10+ Web Tools for Designing, Marketing, Managing, and Leading Virtual Courses
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Ease of Use Scale: Easy ---> Moderately Easy ---> Moderate ---> Moderately Difficult ---> Difficult
Delivery and Facilitation Tools
Free Conferencing
Full-featured tele-conference service |
Free, full-featured conferencing service that includes a web-based interface to manage participants, creation of up to four breakout groups, and free call-recording.
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DimDim, Webex, GoToMeeting, Adobe Connect, Zoho Meeting, and Others
Popular web-conferencing providers that each offer a different suite of features to enable interactive, visually stimulating, web-based meetings (aka webinars) |
Each web-conferencing service provider has its own feature set and pricing, but what they all do is bring a strong web-presence to your virtual events. They enable you to demo software, visit websites, use a virtual whiteboard, work within applications on your desktop, and so on. Most will let you record the session. Caution, though - web-conferences are more technologically complicated than most other forms of virtual training. You must practice using the interface before you offer a web-conference. And you must be prepared for your audience to struggle getting signed in to your conference.
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SavorChat and TweetChat
Private chat rooms for live events |
These add-on services expand the use of Facebook and Twitter by adding a chat room that you can use during your virtual event. While they may take the attention off of what you are saying, they can also be used effectively to enhance interactivity, participation, virtual discussions, and learning. They can also be helpful if you need to mute your participants during a teleclass.
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Marketing and Logistics Management Tools
EventBrite, EventBee and RegOnline
Affordable online event management services |
Create a custom webpage where you can promote your event, enroll attendees, sell tickets, and communicate with attendees before and after the event. Payment processing is available if you have a PayPal account or merchant account. May give you the ability to interface with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social-networking sites.
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GetResponse
An email marketing service for communicating with prospects, clients, and participants |
This email service is cutting-edge with great features. A free version for up to 10 subscribers gives you an opportunity to try it out. If you are serious about online marketing you need an email marketing service - and this one is top notch with a lot of features.
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LinkedIn Events, TwtVite, and Facebook Events
Event promotion through social-networking sites |
Promote your event to your friends and contacts with these social-networking tools. You will need to be a member of the social-networking site in order to promote your event on it. Some allow premium advertising for an additional fee.
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Planet Teleclass, Seminar Announcer, and CraigsList
Event listing service |
These services allow you to list your events in their directory. For Planet Teleclass, you will need to provide your own registration page, to which your listing will be linked.
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Design and Development Tools
Google Docs and Zoho Office
Online applications that can be used to create documents, presentations, databases, and virtual communication. |
Zoho Office is more robust and feature-heavy than Google Docs, but Google Docs is more commonly used and, in many ways, simpler. They both provide a useful way to create a virtual office for communicating with your participants, creating training materials and presentations, and keeping track of all the details. There is a learning curve when using these applications and, particularly in the case of Google, there are constant changes and upgrades.
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The Thiagi Group
Interactive games and activities for learning |
Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan (aka Thiagi) is renowned within the Training & Development community for designing games and activities that teach and engage the participants. Subscribe to Thiagi's newsletter and explore his website if you want inspiration for making your event more interactive.
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Google Images, Flickr, and Design Comics
Photos, graphics, and inspiration for visual concepts |
Useful for finding images that inspire your creativity. If you use the images in your materials, be sure to follow each site's copyright requirements.
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BigStockPhoto, iStockPhoto, and Clip Art
Photos and graphics that you can purchase to use in your materials
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Professional-quality graphics, images, and clip art to use in your marketing materials and participant materials...or just search the database to get ideas for creating your own images.
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SnagItScreen-capturing and image-editing software |
This software is especially useful if you need to capture screen shots or images on your computer screen to place them in marketing materials or in workbooks, handouts, or slide shows. The software also has image-editing capabilities.
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