How To Stay In Touch With Online Learners When Traveling - Stories, Scenarios, Microlearning and Workflow Learning Platform

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How to stay in touch with online learners even when traveling
Doctors aren’t the only ones who need to be “on-call”. There are many instances when online learners need to have their questions answered by a mentor while in the middle of their “learning”. However, if the mentor is traveling a lot, how can he or she stay in touch?
We can learn some effective techniques from some “globe trotters”:

	Set a regular time for participants to contact the mentor by phone, emails and instant messaging.
	Announce the different methods learners can contact the mentor and clearly state your return call or response time policy and follow it.
	Use instant messaging as a “prompt” or (indication) that the mentor is present.
	Choose frequent teleconferencing over infrequent video conferencing.
	Pick the web collaboration tool where you and the participants can share files, share ideas and post comments and allow networking with your community of learners.

By the way, if you still think that instant messaging is just for kids, stop. IBM’s Lotus Notes and Yahoo Enterprise version now provide organizations with Instant Messaging capabilities. New cell phone models also have instant messaging function.

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Long-distance management of your learners
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Ray Jimenez, PhD
Vignettes Learning
“Helping Learners Learn Their Way”