PLAYBOOK GUIDE
Enhancing Your
In-Person Courses
Maximise the impact of your face-to-face training programs by creating a complete learning experience that spans before, during, and after the classroom.
Face-to-face training provides opportunities for connection, collaboration, and skill development. However, without structured pre-work and follow-up, much of what participants learn never makes it to the workplace.
Without ongoing support, learners experience significant knowledge loss in the hours and days following training. This isn't a failure of your facilitation or content. It's a limitation of the format itself. When learning begins and ends in the classroom, participants often lack the preparation, context, and ongoing support necessary to integrate new skills into their daily work.
Enhanced in-person courses solve this by creating a complete learning journey that strengthens every phase of skill development.
The Renewed Value of In-Person Learning
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant shift in online delivery. While many organisations discovered the convenience and reach of digital learning, they also rediscovered what makes face-to-face training irreplaceable.
In-person courses create the human connection, spontaneous collaboration, and immersive focus that virtual sessions struggle to replicate. Participants consistently report higher engagement, stronger peer relationships, and deeper skill development from face-to-face experiences.
By thoughtfully integrating digital elements before and after your classroom sessions, you preserve the irreplaceable value of face-to-face interaction while addressing its historical weakness: the lack of structured support for workplace application. This blended approach delivers the engagement and connection of in-person training with the support that drives genuine behaviour change.
The Complete Learning Journey
Before the Classroom: Building Foundation and Context
Pre-Work That Prepares
Effective pre-course activities transform how participants engage with your face-to-face sessions. Rather than using precious in-person time for foundational knowledge, participants arrive ready for deeper application and discussion.
Pre-work activities should establish baseline knowledge, surface existing understanding and misconceptions, create shared vocabulary and concepts, and prime participants to engage actively from day one.
Diagnostic Assessments
Pre-course diagnostics serve multiple purposes beyond measuring starting capability. They help learners identify their development priorities, allow facilitators to adapt delivery to participant needs, create baseline measures for demonstrating progress, and enable coaching conversations between learners and their managers.
The most effective diagnostics involve both the learner and their workplace manager or coach, creating alignment on development goals before training begins. This collaborative approach ensures that learning objectives connect directly to workplace application.
Setting Clear Expectations
Pre-course communications should clarify what participants will learn, how the learning connects to their role, what preparation is required, and what support they'll receive after the course.
This context-setting increases engagement and helps participants see the training as part of their ongoing development rather than an isolated event.
Building Your Enhanced Learning Experience
Step 1
Audit Your Current Experience
Begin by mapping your existing program experience from start to finish. Identify what currently happens before, during, and after the face-to-face sessions.
Some questions to consider:
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What foundational knowledge could move to pre-work?
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What classroom time is spent on information that could be delivered digitally?
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What support do participants receive after training ends?
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How do we currently measure workplace application?
This audit can reveal opportunities for enhancement and help you prioritise changes that will deliver the greatest impact.
Step 3
Maximise Classroom Time
With foundational content addressed in pre-work, you can redesign your face-to-face sessions to focus on high-value interactive activities. This might mean replacing lectures with facilitated discussions, adding more practice and feedback cycles, incorporating real workplace scenarios and challenges, or building in structured peer learning opportunities.
Step 5
Integrate Manager Coaching
Involve workplace managers or coaches throughout the learning journey. Depending on the learning journey, this could include pre-course conversations about learning objectives and development priorities, check-ins during the course, and structured coaching on workplace application.
Provide managers with conversation guides, coaching frameworks, and clear expectations about their role. The easier you make it for managers to support learning, the more likely they are to do so consistently.
Step 2
Design Purposeful Pre-Work
Create pre-course activities that prepare participants for the in-person sessions, rather than just front-loading content. Pre-work should be purposeful, engaging, manageable, and directly connected to classroom activities.
Consider diagnostic assessments that identify development needs, short videos or readings that establish foundational concepts, reflection activities that surface existing knowledge and questions, or pre-course projects that create context for learning.
The goal is to ensure participants arrive at your face-to-face session ready to engage at a higher level.
Step 4
Create Post-Course Support
Design follow-up activities that allow learners to practice applying their skills in the workplace. Structure these activities as a progression that gradually increases complexity and independence.
Initial activities might provide significant structure and support, while later activities challenge participants to apply skills more independently. This scaffolded approach builds confidence and competence progressively.
Include opportunities for participants to share challenges and successes, seek feedback on application attempts, and learn from peers who are navigating similar situations.
Step 6
Implement Technology Thoughtfully
Choose technology that streamlines delivery rather than complicating it. Your platform should handle the complexity of coordinating pre-work, face-to-face sessions, post-course activities, and manager involvement.
Look for features like automated scheduling and reminders, integrated diagnostic tools, coach dashboards and task review, progress tracking and reporting, and seamless communication workflows.
The right platform makes enhancement possible at scale without creating an administrative burden.
How Guroo Academy Powers Enhanced Courses
Streamlined Pre-Course Management
Guroo Academy handles the complexity of pre-course preparation through automated enrolment and onboarding, integrated diagnostic assessments, coach nomination workflows, and scheduled pre-work delivery.
Participants receive clear instructions on what to complete before their face-to-face session, while facilitators gain visibility into preparation status and diagnostic results that inform classroom delivery.
Transform Your Training Impact
Your face-to-face courses already deliver value. Enhancement multiplies that value by ensuring learning extends beyond the classroom into genuine workplace capability.
Training providers who successfully enhance their courses report higher client satisfaction, stronger evidence of impact, easier renewals and expansion, and differentiation from competitors.
The investment in enhancement pays dividends through programs that demonstrably change workplace performance – the outcome every training client truly wants.
Implement Enhanced Learning with Guroo Academy
See how our platform makes enhancement simple and scalable.
Book a demo to explore:
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Pre-course diagnostic and preparation tools
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Seamless integration with face-to-face delivery
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Post-course workflow automation
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Integrated manager coaching features
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Measurement and reporting capabilities
Have questions about enhancing your specific courses?
Let's discuss your situation and create a roadmap for implementation.