Quilotoa

Quilotoa is a training organisation whose number one goal is to help companies create strong interpersonal relationships. The organisation holds training, consultancy and coaching sessions and facilitation workshops to share its expertise with clients such as Groupe Rocher, Leroy Merlin, and EDF.

What’s special about Quilotoa? Its employees are all passionate about drama! All of Quilotoa’s consultants either are or were actors. The trainers use tools taken from the world of drama to organise lively and dynamic sessions – something they are determined to maintain in their training despite the COVID-19 crisis and the sudden switch to full-digital.

Business Developer and trainer Julien explains how Beekast helped implement Quilotoa’s characteristic active learning and how the tool is today helping them to run remote training sessions with just as much impact.

Implementing active learning

Identifying expectations and feelings

One of the advantages of Quilotoa’s training offer is that it provides a versatile experience that can be tailored to individual needs. To do so, Julien and all the trainers who use Beekast identify their clients’ expectations with the Word cloud, or the Rating activity, which their client Adeo used to evaluate Quilotoa’s training, for example.

Beekast also makes it easier to implement exercises that can sometimes be problematic. It can be hard to sincerely express our feelings to an office colleague during a debrief. Quilotoa uses the Survey activity in anonymous mode to get everyone’s input and gather the best feedback, while keeping things positive, of course.

Simply encouraging creativity

Regardless of their (lack of) experience with digital technologies, trainers can easily create their own sessions. When Julien presents Beekast to a learner, he sees just how quickly she gets to grips with it: she immediately envisages and imagines numerous ways to use it in her sector. She’ll use Beekast’s Speedboat activity for her next brainstorming session!

Expertise in terms of using the tool is also very motivating for Julien: the more skilled the trainer is, the greater and more varied the possibilities for teaching.

Adding variety to learning methods

Quilotoa trainers use a number of techniques to keep their learners focused. For example, they use methods taken from the drama scene and run participative Beekast activities to wake participants up and really get them active.

Quilotoa trainers also have learners use their smartphones at certain points during the training, even remotely. This little tip helps prevent learners from losing interest (we really shouldn’t be sitting behind a screen for long periods!) and helps them retain information better.

Since the company had already begun their digital transformation with blended learning and help from Beekast, their desire to provide an active learning experience was largely unaffected by the pandemic.

Transforming training in record time

The power of digital tools

The stakes were high! Quilotoa and its trainers had very little time to adapt all their training to remote learning, including those that were purely designed for in-person sessions. Digital tools, including Beekast, offered invaluable help in this challenge. As Julien says today: “Beekast is one of the tools that enabled us to successfully implement the transformation of our training”.

Quilotoa was especially impressed with how easy to use Beekast is, meaning their transformation was completed on schedule. The trainers got started with the tool very quickly, and the learners who used Beekast for the first time quickly adopted the tool: just by scanning a QR code, they were taken straight to their activity!

SpeedBoat activity

The need to establish connections

Working remotely meant that it quickly became apparent that there was a need to create social connections with colleagues, and for the facilitator to do so with and between the learners. For Julien, Beekast is a very effective tool to organise online classes because it breaks down geographical barriers and brings employees together in a welcoming way.

An essential building block: Beekast

Over time, the tool became an essential part of some of the training that Quilotoa offers key clients such as Leroy Merlin and Bearing Point. And it has now become a ritual for Quilotoa in-house, setting the tempo for their week and supporting employees!

Whilst certain parts of the training are still to be perfectly reproduced remotely, and whilst human beings do have a fundamental need for contact and physical closeness, Julien also believes that Beekast is helping to create tomorrow’s world of learning: a hybrid world where connections and interactivity feature in both remote and in-person situations.