Interactive monthly webinars
Success achieved
How the Chartered Association of Building Engineers contributes to their members’ CPD with interactive monthly webinars.- Website
- https://www.cbuilde.com
- Project dates
September 2014 - Ongoing (at the date of publishing)
Project team
- Katie Di Stefano, Digital Services Specialist,
- Kevin Blunden, Deputy CEO, Technical,
- with support from the marketing and publications teams
Introduction
Webinar Wednesday takes place once a month at 8am and lasts for up to an hour. Content varies from month to month but is usually along a technical theme providing the audience with up-to-date information on a range of subjects including Building Regulations, Fire Safety and Maintenance.
Attendees are able to log 1 hour CPD for each webinar attended which contributes to their professional record. The sessions are interactive and we welcome comments and questions from attendees. They are hosted by a moderator with a speaker who is a specialist in the area to be discussed.
Discovery
It is a requirement for members that they need to undertake 35 hours of CPD per year, however the association recognises that attending events isn’t practical for everyone due to geographical spread. By using online broadcasting, the CABE is assisting its members in achieving this and therefore providing value to the membership subscription.
CABE has a responsibility to provide its members with up-to-date information and by using online broadcasting, we’re able to react quickly to changes in the industry, such as Government Consultations, Building Regulation changes etc. We find that webinars on these subjects are very popular.
Objectives
The association has the three primary objectives:
- Developing professionals,
- Sharing knowledge
- Raising standards
The objective of the webinars is to encourage personal and professional development and the maintenance of competence in a changing environment.
Activities
Intially, we identified the need to provide accessible learning to members and to also reach out to non- members.
GoToWebinar Dashboard
We researched a number of platforms that would allow us to broadast our sessions and that would be straightforward to the end-user. Using the Citrix GoToWebinar software, the registration process is a one-click operation.
When setting up the session, we make use of the available customization to make sure that the registration form is branded as CABE providing the user with a familiar, seamless experience.
At first, we broadcast our webinars to small, select audiences to ensure that the software allowed
us to achieve what we wanted in terms of visual presenation and once we were happy, we looked at creating a regular schedule of events available to a wider audience.
During the early sessions, we questioned the attendees to ascertain what time of day was the most suitable and the sort of content they wanted to see. An early morning session was (and still is based on recent feedback) the most favourable and as such, we run our sessions between 8am and 9am once a month on Wednesday morning, hence the title ‘Webinar Wednesday’.
Webinar Wednesday is free to attend. As undertaking CPD is a requirement of membership, by providing these sessions free of charge, we are underpinning our commitment to our members to provide them with up-to-date information which they can record.
During the sessions, we don’t want to fall into the trap of just talking to people so we deploy engagement tactics throughout the session. For example, we ask the audience to vote in polls that the software manages. We are able to share these results with the audience and we can also use the responses to tailor the content accordingly.
In addition, we always invite the audience to send in questions by typing into a comments window which the moderator and speaker can view. We try to answer the questions during the session or we can do a Q&A session at the end trying to refer to those who have asked a question by name.
For those who can’t attend the live event, each session is recorded through the software and is uploaded to the webinar playlist on our YouTube channel within hours of the webinar taking place. We then post the link to our social media channels to maximize the number of people who may view and share it.
We also use the YouTube channel to direct members of the public to when they’re looking for information on a particular subject. Up to July 2016, we have had over 10,000 views of the recorded webinars on YouTube.
Marketing
At CABE, we have our own monthly journal ‘Building Engineer’ which we can use to promote the sessions. In addition, we promote the webinars through our social media feeds - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.
Challenges
We experienced some initial teething problems in terms of connection speeds which affected the broadcast quality. We’ve invested in fibre broadband to ensure we’re broadcasting to the highest quality possible. We’ve always been open with our audience and have welcomed feedback to allow us to develop this further.
Many attendees have commented that they can see how we’ve progressed and how this has improved our webinars. We’re now looking at upgrading the computers used to run the sessions.
One significant challenge can be the technical content that we broadcast. 85% of members are based in the UK and are familiar with UK Regulations and constructions techniques, however as these events reach an international audience, we are careful to consider regional variations when looking at content.
We are able to provide targeted training (e.g. to a Scottish audience where the regulations differ from other parts of the UK) but we also ensure that there is sufficient content to interest those who wish to widen their knowledge in other areas.
Achievements
Webinar infographic
To start with, we held a basic software licence that allowed for up to 100 attendees to log on to the session, but we were soon reaching that limit and having to operate on the basis that attendance was down to the first 100 people to log in.
We increased our licence to allow for 500 attendees and we’re finding that this is currently working well, with an average of 150-200 attendees per event.
One target we set ourselves was to capture the data of attendees. We now actively ask attendees, during the course of the webinar, a range of questions such as their job role, whether they’ve had experience in certain areas or their thoughts on certain subjects. By making the sessions interactive, this provides value to both parties – the attendees are engaged in the session by responding and we’re capturing valuable data to allow us to develop our training programmes and find out what issues are affecting our members.
The webinars have had an extremely positive impact on CABE. Since starting in 2014, we have experienced a 266% growth rate which has been extremely positive for the association. It is our intention to continue to grow to increase our software licence further.
The investment in equipment and software has not only benefited the attendees, but has had a positive impact on staff with faster processing and connection speeds allowing for increased productivity.
From the post-session feedback, 90% of attendees have rated the speaker as good/excellent.
Webinar attendance has continued to grow into the Autumn of 2016 and all webinars scheduled for the next six months already have in excess of 75 registrants.
What would we do differently?
We feel our approach in the early stages was well planned as there’s an element of ‘having to go for it’ to see whether people could connect. There was only so much we could do in an office environment before bringing an external audience.
Going forward, we have plans to increase audience participation to increase engagement during the sessions and we want to make more use of post-event feedback to gain a better understanding of the learing outcomes achieved by those who have undertaken the training.
Feedback & Testimonials
“This webinar was excellent and it detailed a hostilic scope of new information for me. Congratulations to Kevin and the team.”
“Thank you very much for this mornings webinar. This was my first webinar and i would like to say how good it was. The subject matter was delivered in a very professional manner, at a good pace and the slides were all very clear. I liked the idea of the questions as the event progressed. I shall be booking in for more of these in the next few months. Well done.”
“First CABE webinar I have attended and I thought it was really good. Will definitely be attending some of the future ones.”
“I received your e-mail thanking me/us for attending the recent webinar and just thought I’d send you some positive feedback. I really enjoyed the session and found it very informative. The level and depth of information was just right and I liked how we were pointed to additional documents and guidance e.g. BRE guidance etc.
I attended some of the earlier webinars and you seem to have ironed out any issues with the bandwidth/ software as some of the earlier sessions sometimes dropped out or the sound quality wasn’t very good at times but this particular session has good quality sound and was smooth in terms of the presentation. I look forward to attending the other sessions in the future!”
“Thank you for your presentations this moring very informative.”
Wider impact
We have recently had membership enquiries after sessions have ended citing the strength of the webinar as a decisive factor to join the association.
We’ve been pleased to support some of our regional committees who have also embraced the technology. They have used the software to broadcast seminars taking place in their area to other members within the region. Our regions tend to cover a large geographical area and the committees have decided that this is a great way to ensure that everyone has access to valuable CPD.
In addition, one of our main suppliers has contacted us as they are aware we run webinars and would like to run similar sessions themselves. We have supported them through the set up process and have guided them how to run a broadcast. It’s great our webinars are seen to be professional and of a high standard that others wish to emulate our success.
