Continuation of training during a lockdown: How the Manipal ProLearn faculty made it possible?

 

Sunaina Tripathi, a student from Manipal ProLearn Sales Academy’s Unibic Program, couldn’t leave hostel after Indian government declared a sudden lockdown to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak. She is from Bhopal and came to Bangalore for the 4-week Training Program. The academy campus was shut but despite that, she still continued with her curriculum as scheduled, spent time brushing up on her lessons and submitted class assignments regularly. Not just Sunaina, her classmates, who could travel back to their locations just in time, logged in from their homes and those who could not, from hostel rooms.

As the Face-to-face classroom training sessions had to be closed based on government directive, it created a need for our faculty to turn to remote teaching. It was completely unanticipated and abrupt. But for Nageswar, an industry veteran & a faculty at Manipal ProLearn’s Unibic Sales Academy, who has never taught an online class before, this overnight transition to digital seemed a daunting challenge initially. There was no time to get acclimatised with the new methods and infrastructure required. While the transition required hours of work and great deal of patience, Nageswar leveraged his years of experience across India and Africa and picked up quickly to use the new situation to drive strong impactful learning. Unfamiliar with these methods, but still within 24 hours he was up and running. Despite facing minor glitches here and there, which he ironed out as time passed by, Nageswar started teaching via video conferencing his students logged in from the comfort of wherever they are.

It was fun as everyone started exploring the features of the tools. Students used virtual post-it note to share ideas, created short video notes to seek advice from the teacher. Students did individual work, group work and conferred with teachers when needed. Nageswar too overhauled the schedule from two-hour units to longer blocks. Buoyed with the positive response, Nageswar also brought additional elements to training as he applied concepts of gamification to make the new remote learning experience more engaging and entertaining.

Another faculty, Rajasekhar too was faced with the task of transitioning to remote teaching in this setting. He also is a veteran from FMCG industry and had spent close to two decades in training. In essence, he adopted a blended approach - offline and online, as he stayed put in the hostel with the students. By enabling traditional face-to-face setting from safe distance - thus activating social distancing mode across the dining table – he made the offline learning possible with Cisco WebEx and WhatsApp and thus, allowed students from home and elsewhere to join classes remotely.

Rajasekhar has been imparting Selling Skills Program to students of Spectrum (Indiamart) Manipal ProLearn Sales Academy. He was on the last leg of training curriculum when lockdown was initiated. Rajasekhar was racing to make sure that the pandemic did not prevent the students from completing their syllabus. All this, with zero compromise on the quality of training. Rajasekhar not only shared resources like case studies, project notes over WhatsApp and email but also carried educational and equally fun roleplays and team building games over video conferencing.

Rajasekhar felt that when students were not in one location and stressed, such team building games could play a great way to bond and bring students together in the time of a crisis. So, a potential crisis was actually turned into an opportunity by him to engage the trainees with even more focus. The results are outstanding - the trainees acknowledge that they got far more than what they expected when they decided to join this training.

What stands out in these two situations is the expertise of Manipal Sales Academy and its faculty, with their long years of experience in facing uncertainties, in adapting to every situation and still delivering the training with excellence.