The question often arises as to the difference when a Live Online Training is conducted with Microsoft Teams or, for example, with Zoom. In addition to all the usual features, there are two crucial differences that, from a didactic perspective, favor Zoom:
The gallery view allows all participants to be seen.
In Zoom, all participants can be seen simultaneously with video in the gallery view. This truly creates a group feeling for a group of 12 to 14 participants and gives the trainer the opportunity to look everyone in the eye and specifically include quieter participants. Above all, it is emotionally significant.
In Microsoft Teams, currently only a maximum of four people are displayed with video on the screen. All others only appear as an icon in a bar on the screen. Whoever speaks is automatically seen with video on the screen. This clearly disadvantages introverted participants. As a rule, the same video images are always seen from participants who are very active on their own. From a didactic perspective, this is a clear disadvantage that favors extroverted employees and makes it difficult for the trainer to involve all participants.
Breakout Sessions
Conducting breakout sessions – i.e., dividing into small groups to work on a topic – is a crucial criterion for genuine live online training. How quickly and easily this is possible largely determines the success of this feature.
Here, too, Zoom clearly has the advantage. The moderator can easily divide the groups. These automatically find themselves in a group room, where they can create their own documents, work on them, use the whiteboard, comment on and annotate existing documents, and then easily take these work results back to the main room. The trainer can move between the groups and support them in their work. Even just showing up briefly as a trainer while participants are in group work leads to better results because participants understand: Okay, we really need to stick to the task.
This is not quite as easy (at least for the administrator) in Microsoft Teams. There is a workaround via setting up sub-meetings to switch from the main meeting. The initial explanation and setup take a little longer, especially for participants inexperienced with Teams, as the administrator cannot control the participants, but they have to navigate to the breakout rooms themselves.
Furthermore, participants cannot communicate with the main moderator as easily as in Zoom, and the moderator cannot send messages to all groups simultaneously via the chat function. However, the independent switching between the main room and the breakout session works with a single click later in the training, as Teams offers the possibility to switch between the current and previous meeting via a (let’s call it) switcher.
Conclusion
From a trainer’s perspective, Zoom is clearly the better tool. The difference can be imagined like this: In face-to-face training, the question is whether it takes place in our own meeting room, which perhaps has permanently installed tables and is therefore not really suitable for truly interactive training without disruption, or in a hotel outside the city without distractions, with a large training room, group rooms, and a seating arrangement without tables, where I can build a real group feeling. Anyone who has experienced both knows that it makes a big difference. But it is not always possible to afford the perfect training scenario in a seminar hotel. And it’s similar with Teams versus Zoom in terms of security.
Or, to think about it differently: Those who previously did not pay attention to whether real training takes place in suitable rooms and a protected learning atmosphere might now also prefer Microsoft Teams. Those for whom didactics and optimal learning conditions are important will allow Zoom everywhere where real training is concerned and no strategically relevant internal company information is shared.
[note note_color=”#f9f9f9″ text_color=”#333333″ radius=”3″] Would you like to have a live online training conducted for your company? Get in touch and let our experts advise you.
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