Hi,

My group is about to roll out a new web based payroll system that needs to be trained to about 20 managers in ten different cities. Unfortunatley, budget restrictions may force us to do all of this trainig via the web and other long distance means. We are planning on using WebEx conferencing, but what other stratagies should I be considering? This information will be completely new to all of the participants, and a pretty drastic change at that.

Please advise,

Virtual classrooms can be used effectively to train applications. In fact, InSync Training has a class on it. (Note: I do not work for InSync Training, but have taken several of their courses... which I found to be very good).

In addition, I would probably look to having job aids created with key features, codes, tasks, etc.

If you have software such as Camptasia or Captivate, you could do some simple tutorials also. You could have the tutorials be pre-work for the live sessions in WebEx.

ScreenToaster is a Free online screen recorder paired with a video platform dedicated to screencasts. Just the perfect tool to search and find tutorials, howtos, reviews, tips and tricks, showcases, walkthrough and e-learning formations.

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

Wondershare screen recording software is a professional screen recording tool to create better-than-live software video tutorials, presentations and training courses.

What if you used the feature in WebEx to record a session? Might be a simple option to start, not sure how that exports though.

I personally like the "higher touch" version of walkthroughs with web conferencing, like WebEx, if it is truly interactive (i.e. the instructor can be asked clarifying questions, to redemo, etc...).

However, if this is a skills-building training that users will need to apply, I would suspect that you would want a way for users to practice- I might recommend a "simulation" software (many freebies out there) as a component of the solution (maybe follow up work to the webinar), and certainly recommend a printable, referenceable job aid that folks can easily use on-the-job while performing tasks.

Unfortunately, after doing many Webinars and developing simulations, my team has discovered that often these are not practical for reference at the time of performing a task, and a simple, low-cost, job aid generally is much more effective (but usually only effective if some more in-depth training occurred prior to using the job aid).