Effective virtual sessions require up-front analysis that will guide your design.

1. Ask yourself questions during your analysis to ensure that your design matches your presentation goals.
   • What is the ultimate outcome of the training? What will the attendees take away from the experience? Some desired outcomes might be:
     • Motivation
     • New awareness or knowledge of specific content
     • New skills
   • What kinds of information and activities can be included in the virtual session to achieve the desired outcomes?
   • Is there content that already exists that can be used in the session? If yes, where is it, what is its format, and can it be used as is or does it have to be revised?
   • Does new content have to be created? If yes, what is the best format to use, and what resources are available to help create/develop that content?
   • How many people will participate in the session? What is their previous experience with virtual classroom learning? What is their previous knowledge of the topic(s) to be covered in the session?
   • Will there be a single or multiple presenters? Who are they? How will they coordinate their participation?

2. Use an outline. Dialogue Design includes outline templates that offer suggestions for session content and sequencing. Each outline component has supporting guidelines intended to help you build and, in some cases, develop the individual content pieces that will comprise your finished session.
3. Consider appropriate content types.
   • Microsoft® Word documents
   • PowerPoint® presentations
   • Excel spreadsheets and graphs
   • Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF) documents
   • Web pages
   • Dialogue Resources, a vast Skillsoft repository of Courses, SkillBriefs, Job Aids, and Referenceware (Skillsoft Press only)
   • Adobe® Flash® (swf) files

   When planning your content, remember that there is a vast library of content and resources available to you, and that Dialogue Design lets you use content from a wide array of learning assets to best complete your course's learning objectives. You can also include other content, such as vendor materials, videos, or multimedia that already exist in your own organization. Having a variety of media (audio, video, self-paced reading, etc.) can improve the quality of your program in several ways. It will:

   • Reinforce learning points by appealing to multiple learning styles.
   • Break up lectures.
   • Promote interaction and reasons for discussion.

Used in combination with the various learning tools available in live sessions, you will create an engaging and memorable experience.

Note: It is highly advisable to complete your analysis and high-level design before starting to create your session. The time it takes to put together your session can be significantly reduced by identifying and collecting all existing content sources, and developing/creating new content before you start putting your session together.