Incorporate Live Webinars in Blended Learning was an interactive good time!  If you want to catch the recording, you’ll find it here.  What follows is one of the FAQs I didn’t get to during this well-attended event.  To be fair to readers, a number of these answers assume you were there, so you might check out the recording. 

Nina C. writes, “How does one go about “chunking” webinar recordings?”

Nina, here are two approaches:

In the webinar I spoke about recordings in two contexts:  using full-session recordings first to save time with follow up and exception management, and if your intent was to author on-demand content rather than record live sessions that I’d recommend breaking it up into numerous smaller pieces.

If I wasn’t clear, what I meant was to take that 45 minute presentation and instead of making one 45-minute recording, consider making short ones (ten, 4.5 minute versions or…?) that focus on one topic each.

The alternative is to make a recording and then edit it.  I would NOT recommend this, honestly, for two reasons:

Web conferencing software is made to enable live communications – a very different beast than content authoring and publishing.  The cool thing about web conferencing software is that it is very easy to make and recording and share a link – fast.

But web conferencing software isn’t designed for authoring content – that’s probably much more easily accomplished with a tool designed for that.  To edit a web conferencing recording, you’ll either have 1) no options, 2) extremely limited options (like chopping off an intro or exit but nothing else), or 3) you’ll need to download a media file (e.g., a Windows Media Video file), have an editing software, etc., etc.

What I’ve done in the past is simply chop up a presentation, have an opening slide that says “this is part 4 of 8,” and make a 4-6 minute recording.  It’s not picture perfect, but it can get done quickly in the midst of the “day job.”

Then on the registration page I put what I recommend to clients:  how long the recording is.

If you’ve got a place to have a table of contents, that’s a great place for that info.  I found audiences appreciate knowing how long the piece is – it gives them a chance to gauge what their investment will be to answer their question.

Related, see my answer to Cindy