"Live online learning - also called synchronous learning or virtual learning - can deliver this to organisations - but there are fundamental problems facing L&D management. The traditional delivery skills of classroom trainers simply will not transfer into to the online classroom. The success of live online learning events depends entirely on the quality of your L&D professionals' skills in facilitating live online events. Without these skills, your learning events will fail", he says.

"New skills and techniques to facilitate online learning using web-conferencing software are vital for successful learning events."

Leading global L&D commentator Nigel Paine welcomes the new certification programme: "There has been a veritable explosion of live online learning over the last few years, and that dramatic increase will continue as companies see the value of linking their staff to an expert in real time without having to ferry everyone to the same place", he says.

Steed explains that when the IITT was formed in 1995, it developed standards and produced certifications to ensure that all trainers were able to deliver courses that provided high-quality learning events in the classroom. "Now, it's time for the live online learning revolution. It's simply not a case of trainers porting their classroom skills into the online environment", he says. "What they need to do is draw on those skills and layer them on to the new skills and techniques of maximising the engagement of the remote learners in the online classroom. This new certification programme will do that."

The certification workshop from the IITT will provide learning professionals with essential online-training-environment skills, providing fourteen hours of live online instruction, together with self-study assignments, and culminating with an assessment of those skills in a live environment.

This workshop is for L&D professionals who want to build their expertise in delivering effective live online learning events. It provides the skills to maximise the engagement of remote participants and to develop and produce engaging and interactive online content that will help participants learn online. It also provides the techniques necessary for facilitating and managing live online learning events, meetings, and webinars.

The workshop is applicable to all L&D professionals, irrespective of the subject matter they teach.