In our first CoP meeting (April 9, 2015) the question came up about what we all do, as Educational Technologists, for our trainings.
Such as do we focus mostly on individual or group trainings/consultations?
Do we focus more on face-to-face, online, or a mix of formats? And what do these trainings look like?
Please use the comments section to describe your trainings!
Hi All – I’ll start with an answer to this question:
I use a mix of face-to-face trainings and lab based group workshops here in A&AA. I find the labs a very good space to do trainings and workshops that help give the participants a hands-on experience. During these workshops, as people begin to understand concepts and behaviors, they will often share what they learn with each other. So beyond just myself there are other instructors in the lab, which is very helpful.
I’m also not shy about sharing the fact that I might not (and probably do not) know everything about the workshop at hand. It is nice to learn new things in these workshops, too.
Face-to-face meetings are facilitated when another full time staff member sends a faculty member or instructor my way or I receive an email from them requesting a meeting about a particular topic.
For my, our work here in the Teaching Effectiveness Program the majority of training (and consultation) work is done face-to-face.
Within my own area of Ed Tech support I will say there is a bit more online in terms of providing some online self-paced trainings through the LMS as well as providing some support via email.
Most workshops though are done face-to-face and in group settings. We don’t do a lot of hands-on technical training though, most of our work with faculty, instructors, and GTFs revolves around thinking through questions about course design, learning objectives, working the technologies into existing course design, and thinking about trends and “good and powerful instructional practices.”
We like to model activities for the groups, such as think-pair-share and other group brainstorming activities. And when we do work with specific technologies like say the LMS, clickers, social media, and so on we really do try our best to work in hands-on exercises where the participants go in as “students” to play around with the technologies. At times though we also do some hands-on individual training of learning how the technology works.
Not saying this is THE only basic structure we work with, but if we have a “standard” approach to our workshops it would look a bit like this:
1. Introductions,
2. Exercise to start thinking about learning objectives,
3. Presentation of the topic (say specific examples of various technologies to use in a classroom environment),
4. Group activity (hands on use of the technology as a “student” may use it)
5. Group discussion
6. A little more presentation, leading to a wrap up
7. Q & A
8. Individual work time (as in learning how to set up the technology for their instructional use)
Again that is a generalized overview and depending on the topic and/or group we modify a lot here and there.
One thing we really like to do is to get a pre-survey of who the group is, what are their backgrounds, what are their burning questions and needs, and so on. This will help direct the session prep as well as help us know where it may go when we get in there with the group.
As for asynchronous online (creating more of a “blended”/”hybrid” type of training) we have found really the faculty and GTFs only have the time and energy to focus on a short pre-survey, and that when you go beyond that to say do readings or have them do an online activity before, or after, the face-to-face meeting they just don’t have the time to do it.
That is all for trainings/workshops, and as mentioned above we do also do consultations and the majority of consultations are individual and most are face-to-face. But again I do facilitate a good number of tech consultations via email, but many are pretty simple “how do I do this” questions and if it needs to go anywhere beyond a simple step-by-step guide to set something up I will work with the individual face-to-face.