Thursday, March 10, 2011

A polarizing debate

How long should your virtual classrooms be? This is a long running, and a polarizing debate. Some organizations keep their virtual classrooms as short as 20 minutes. Others have successfully facilitated three or four sessions of up to three-hours each, with breaks in between — breaks that range from an hour, to days, or even weeks. Some people build day-long experiences that are broken up into 90-minute chunks.

Our personal experience has shown that anything longer than two hours per session is too long--even with frequent and a varied interaction. We believe that 90-to-120 minute sessions are an ideal length for a virtual classroom experience. It allows you enough time to teach three or four main points and is short enough to keep people engaged.

We recognize that every situation is different. You should test various combinations and options yourself until you find the perfect amount of content and length of your virtual classroom.

No comments:

Post a Comment