How Our Live Online Format Ensures Graduates are Remote-Ready

The world has gone digital — and so does the way we work.  

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, states and cities globally are re-implementing restriction measures on businesses and social life. With more job roles transitioning into or remaining remote, effective online collaboration skills have never been more crucial.

In our response to the situation, we are rolling out a Live Online classroom format for all our ongoing programs. Through this format, we strive to prepare our learners with not only technical competence but skills to succeed in a professional remote environment.

Here are some ways our Live Online format ensures graduates are remote-ready:

Be familiar with online collaboration tools

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In our Live Online setting, we stay connected and engaged with our learners through various online collaboration tools that are widely used in tech companies, namely Slack, Zoom and Forward School's Online Learning Portal. 

Slack: A digital classroom platform that allows our learners to connect and collaborate with each other through real-time messaging or calls. With Slack, we dramatically reduce email load and increase efficiency in communication across the school.

Zoom: As we move away from in-person training, learners will regularly use Zoom, a video conferencing tool for our online classes. They will familiarize themselves with features such as screen sharing, breakout rooms to debug code in groups, and other collaboration tools within the platform.

Besides, learning will also be kept interactive and personalized with Forward School’s Online Learning Portal, where every learner will have their own learning path through everything they’re learning in their respective program. 

By using these tools regularly, this will be an added advantage for our graduates when they encounter them in other professional work settings such as remote job interviews, technical interviews, pair programming projects, or team meetings.

‍Build effective online communication skills

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Given that most of today’s meetings take place online, effective online communication skills are no longer optional but a must-have. By mastering the mentioned tools above, it will enable our learners to communicate with confidence online.

For learners who are especially new to remote work, it takes some practice to get comfortable communicating with others online. This could come in forms of listening before speaking or phrasing a question with greater thought and clarity to get the support they need.

With our Live Online format, learners will be able to improve their remote communication skills by working in paired projects, checking in with their peers, and asking questions to their instructors during designated Q&A sessions.

On certain occasions, they also get to practice their remote interview skills when conducting mock job interviews with our Student Admissions Team and presenting their capstone projects to our panel of industrial experts on Zoom.

Fostering teamwork with remote peer code reviews and group projects

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Whether you are a software engineer or data scientist, you will be working with a team at some point of your career. These teams could be technical teams, or involve other functional teams within the organization. So, knowing how to program and collaborate with a peer or a group is essential for any productive developer—and this is where pair programming projects will help. 

In modern software engineering, communication is imperative to the success of any software development team. With most teams being distributed today, pair programming is a good opportunity for developers to bounce ideas of each other, solve problems more efficiently and hone their technical skills.

During our Live Online sessions, we hold “Morning Storm” sessions weekly, where learners are encouraged to share about what they are doing or if they have been facing any challenges to their peers. This also enables them to inquire more and learn new hands-on skills when working closely with a peer or someone more experienced.

In a nutshell

With no end in sight to the COVID-19 crisis, one thing’s clear: technology has proven to be a useful and necessary tool to help us weather the storm. From skill sets to business strategies, it’s more important than ever for us to embrace the power of technology.

And to do that, we will all have to start by getting comfortable using digital tools.  

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