VIRTUAL TRAINING
Cindy Huggett, CPTD
Every platform now touts artificial intelligence (AI) features, and headlines promise that AI will revolutionize training. It seems that every week brings another updated tool. We are drowning in AI noise, while most of us are wondering how it will specifically affect our dayto-day work.
In my nearly 35 years of infusing technology into learning solutions, I’ve watched countless “revolutionary” tools come and go. AI is different, but not in the ways the hype suggests. Its true value is enhancing the capabilities of virtual facilitators and instructional designers.
So, the full question isn’t “how do I use AI?” but “how do I use AI in specific ways that enhance a virtual class?”
There are currently three specific applications for virtual training: as a design companion, a facilitation partner and a tech assistant. Let’s look at each in more detail.
Creating engaging virtual training can take significant time and effort. But using AI as a design partner can help you efficiently craft an interactive virtual learning experience. For example, AI can rapidly prototype activities and exercises based on the learning objectives, generate discussion prompts tailored to the content and create participant materials in multiple formats. It can suggest engagement strategies for maximum involvement and can quickly design job aids that reinforce key concepts.
The partnership works well because you bring the expertise, the organizational context and deep understanding of your learners. AI brings speed and a variety of options you can evaluate. You might prompt your AI tool with something like “generate five discussion questions for a 60-minute virtual class on giving effective feedback, targeted at new managers in a healthcare setting.” Within seconds, you have activity options to evaluate and refine based on your professional judgment and knowledge of your audience.
This design methodology allows more time for strategic planning, like determining which activities will resonate most with learners or how to sequence practice exercises for maximum application. AI offers options, while you handle the critical thinking that makes them work for your unique training program.
Virtual facilitators must simultaneously manage multiple demands during a class. They facilitate discussion, read participant energy, monitor breakout rooms and make real-time adjustments to keep the program on track. Even skilled facilitators can find it challenging to stay fully present with participants while also processing everything happening across the platform.
AI tools can help by monitoring chat in real-time and summarizing key themes or questions, suggesting responses to common participant inquiries, recognizing patterns across breakout room discussions and generating examples or analogies when participants need additional clarification. For example, you could prompt an AI tool during a session with “participants just discussed challenges implementing new software. Generate five follow-up questions to deepen their analysis.” You quickly review the options, select the most relevant ones and seamlessly continue the conversation.
In this delivery partnership, AI processes the chat, polls and participation data while you focus on facilitation presence and authentic engagement. You maintain the human connection, use empathy and read the room’s energy. AI handles the information processing and pattern spotting. In short, facilitators can stay connected to the learning experience, which is exactly where their expertise matters most.
Tech issues can derail momentum and use up valuable learning time. If a participant can’t join their assigned breakout room, an audio connection isn’t clear or someone needs help finding the whiteboard text formatting tools, they will have trouble staying engaged. These seemingly small issues add up, causing disruption to the program flow.
AI tools can provide tech support to keep things moving. Before a session starts, you might prompt the AI with “this session uses chat, polling, breakout rooms and the whiteboard tools on [insert platform name here]. Provide troubleshooting help to participants who ask technical questions about these features.” That way the AI assistant is then ready to offer automated guidance for common platform issues, deliver instant help documentation and provide step-bystep support without the facilitator’s direct involvement.
This means that participants can get real-time support without interrupting the session or waiting for you to stop and troubleshoot. You can acknowledge someone’s challenge with a quick “help is on the way” and continue facilitating the program. The individual problems get solved without taking everyone else out of the learning experience.
If you’re new to AI tools, consider carefully where to start. If you’re spending hours creating materials, try AI as a design partner. If you’re overwhelmed during delivery, explore AI as a facilitation partner. If tech issues constantly derail your sessions, implement AI technical support.
Your professional expertise hasn’t become less valuable in the age of AI. Instead, there are now tools that let you focus that expertise where it matters most, on the uniquely human work of helping people learn and grow.
Cindy Huggett, CPTD, is a consultant and author whose books include The Facilitator’s Guide to Immersive, Blended and Hybrid Learning and Virtual Training Tools and Templates. Email her at Cindy@CindyHuggett.com or connect with her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/cindyhuggett/.