With COVID-19 in retreat in 2024, remote training for bloodborne pathogens, and online training in general, is still at the front of everyone’s mind.
Recent global events have thrust online training into the spotlight, but this has really just sped up a process that was happening anyway.
This is because online training had already become the preferred way to train for many individuals and organization.
Remote bloodborne pathogen training has its own set of challenges that are unique to the format and these can catch even seasoned training professionals off-guard.
This article covers some actionable advice you can use to overcome the hidden challenges of remote training if you are delivering instructor-led BBP training to your employees.
Online Bloodborne Pathogens Training: Key Challenges
Distracted Trainees
Distractions are a reality of remote work, but these distractions are an even greater issue for remote bloodborne pathogen training. A parcel delivery or a child running into the ‘office’ is just a distraction when an employee is answering emails or writing a document – but if they are in the middle of an OSHA bloodborne pathogen training session it’s highly disruptive to everyone involved.
Overcoming Distractions
Make it cystal clear in all the pre-training communication that this a formal training class and that 100% focus is expected and those remote trainees must have both a dedicated, workspace and adequate childcare as required. Offer assistance to employees who are having difficulties with scheduling or childcare.
Scheduling Remote bloodborne pathogen training
Scheduling ILT can be a headache – but scheduling remote learning can be an even bigger pain. Remote scheduling becomes even trickier when blended learning solutions are used that require attendees to commit to multiple synchronous and asynchronous activities like eLearning, virtual classroom and video check-in sessions to complete their OSHA training for bloodborne pathogens.
How to Overcome Scheduling Issues
A considered approach training scheduling will allow anyone who needs to take the remote BBP training to access it on a suitable day and time.
But that’s easier said than done – fighting with multiple spreadsheets and booking forms is time that could be spent creating your training content.
For that reason, it’s best to leverage an online training solution like our bloodborne pathogen group training that allows you to schedule training effortlessly with a built-in dashboard.
Creating Online Bloodborne Pathogen training that Works
What works well in an ILT environment will not always translate well to remote training. Powerpoints used in instructor-led training may work in a virtual classroom context with some tweaking – but for interactive eLearning courses, you will need to repurpose existing content according to elearning best practices.
Create or leverage engaging remote courses
Creating online remote courses is really an activity where leveraging technology will help you out. Modern HTML5 authoring tools will take the hard work out of formatting content and creating interactions that will engage remote learners and encourage course completions.
Look out for authoring tools that feature e templates you can customize and built-in interactions like TOC’s, process charts, dialog simulations, and flip cards, so you can just choose a template you like, populate it with OSHA bloodborne pathogen training information, add bloodborne pathogens test quizzes or assessments, maybe embed some video, and get a course up and running very quickly.
If you don’t want the effort of developing your own OSHA compliant BBP training you can take advantage of our award-winning training and use it on your own LMS system.
Technical Challenges Interrupt Training
even in purpose-designed training room environments, It’s possible for training sessions to be interrupted by technical issues, and remote training is perhaps more vulnerable to these issues. From unstable internet and VPN connections to software issues if something can go wrong it probably will.
Prepare and avoid Tech Issues
Proper preparation goes a long way to minimizing the likelihood of issues occurring.
It’s a good idea to start the training session early and leave a buffer in which to address any login or access issues.
Conclusion
Remote training for bloodborne pathogens does present many challenges, and it can be especially problematic for trainers used to a classroom environment that needs to make the transition to remote training.
The key to delivering any good training is planning and preparing, so by taking the proper time to plan and keep your participants informed you will go a long way to avoiding some of the hidden challenges of remote training.
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