have in the room with us today. My Chief, Jeff Hadnot, Archie Weatherspoon, my bud, Ashley Kerr from the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and also the IACTP trainer of the year and myself. And a big shout out and thank you to my colleagues who are on our stellar NIC producer team. We have Evelyn Bush, Scott Richards, Belinda Stewart and Case Dent. So, if there's any one of us that you want to reach out to, please don't hesitate to use our email addresses that we have up there on the screen for you. Again, I will be including an edited chat stream for you on your verification of attendance. I'll also be sending out that verification of attendance for today's webinar, tomorrow. We don't give certificates for webinars because we don't register through the LMS. So, that verification of attendance email is what you can use to prove and show that you took part in this webinar, today. The webinar has been recorded and when the webinar is captioned and posted to the NIC website, you'll be hearing from me as a registrant for not only this webinar, but any webinars in this series about where the recording and the materials are available for this webinar. And the link to webinar one I know has been posted in chat, but that's also in your workbook. We thank you all for taking time out of your day to be with us. Please, do contact us with your very specific questions and we look forward to seeing you in February. Thank you, everyone and this concludes today's webinar.