By Miles Peacock, 27 April 2021
Kate Wootton is an independent trainer, facilitator and coach who offers mental health training to people at work. Taking the delivery of mental health training online presents its own challenges and I wanted to ask Kate about her experiences of the transition from face-to-face learning to a blended approach.
Kate is owner of Ripple Concept Ltd.
Kate, you work in the field of mental health at work. Before we talk about working online, what have been your observations about mental health at work since lockdown?
It’s been mixed. I think some people are really enjoying it because they're not having to physically go out or go to places that they may not want to go. I think some people are really struggling because they are not technical. Working online induces headaches, sitting on screen all day, and so I think that it's been real mixed bag.
I think people are behaving in different ways online. It's more difficult to work online. If you're doing anything around mental health, it’s harder because you can't see the person so you're not really able to pick up the subtleties. You're not seeing how they work in a group; not seeing the interactions between people. You're not really being able to build a stronger relationship with somebody and that that has impact.
So how did you find having to move Mental Health First Aid training online? What were the differences compared with face-to-face training?
When we went lockdown in March there had already been a 5 month period where I was running face-to-face training events. That gave me a really good grounding in the course content and structure. I would say it's harder to run the face-to-face version than online.
In what way?
Working online, from your own office, you are able to have your reference materials in front of you. And the material isn't as intense because you've got delegates doing self-learning. So, face-to-face we were literally facilitating everything, whereas online training has a significant amount throughout, which is self-learning, so that took pressure off. But for me going from face-to-face to online line I wasn’t worried about the material, I was worried about the tech.
As a participant on one of your Mental Health First Aider programmes I was really interested to find out more about the structure that was used for your online programme. It was a blended approach with pre-work reading materials, 2 days of facilitated sessions separated by asynchronous work on the Enabley platform. I particularly like the structure of the facilitated sessions, which on each day were also interspersed with periods of asynchronous work. It meant you didn’t have to be online for several hours at a time.
The face-to-face format was 2 days working together. You had facilitated sessions but in a slightly different order. You had exercises. Probably a few more exercises than online, but overall, the structure is pretty much the same. You probably you have more videos on the online version. The online version hasn't lost anything, it's just slightly different in the way in which it's presented.
Face-to-face we would have done more about getting to know each other. You also get the workbooks at the start [rather than as pre-work], but the order of content is pretty much the same. You would have had more exercises and group discussion.
The online structure actually gives me greater flexibility. I can either run the course over 2 days, with 2 synchronous sessions per day, or I can run the four sessions on different days. I like having that flexibility.
I prefer running two sessions in the day because you keep the people that you have on the day. People have that opportunity to go off and study then immediately come back and ask questions if they need to, and you're following up on that learning pretty much straight away. So, you're not leaving a big gap.
Frankly, it appeals to people like you - the introverts! It gives them time to get off screen. You haven't got that forced focus of being in a classroom with lots of other people.
What has working online done for the way you can monitor learning?
Working face-to-face we can look through a participant’s workbook and make some judgement of their understanding, but we pretty much leave it to the individual to tell us if they don't understand anything. On the Enabley platform we're actively questioning and checking out the participants’ understanding. There are more analytics to assess how participants have been engaging with the course materials. Also, I can pick up exactly what people have said in their uploaded work. The analytics element is there if we ever want to go in and take a deeper look; how long they are taking to complete a module, for example. You can use it pretty much to answer anything you want.
Do you feel any different about the competence of people completing the online version?
No, I actually think in honesty, people probably learn more on the online version because they are forced to go to the manual to read sections that were not covered in class.
You said earlier that at the start of lockdown, your worries were not about course content but the tech you would use to deliver the content. How has that changed for you over the last year?
First of all, my computer didn't have the capacity to have all of the platforms. I hadn’t heard of half of the platforms, didn't know how to run them and I have this kind of age-old belief, ‘Well you are crap at tech’. I've always been of the opinion that I am much better face-to-face than I am online, so previously I always steered clear of online stuff…but having to do it was a brilliant way for me to get involved in tech.
So how many different learning platforms have you engaged in over the last 12 months?
8 or 9.
One of the things I think we as independent trainers face is that you can have a recommendation about what platform or app is best to use, but often you end up having to use the one that client wants you to use and therefore, you have to understand a range of platforms and apps.
I think one of the big learnings for me is how different they are and how some platforms are really training-focused while others are not. Sometimes a client will insist on using an inappropriate training platform. No matter what you say to the client, you cannot budge them, usually because of their IT protocols. You end up giving a session which is not always ideal or in the way you would like just because the platform lacks functionality.
So, to run a training event, what would you be looking for, bare minimum, in terms of functionality?
Breakout rooms, the ability to show PowerPoint and chat on the same screen and it’s nice to have a whiteboard. You don't absolutely have to have it, but you have to absolutely have that ability to be able to see PowerPoint at the same time as looking at chat for delegates' responses.
