Deliver a successful virtual staff training

COVID-19 has taught us that a lot can change in a short period of time. We've seen many of our library partners shut their doors or implement hybrid programming plans during the pandemic. While it can be painful to know that the heartbeat of a community is not physically available to its residents, libraries have been investing in virtual resources for years and still have so much to offer! We want to make sure that you can seamlessly offer Beanstack, too, even if it means you now have to host staff trainings and refreshers virtually. 

Our Client Success Team members train almost exclusively online, so we wanted to share a few tips as you plan your Beanstack training sessions for this summer or anytime. 

GETTING STARTED

1. Watch a Staff Essentials training. We regularly offering webinars on the basic “Staff Essentials.” These trainings include details on the reader experience registering, logging, and earning rewards. They also show those actions from the staff admin tools. You can access our most recent trainings here.
2. Test everything. Create a test family account with staff access and readers whose ages align with your challenges. Log in as the family and test out all of the possible scenarios. Make sure you have tested all of the actions you will be showing your staff. This article will show you how to test a challenge when you already have a live site.
3. Have your “cheat sheet” ready. We recommend handing out your cheat sheet when you deliver your training. You can send it to people in advance or post it during the training. In any case, giving staff a clear guide of what to expect is key. Here are some examples from libraries using Beanstack in summer 2019.
4. Choose your virtual platform. Our team uses Zoom, which has a free version, and also Google Hangouts Meet. We recommend using a platform where you can record your training and make it available after the fact.
5. Get staff ready. Take advantage of the ability to duplicate a challenge and create summer testing challenges with current dates. Ask staff to participate as if they are readers in advance of the training. If you can swing it, offering a small incentive or drawing prize is a great option for those who complete the challenge! For those who are training at libraries with live sites, make sure to set the testing challenges to staff-only.

PREPARING FOR YOUR STAFF DEMO 

1. Make sure your challenges are open and available for the demo. To do this, give your challenges current dates. If your site is live and has existing users, then also make your challenge staff-only.  
2. Consider the important scenarios.
   1. Returning reader (registration as a reader and from the admin tools)
   2. New reader (registration as a reader and from the admin tools)
   3. How a reader logs reading or activities; how an admin logs on behalf of a reader
   4. How a reader earns a prize; how an admin redeems a prize 
   5. How to update or reset a password
   6. How to unenroll/enroll a reader in a different reading challenge
   7. How to access the Help Center or submit a ticket to the helpdesk.
3. Create an admin account that is the level you are training (Volunteer, Staff, Staff Plus). This avoids confusion and ensures that you are showing your staff members exactly what they will see when logging in. And make sure they know how to log in! This article shows you how to create a new staff account.
4. Make sure people know how to use the virtual training platform. Help ensure that everyone will be able to attend your training by creating instructions that speak to those who are not as tech-savvy. Consider making a training presentation with screenshots of what you ultimately would show during a demo. You can then share a PDF of your presentation with everyone, especially any individuals unable to join the training remotely.
5. Consider offering a small incentive for those who attend. We know this isn’t possible for everyone, but it can be a nice bonus to offer something small.

DURING DEMO

1. Use headphones or dial-in with your phone. We suggest using computer audio with headphones (that you have already tested) or dialing in with the phone option to avoid interruption and/or feedback.
2. Turn off notifications on your computer before training. We recommend putting your computer in “do not disturb” mode and turning off any notifications that typically might pop up on your screen!
3. Resist the temptation to comment on every little thing. Stick to your script! Sometimes when we do a demo, it is hard not to comment on every item that we see. Try to stick to the items that you want to cover, the essentials, so that you keep everyone's attention and avoid overwhelming people.
4. When showing the registration process, create a story. We like to create a story about the family that we create, and we also use memorable names and passwords that we write out beforehand!
5. Consider taking questions at the end of the training or at the end of specific sections. We recommend asking your participants to save their questions until the end of a section or the end of the entire training. This allows you to focus on delivery of the training and also means that you can cut off the question portion from the posted recording if needed!
6. Just in case, queue up questions. We prep ahead with a few questions to get everyone going! We usually think of questions that we know would be asked in person or items that we ourselves have asked over the years. :)

POST-DEMO

1. Record your session and post it on a tool like YouTube or Wistia. Consider sharing a “quiz” through SurveyMonkey or Google Forms with a few simple questions to confirm everyone has watched it.
2. Host smaller virtual meetings using GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts, Zoom, or a phone call with your key Beanstack leads.  It is critically important to have one training to which you can refer people. But you may want to host smaller meetings with key groups to ensure that they watched the training, understand it, and are prepared for facilitation, however it will look for you this summer. Small groups of 10 and under make it easier to connect and less intimidating for people to ask questions.