With online learning often the top of the headlines, it's easy to forget that technology can allow for more than just courses delivered through the web or on CDROMs. The use of collaborative tools (which allow sharing of information and ideas through the Internet) is steadily increasing (read our expert guide to find out more), as people recognise the advantages of being able to communicate from any location and gain shared access to documents or slideshows.

TrainingZONE's workshop area has been used for online discussion for several years now. During this time, our Tuesday lunchtime sessions held at https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/workshop have covered topics as varied as managing poor performance, action learning, making a reality of CPD and developing trainers skills. Each session has a facilitator who sets out the topics for the day's discussion, welcomes participants and encourages discussion and dialogue during the 45 minute session. The number of participants can be anywhere between 5 and 20, so there's plenty of opportunity for people to contribute. It's a different experience to facilitating a discussion face-to-face (several discussions can be taking place at once!), but an interesting one at that, and one which is likely to become more and more common.

If you think you'd like to try your hand as a facilitator, we're looking for training practitioners to host a number of sessions over the next few months. As we described earlier, the topics can be varied, and we'll leave it up to you to decide the theme for your session. The technology we use is at the simpler end of some of the collaborative tools on offer today - just type into a box and hit return, and that's pretty much it! If you want to see how the format of the sessions work, you can read the transcripts from each session, as several hundred other TrainingZONE members do each week.

If you'd like to add online facilitation to your current skills base, contact the editor by e-mail.