Events (blended learning)

In this article, you'll get an overview of what events are, how they work, and how to use them to create a more engaging and exciting learning journey for your employees!

Watch this video to get a deep dive into the events feature! 📽️

What are Events?

Events are live trainings, meetings, or other gatherings that take place in person face-to-face, online via video chats, or a hybrid. In contrast to digital learning modules, multiple participants can join simultaneously, enabling real-time interaction, communication, and sparring between users and teachers or administrators.

Why use Events?

As much as digital learning is important to us here at Learningbank, we believe even more in blended learning! Events are a great way to engage with users on their learning journeys. They can allow new employees to show what they have learned in their onboarding phase, or to reskill or upskill existing employees with new learning content. The goal is to cater to multiple learning styles by blending digital and in-person learning.

You can hear more about blended learning in our dedicated video on the topic here!

Best Practice for Creating Events

Title
Keep the titles as condensed and informative as possible. Besides providing users with an overall sense of the topic, the title is used to search for the event in the academy. So when creating a title, use keywords that are highly relatable to the overall topic.

Description

Here, you can provide the users with context about the overall topic of the event and what they can expect from it. This area is optional, but essential in getting the users enthusiastic in the event. Try using exciting language that will engage users!

Image

Nothing grabs the attention like a great photo! With our Unsplash library, you can access a curated collection of pictures to add a splash of color to the event. And, of course, there is the option to upload your own photos if you have the perfect one for the occasion.

Here is our Unsplash library

Sessions

Sessions are how you organize which users are added to the event, when the event takes place, and where specific information about the event can be found. The reason for this split between events and sessions is to give the flexibility to hold the event at different times if that is desired, and to tailor each session as needed. After the registration deadline for a session, users can no longer choose the session (in the learning path) or accept/decline an invitation. If you label the session as mandatory, all invited users are automatically marked as attendees and will not be able to accept/decline.

Files

Relevant files can be added to the event and specific sessions, such as a PowerPoint, meeting agenda, briefing information, or anything else that could complement the event. Files that are added to an event are only visible to users invited to the event, or accessing the event through a learning path. Files that are added to a specific session are only visible to users taking part in that session. In both cases, users will have access to the files after the event has finished.

Explorable Events

Explorable events are a great way to engage with users on their own terms! By making events explorable, users can search for, browse, and add themselves to events they find interesting or want to attend. An event can be added to your platform's explore page by going to the explore tab in the event settings. Remember to add categories to the event so that users can easily search for and find them!

Efficiency at work! ✔️

Are you setting up an onboarding event to train new employees? Make the event explorable for existing employees who want to brush up their skills! Now you have a better-trained workforce in less time. That's efficiency!

Explore tab from the user view

Curious To Learn More? 🧠

You can read more about this feature in our help center article on the topic here!

Inviting users

There are multiple different ways to invite users to an event or specific session. Note that users can only be invited after the event has been published.

1. Manual invitations

   You can search for individual users, or sort by department and/or job profile. This option is good for smaller events with a short list of users to invite.

2. CSV file
   For sessions with a large number of invitees, a CSV file can be imported. Collect the users you invite into a file and import that to the session. All users that are being added to an event this way must be already existing users in the platform. Please note that the file must have “Email” on the first cell of the first column, and the users’ email addresses below. A downloadable template for this is available in the platform. Click on the 3 dots to the right of the "Create user" button in the User management tab, and then "Download import template".

3. Sharing
   When users are added to a sharing with an event, they are automatically added to the event and can choose one of the sessions. Note. Users can only choose 1 session per event.

You can find more info about sharings and learning paths in our dedicated help center articles on the topics!

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Setting attendance

Users can choose to accept/decline a session unless you have specifically chosen for the session to be mandatory. In that case, users cannot approve/decline, and they will be automatically set as attending. You can control how the event will be communicated in the Events section of the communication tab. Recording attendance after the event is controlled in the Completion tab of the event settings.

Participant list

Each session has a list of participants; here, you can check the status of the invitations. If you have users who have declined the invitation and left a comment on that, you can see the comments here. This is also where you can mark who showed up and who didn’t when the session is complete.

• You can manually manage all statuses for the participants, or see the overall status of all participants, how many have been invited, how many have accepted, etc.

• You can filter the list by department, job profile, status, show-up status.

• You can send emails to all/some people on the list. The email will use your email client.

• You can remove participants from the list (this will not send an email to the participant, so make sure to manage this communication as desired outside the platform)

• You can export the list of participants to make a separate guest list, make name tags, etc.

• You can edit the table depending on your preferred way of using the platform.

Waiting list

You can invite more users (or assign them through the learning path) than the session has seats for. In that case, the users who do not get a seat will then be placed on a waiting list. If someone declines their seat or cancels their attendance, a seat will become available for the next person on the waiting list. The one who first accepts the seat will get it, and the rest will remain on the waiting list.

Events from the user's side

As a user, there are three different ways of viewing and interacting with events.

• If it is a stand-alone event, the user will receive an email invitation with a link to the event.

• If the event is assigned through a learning path, the user will receive an email with a link to the learning path and can then choose a session from the event.

• If the event is added to the explore page, then users will be able to freely search for, browse, and add themselves to events they find interesting.

All events a user has been invited to can be found on their events page, where they can also accept/decline invitations and choose sessions. If the admin labels an event as mandatory, the user will be automatically added as attending.

Events tab view for users

Saving

• All editing to the event is autosaved, but to make these changes visible, you need to publish the event. You can also choose to discard the changes; in that case, you will go back to the previously published version of the event.
• To create sessions and invite users, you must have published at least one version of the event.

For more information, contact our support 🚀 support@learningbank.io