This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

In a physical room, half the trainer's work is done by the room. Online there is no room, and you find out how much of it you were relying on.

People sat near each other, and that did the job you thought you were doing

They stood up, moved chairs, argued in the coffee queue, saw the person beside them taking notes and started taking notes too. Energy was contagious because bodies were in the same space. Move the same session to a screen and all of it disappears at once: forty muted squares, no cameras, no eye contact, no way to tell whether anyone is still there. Most trainers respond by talking more, which is exactly backwards — the room was never quiet because you were interesting, it was quiet because leaving was awkward.

What this course covers

Forty lessons on building deliberately what the room used to supply for free. The craft first: structure, content, style, support and challenge as five separate jobs, Dale's cone and why telling people things sits at the bottom of it, problematisation as the opening beat, group size, programme design, the reflection-conceptualisation-practice cycle, group dynamics and norms, warming a group up, facilitation against moderation, resistance and objections, metaphors, individual aims, the five rules for sub-groups, how to end, and running a webinar so it is not a broadcast. Then the medium itself: how adults take in information, the platform stack, programme and material design, behaviour on camera, the participant life cycle, holding attention to the end, and evaluating both the people and the course. Then what you give a group to do: a step-by-step process for building any activity, diagnosing a group with a questionnaire before designing anything, activities matched to specific problems, an entire lesson on remote and hybrid groups, the GRPI model, and the four conditions behind a group that works. Then the mechanics that produce completion: low-budget gamification with no platform, recognition against prizes, behaviour shaped rather than requested, certificates, and internal trainers. Then the professional context: audit, strategy and budget, the competencies of a trainer and how to assess one, justifying training cost to a business that dislikes the line item, instructional design and transfer into practice, blended learning, development programmes, coaching and facilitation, talent pools, competency models, external providers, and launching distance learning end to end. Finally AI in the workflow: the platforms, course generation, materials and tests, adapting content to different learning styles, personalised paths, and analytics that track progress without chasing anyone.

Two blocks were recorded for a corporate audience

I would rather say this before you find it in lesson twenty-two. The gamification block was recorded around employees — hiring, onboarding, motivation, culture — and four of its six lessons sit inside a company. It is here for the completion mechanics, which a virtual trainer needs precisely because nobody is sitting in front of them. The corporate learning block is the largest single part of this course, and six of its ten lessons describe how a learning function is organised: budget, business conversations, competency models, providers. If you sell training to organisations, those six lessons are not administrative background — they are a description of your buyer, including the argument that gets a proposal approved and the reason most get declined.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 40 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: the four-beat design model, the five rules for sub-groups, the group diagnostic questionnaire, ready-made activities, the GRPI model, the completion mechanics, the instructional design sequence, and the AI tool set

• A full lesson on remote and hybrid groups rather than a paragraph about it

Where to start

Take the last online session you ran and write down the minute at which you lost them. Then write down what you did in that minute. Almost always the answer is "kept talking". Enrol now and start today.