RPCuk Remote – the same top quality training, wherever you are

At RPCuk we’re used to running our training courses in classrooms all around the world. We have dedicated training rooms at our offices in Leeds, but all our trainers are well versed in setting up a training environment in client offices from Derby to Dubai. Covid-19 put an abrupt stop to all that and left us with a new challenge. How could we continue to offer training to our clients when we could no longer be face-to-face?

We already had many years’ experience in delivering web-based, interactive, hands-on training and realised that we could use this know-how to offer remote training to all our delegates who were now confined to working from home. All the delegates would need would be a PC with audio capability, a bandwidth of at least 256kbps and Microsoft Teams. They would get all the great benefits of an in-person course with two great new added benefits of being able to train from anywhere and the reduced risks and cost of doing that without the need to travel. We could offer group sessions and 1:1 training for all our regular courses and workshops either as public classes or closed sessions – just as we would in normal times.

Trainer Richard Collins was first to try this new way of working with a 3-day Oracle Primavera P6 Fundamentals course, originally arranged to be delivered on site up in Scotland. He tells us how it all went:

Day 1

I was a little apprehensive in the knowledge that 10 delegates were awaiting instructional guidance from me, but I knew that if anything was to go wrong, Chris – with his expert support – was waiting in the wings. Having already been involved with online learning and what can go wrong, I had a good idea of the likely challenges ahead. Chris had already got all the delegates settled and ensured their connectivity was up and ready. 

As the trainer, I didn’t have any issues with my computer or internet connection, but I was aware that one delegate had persistent connection problems. He was in a rural part of Cork in Ireland and working from home. Every now and then he would lose internet connection, then have to either log back into the cloud environment or reboot his machine. Considering this did happen on a few occasions, the flow of the course didn’t suffer as we continued in his absence until he was back online, and I was able to recap what he had missed. At one point, another delegate lost his microphone and speaker, so couldn’t hear my delivery and I was unable to hear him when he asked a question, but that was resolved by Chris once again who was on hand in the background.

So apart from a few hiccups day 1 was completed on schedule. It didn’t take long to get into the flow of delivering the course and in no time at all it felt pretty much the same as delivering a course in an actual classroom. With a combination of video and screensharing I could talk to and demonstrate to the delegates and look at their screens, too, to check how they were getting on or to resolve queries they might have.

Day 2

There was a lot of content to deliver on the second day and fortunately we had far fewer technical glitches. Chris was on hand first thing to ensure the delegates were up and running before the course started, but I didn’t see him for the rest of the day until after the course had finished, as for the most part the day went without a hitch. One delegate had a recurring issue but was able to resolve it himself. He would have to thank Chris for that. Delegates were able to communicate with me and with one another to talk through queries and examples, just as if we were sitting together in the same room.

Day 3

No major issues to report, and if the delegates lost connectivity, they were able to deal with it themselves by now – we’re all learning on the job! I was only made aware of a problem if a delegate had missed part of my demonstration on screen due to the screen freezing their end and needed to ask me to repeat something. By the end of the course it seemed perfectly normal, and I was pleased to receive a unanimous verdict of ‘outstanding’ in the feedback forms!

What could go wrong?

Home remote training is fine if your broadband is fast, but frustrating when it's slow and with other family members also working from home in many cases, this is the most common technical hitch. But the trainers and the delegates quickly found the best ways to deal with any issues. To resolve a slow network, delegates restart their machine, making sure no other programs are running in the background. Turning off the video in Microsoft teams can also help a lot.

One of the main advantages that classroom training has over remote is the fact that unless a delegate has 2 monitors available – one to view the software and documentation and the other to view the trainer's computer which is providing instructional guidance at the time – they will find themselves constantly switching screens to keep up. In a classroom, we can use the individual monitors in conjunction with a display screen at the front of the class. But we’re all becoming more agile and getting to grips with new ways of working and by the end of the first day on most courses, it all seems perfectly normal.

WWW – What Went Well?

Operations Director, Tina Johnson, takes the lead on co-ordinating all the training at RPC and sees remote training staying on the RPC books as an option going forward. Since March, we have delivered 24 remote training sessions for 61 delegates. We’d like to imagine our remote delegates in exotic, remote locations, but like the rest of us, they have been nowhere exciting this summer! Director Pete Gable has undertaken bespoke training for Vermillion, Glan Agua and Fugro and a number of other clients have booked closed remote sessions for groups of their own employees.

We’ve had some terrific feedback to the remote training courses we’ve offered, and the trainers are as positive as the delegates about how it’s worked so far:

• The responsiveness of RPC to my needs and the distance learning option were brilliant. It went really well
• The temporary provision of P6 to use via the cloud was excellent
• I felt the course met and exceeded my requirements. 
• I really enjoyed it and learnt a lot, great knowledge from the tutor and real-life examples
• I thought the experience of the tutor and how much work experience we got to do live in the system was excellent.
• Brilliant course, brilliant trainer.
• The quality of tuition was excellent 
• The remote learning was really a lot better than I would have imagined probably as good as a classroom
• I will be returning to RPC in the near future to carry on my training

Tina tells us, “It is a real advantage to know that we can offer a variety of solutions and that there is a training delivery method to suit all requirements. Since re-opening the classroom at our Leeds offices in July we have already delivered 17 sessions for 43 people in total – so some are happy that we are back to face to face training. And our trainers are back on the road, too, delivering courses for clients at their own sites. We’re looking at ways to offer a blend of classroom and remote access to the same course at the same time, so that the trainer is training both the delegates in the room and other delegates working remotely – watch this space!”