With some multitasking and technology prowess, trainers comfortable in classrooms can also operate in the growing e-learning world.

Wendy Kaufman runs her own executive training firm and has years of experience conducting workshops and seminars. So she wasn’t expecting her entry into the expanding world of online training to be such a jolt.

“The first time I did an online training [course], I was covered in sweat,” Kaufman says. “It was one of the hardest training classes I’d ever done. I thought, ‘This is crazy. I didn’t even leave my home. It should be a piece of cake.’ But it is a whole different skill set. You have about 20 seconds before you can lose an entire audience.”

Kaufman is president of Balancing Life’s Issues Inc., a firm in Ossining, N.Y., that offers training seminars with a work/life theme. She’s now a veteran in online training—she conducts about one-third of her training courses over the web. But her introduction to the field illustrates the challenges that trainers who are used to conventional methods can face when they enter the virtual classroom.

There is, of course, the more familiar form of online training, called asynchronous e-learning, in which lectures are prerecorded and students can watch them at any time. There is no student/teacher interaction during the sessions.

In synchronous online training, on the other hand, students log on to a web site at a designated time and view a live presentation, and the trainer interacts with trainees in real time. The two-way online communication may be with sound or text messages or images, or a combination of those elements, but there is no eye-to-eye contact.

The absence of such a connection is just one of the drawbacks that trainers who are used to conventional methods may perceive when they make the leap to the world of online training. They also may not be comfortable at first when they start working in a new-tech environment and in effect become trainees themselves—students in an online world, cultivating the particular skills necessary to be effective at online training.

Yet, they may have little choice. Synchronous e-learning has gained a strong foothold in the training profession. The eLearning Guild, an association for e-learning professionals, issued a survey report in 2004—Report on Trends in Organizational Practices of Synchronous e-Learning—stating that 73 percent of surveyed companies that offer employee training online do so via synchronous e-learning, up from 60 percent two years earlier.

Most synchronous training sessions are centered on technical training and product knowledge. But almost one-third of companies say they use synchronous training for developing leadership skills, business skills and soft skills such as communication methods, performance management, stress management and time management.

The following are a few additional tips from experts on running an online classroom:

Keep class sizes manageable. The ideal for a class lasting 60 to 90 minutes is 10 trainees; the limit is 25. When the number approaches 30, the class becomes a lecture.

Greet each student by name. Being an online trainer can require a little bit of “hand-holding.”

Listen attentively. Tune in to what is being said, but also listen for what is being implied.

Call on students. Don’t leave anybody out. Some people want to lie low. Throughout the course, do random calling, and let the [computer] can go after those who haven’t called in a while.

Use polling, chat and other interactive features.

Ask open-ended questions.

Respond to silence.

Be personable. Use intonation. Be funny. Be as real for them as if you were standing right next to them.