Remote working is the new normal. Become a remote Learning Advisor!

Many people try to make the best out of this situation and learn and acquire new skills. Others just need to learn remote and virtual now for business continuity.  To support everyone in remote learning we collected the below tips & helpful resources and hope they help you.

Together with the SAP Community we now want to even enhance those tips further. Everyone can contribute in the mission “Remote Learning Advisor“. See below the initial tips from our community wiki. 

Tips for learning remote & virtual

Place

• Ensure the right furniture to avoid back-pain. To stand up sometimes you might put your laptop on a box or window board
• Ensure propper equipment (Headset. Laptop) if not possible BYOD bring your own device – everyone has smartphones!
• Connectivity, stable internet connection incl. access to company network via VPN
• Discuss with the ones you live which spaces are used by whom for work

Health & body

• Ensure breaks (stand up),
• Exercise – from yoga to stepper – there are many great apps for guidance. Free e.g. and extensive is e.g. the Nike Training Team (NTC)
• Time to relax and calm-down: practice a daily mindfulness or meditation session via guided apps – a good list is here – on Spotify you find guidance in the Genre Meditation

Values & Mindset

• Remote learning & working needs trust in self-organization as everyone has another context (family, space, equipment etc.) and needs to organize the own productivity
• Clear goals & tasks and regular communication help to keep on track and be motivated
• Self discipline is important as you do not have the drivers of colleagues or managers meeting you in person- online-sessions for parallel work can help (like a virtual co-working space)
• Respect, appreciation & empathy if others are not reachable, or work focused on their learnings/ tasks without interruption
• Some find it helpful if they use similar clothes like at work to be more in a “work” mode

Learning Methods / LearnHacks

• Set goals & timeslots (via your calendar) for learning.
• Develop a learning plan on how to achieve your goals
• Also use a daily plan e.g. via a Kanban Board with your family (joint breaks, school support etc.)
• Break up your learning goal into many small steps & plan regular tasks to achieve it – plan it like a project
• You can use a timer, an app or the pomodoro technique (25 min) to learn focused
• Don´t forget to plan self-reflection & hands-on-practice
• To focus and avoid distraction/ procrastination it might help to listen to chill-music like in brain.fm or e.g. Genre “Focus” on Spotify
• Ensure social support like via a learning buddy, mentor or coach
• Think of energizer tasks – e.g. find a red thing in your room and show it in the webcam, change location (e.g. outside, stand-up)
• Document your progress – for your self e.g. in blogs, mindmaps, whiteboards, wikis, digital-notes like evernote/ one-note – also collaborative with your team and network
• Develop routines like daily standup meeting with team, but also your family
• Ensure to meet via video to create social interaction & emotional rapport
• Find examples how others learn remote and learn from them
• Retrospective in the evening or end of the week
• Create virtual private sessions with NO work talk
• Leverage personal productivity methods from time management or GTD (Getting Things Done)
• A virtual LernOS Circle combines many elements (guidance, social support…) → http://cogneon.github.io/lernos-core/
• Leverage further LearnHacks: Collection of Tips & Tricks for effective learning via the SAP Community or templates for download

Learning Content Sources 

• SAP Live Class offers all SAP Training remote via Zoom a virtual Classroom
• SAP Learning Hub to access learning content around SAP products – incl. trainer-moderated learning communities, expert-led live webinars, thousands of e-learning and handbooks as well as training systems (Trial, live demo, Web).
• openSAP – free SAP & IT related online courses
• Remote Readiness & Effectivity Academy – free online courses from SAP Litmos on remote work, hygiene etc,
  
• Podcasts: see a collection here on SAP Community

• Class Central – search engine & reviews site for free online courses popularly known as MOOCs

• Swoot – social Podcast App (social Podcast recomendations)
• There are many further free sources like Duolingo for free language training, Khan Academy for free school courses and other

Tools for Learning & Collaboration

• Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) like MS Teams or SAP Jam help employees to collaborate & connect
• RUUM, SAPs leigthweight projectmanagement & collaboration tool incl. templates from the center of disease control
• Remote Work Pulse Check by Qualtrix to understand how employees are doing
• Atlassian offers the well known social collaboration tools like Jira (Project & issue tracking), Trello (Kanban based task management) or the Confluence Wiki (which we use here for joint documentation)
• ZOOM a popular video conferencing tool
• Google Hangouts Meet: Online-Video-Conferencing & Desktop sharing
• Microsoft offers with Teams incl. video & VoIP telephony, collaboration, task management (via planner & todo), Wiki & integration many further apps.
• Beekeeper is a mobile employee communication app based in sitzerland (=secure data) http://www.beekeeper.io/en/ – another one is Threema http://threema.ch/ and of course Slack
• Mural or Conceptboard are tools for visual collaboration like remote brainstorming, sketching etc.
• Cuckoo is a productivity timer for remote teams to work on tasks using timeboxing/ pomodoro technique: http://cuckoo.team/ (and make breaks afterwards)
• Online Co-Working Apps: work on your own online next to each other, not alone: Focusmate
• SAP Enable Now to develop learning content, e-learning or documentation or enhance SAP help

I use Zoom for Videokonferences, Teams for collaboration & telephony, Jam & MSTeams as Enterprise social Network, Mural for Brainstorming – however check out what is best for you and your business + check out further lists if you need further guidance:

• Tool-List for virtual teaching (german – e-teaching.org),
• List from Cogneon on virtual events & meetings (german)
• Very good list from Switzerland: Learning in coronatimes for schools (german) 

How to join the Mission and earn a badge?

It is easy – sharing is caring! Simply add your favourite tips, sources or tools for learning remote below in the comments. You will get a badge after a quick check – badges are issued on a weekly basis.