It makes a difference when you can't see faces, doesn't it? Even if it’s only thumbnails.
Yeah, massive difference.
Enabley is the platform that you are required to use for your Mental Health First Aider training. What would you say with the good points of it? What do you think hasn’t worked so well?
Once you get your head round it it’s easy to build a course on it. We have a template and we build a course on the template and once you have got it set up it’s fine. You can see slides. You can put people into breakout rooms very easily. You can easily manage breakout rooms. So, you can keep up to speed with it. You can put YouTube clips on, you know, it's easy. It's got things like notes sections. It's got the whiteboard. It's got quite a big screen. We only ever have up to 16 people on any of those courses, and you can easily see people on screen. It's easy to just shift between PowerPoint and then back to people on the big screen view.
It lacks stability at times and some organisations can’t use it because of their own protective firewalls etc. When you lose people because of connection issues it’s so stressful for me, and for the other people.
That leads me on to the next point, how much of what you have done online has been flying solo or have you worked with co-facilitator or tech back-up at all?
I've done both. If I'm doing associate work, tech back-up can be limited because once I'm on the course that back-up goes and then I'm running it. It’s difficult to talk to tech back-up when you are running the course.
Most of the work I've done is flying solo. I have worked as a co-trainer, but that's more to help other trainers up to the certificated level. Virtually everything else has been run solo. I like it when you co-train, because you 'bounce off' each other and can support each other as you go along. You can also watch out for delegates and check they are OK.
How do you find the work effort training online compared with face-to-face?
I find it different. I find the worry of whether something's going to work or not, much higher than I do when I'm working face-to-face. But there are bonuses because you can literally have all the notes lying near you. You feel more comfortable because of that. You know, for me, being a perfectionist and being analytical and data-driven, I like to have all my stuff around me so that's been easier.
I've found it more difficult, much more intense in terms of work input because I have to know that there are things you have to set up. If I am using Enabley, for example, I have a whole lot of admin. before I actually get to running the course. You spend about 2 hours setting it up in the first place, unlocking and locking the assignments that participants are required to complete. Then there’s following up that people have done the self-learning. If I'm using Zoom it's just a case of getting on and running a session so that's much easier. So there’s a sort of give-and-take. You'll probably laugh, but I've learned to be very chilled out about it. And if it's not going to work, it's not going to work, and I can't do anything about it and just go with the flow.
How would you say your mindset has changed, if at all towards tech in the last 12 months?
So, it changed hugely. I've done probably as much as I can in terms of making myself feel comfortable. I've spent a lot of time behind the scenes learning different things. I spent a lot of time online with our admin. manager from the associate companies, trying things out and playing with things. So, there's been a lot of input, but I've actually really enjoyed it because I was so untechnical before. I've now been given the honorary title of being quite technical!
People come to me and say, ‘But you're really chilled out about it’! Sometimes things go wrong, but we can always find a solution. It's nobody's fault. People are very forgiving, more tolerant about those things. I think people have recognised we are all human beings and if you use your humour it helps too.
As an independent trainer, what is your view about training in the future, when we return to more conventional forms of work?
I think we're going to have a mix. I think there's going to be those organisations with people who are absolutely desperate to have face-to-face and I think there are going to be people who say, ‘Can we do that online? It’s actually cheaper for us and we can get everybody from around the country, all around the world on the same training session’. So I think it's going to be a real mix of requests from organisations.
As trainers we may have to be more assertive about challenging organisations. So, when they say, ‘We want this online’ and we know it's not going to work online, I think we're going to have to go back and be really much more persuasive. But I think we will be offering a mix because what organisations have found is that it's actually really easy for most of their delegates to just hook up online and get what they need.
If you could advise an organisation on moving to blended approaches what would you recommend to the client about what would be best delivered online and what elements would best be delivered face-to-face?
I think things like leadership development, where you are working with senior teams, where you need to get in and challenge behaviours, that does not work online. People can hide online. It’s harder to run activities where you can observe behaviour [rather than just talk about it]. So, it’s harder to deep-dive into a discussion on behaviour when there is a lack of observable evidence. You can’t, for example, discuss the impact of a person’s behaviour on a colleague, in specific terms.
Most stuff you can put online, but you lose that interaction. You lose that potential to pick up the subtleties of body language. Also, some people find being online a little bit more uncomfortable.
It’s worth saying that I have also be a participant on online courses over the last year. It is hard. I have just come off three very, very full days, all consecutive days. I had a migraine on the last day, I just did not get that rapport with the other delegates.
Contact Kate:
email: kate@rippleconcept.co.uk
Photo of 'How are you really?' by finn, downloaded from Unsplash. [finn-nJupV3AOP-U-unsplash]