I did my first online training over the last three weeks by running a self-hypnosis course using a web-meeting system called AnyMeeting. Naturally, we had glitches along the way in the form of audio problems and other connectivity issues. Still, the power of modern technology
never fails to amaze me. It is now possible to learn pretty much anything that you want as long as you have a decent Internet connection.
In the self-hypnosis course, the participants learnt a simple but highly effective way of going into self-hypnosis and giving themselves positive suggestions.
I’ll be running the course again over the next few months, so please get in touch if you are interested. You can look at the details of the last course here.
Some Technical Details
I based the method on the NGH self-hypnosis technique and added in a lot of supporting material.
It was my first time to run an online training. There were, of course, some technical issues, but the technology is definitely in place now to teach pretty much anything online. People can sit in the convenience of their own homes, and so can I š
For anyone who wants to do something similar, here areĀ someĀ quick notes about the system I used.
- I used a web meeting software called Anymeeting. It is fairly reasonably priced. I think it was $180 per year for unlimited meetings. Compared to the cost of booking rooms at hotels or other venues, that seems very reasonable. There are many other alternatives available such as Gotomeeting and even Google hangouts. If you do a Google search, you can find articles which compare these different services.
- The quality of audio and video is generally good. We did have some glitches in which a participant’s webcam appeared twice or got frozen. And sometimes the sound broke up for a participant, although I think that this was due to a slower Internet speed at their end.
- Participants didn’t have any trouble logging into meetings. The participants don’t need to download any additional software. It just loads directly in the browser. The presenter needs to download additional software.
- You can see participants’ web cams, hear their audio, share a slideshow (presenter notes don’t display though) and there is a chat box and other tools.
- Most of the time, you will probably need to keep the participants muted. Otherwise, you can end up with a lot of noise. In addition, everyone should wear headphones or you can get terrible echo.
Overall, Anymeeting was a pretty good experience. More particularly, doing the online training was a good experience, and I’m planning to run the self-hypnosis course a couple more times Ā over the next year.
For trainers, one thing that I realized was that online courses can be a great way of extending your market. Apart from the obvious geographical reach of the Internet, different time zones can offer different possibilities. I can run a course in the afternoon in Japan which is available for early-morning risers in Europe etc.