Continuing education is a necessity for teachers, especially with the rapid rate of change in the classroom. Webinars prove to be a very convenient way for them to access this training from the comfort of the teacher lounge or from home. However, most educators won’t sign up for just any class that happens to be convenient. Each webinar must promise one of these five things in order to capture a teacher’s interest.
Actual Benefits
Teachers must be able to clearly identify what they will gain from attending a webinar. They already feel strapped for time, so they won’t want to waste an hour or more on a webinar that doesn’t offer them anything. If you want to host a successful webinar for educators, you need to be clear and upfront about the benefits of the class.
Freebies
Teachers never have enough money in their classroom budgets for supplies, so freebies can go a long way. Give out a small item that corresponds to the webinar topic. Make sure that the gift you give out will be relevant to the classroom and help them to implement the new skills learned through the webinar. You can give them access to additional content at no extra charge, a small token sent to them in the mail, or any other enticing freebie you can think of.
Engaging Presentation
At the end of a long work day, teachers don’t want to listen to a monotonous voice drone on about statistics. Your webinar needs to have passion, engaging content, and an enthusiastic speaker. Great visual content can also play an important role in crafting an engaging webinar that makes teachers want to come back for future presentations.
Shorter Lengths
Most people prefer webinars that are between thirty and forty minutes long. This gives you enough time to get through a solid amount of material without cutting into an educator’s personal time. Webinars should aim to fill at least thirty minutes of time with their content. If this isn’t possible, then the webinar might not be worth a teacher’s time. Virtual classes that run too long may need to be split up into multiple parts to make them more manageable for educators.
Add a Q&A Section
Educators love to learn more information, and one of the best ways to do that is to ask more questions. Be sure that you leave plenty of time in the end to take a few questions from the crowd. This can help them to gain the information they really need from your presentation and feel more engaged. It may even help you to see new potential topics for your next webinar series.
