How to Make Online Training Work For You - Zoom Edition!

Paula Allen, CVA

a pair of AL!VE Academy webinars: Taking Your Volunteer Training Online by Tomomi Summers from 2019, and our latest AL!VE Academy from March 2020, The Accidental Trainer by Barry Altland. Both should give you some food for thought when designing online content. Log in to AL!VE as a member, scroll down to the green links for members; hit ‘Resources’ and choose ‘File Archive’ Search for ‘Training’ to get Tomomi’s webinar recording, and ‘Accidental’ to find Barry’s information.
 
Secondly, we want to take this theoretical training in stride and talk about the nuts and bolts.
What online platform do you choose for your needs? Do you have to set up something quick for National Volunteer Week, April 19- 25? Valerie Mercadante of Volunteer Pro wrote a great article about deciding if this is the right route for you, including a great discussion of technical platforms and necessary equipment.
 
Are you having difficulty with implementing a digital platform? We use Zoom, and the help feature is here: Zoom Video Tutorials. We highly recommend browsing through the links to learn what you need in order to host a meeting. I’d like to highlight Controls you'll use as a host.
 
To avoid the shut-down of your meeting at the 40 minute mark (how embarrassing!), think carefully when you set up your account for your organization. Make sure that you use the email address of the staff person who will lead most of the meetings. Once your first meeting is scheduled, whomever is hosting does have to go back to Zoom, log in, and click ‘start meeting’. Otherwise after 30 minutes it will count down from the 10 minute warning and kick everyone out of the meeting at 40 minutes because ‘the host has not arrived’. So if you’ve got multiple email addresses, watch out! Learn more about Roles in a Webinar here.
 
If you need a link to send your volunteers or co-workers (or even relatives!) on how to JOIN a meeting on Zoom (yes, Auntie, you DO want to click ‘Open zoom.us’ you’re trying to Join the meeting…) then use this simple tutorial: Joining a Meeting. For all of our friends who don’t know how to un-mute themselves, or have trouble with their audio: Audio and Video Controls.
 
We hope this article answers some of your pressing technical questions about Zoom, and gives you access to the resources you need to make a decision that’s right for your organization. Remember, you can do this! The tools and technology you need are available; studying up on it just a bit in advance will help you pull together a great online meeting or webinar.
 
Best regards,
Paula Allen,