Plan and facilitate professional development
When planning training for colleagues, there are key factors you need to explore to ensure your training is meaningful, useful and well-received.
These questions help shape your approach to planning training:
- Does the training fit in with the needs of educators? How do you know? You could consider carrying out a survey to gain a better understanding of staff needs and skill levels. A survey could also help you to prioritize which training(s) to deliver.
- Do you have enough time allocated to deliver the planned training? Be realistic about what you're trying to achieve in the time you have and be ready to adapt if you need to.
- What opportunities are there for educators to put what they learn into practice? Can they reflect on their own planning, delivery, and assessment? Is there the opportunity to follow up and share experiences?
- Will attendees have full access to the tools you're planning to train with? You may need to have a discussion with the IT team to help ensure everything is ready for you to be able to deliver a great training session.
- How're you going to facilitate the training? Will the session be face-to-face, remote/online, synchronous, or asynchronous? Consider what will work best with your context and what will best suit the needs of your audience.
- What technical steps do you need to put in place to ensure the training runs smoothly? For instance, if the training is to be delivered face-to-face, what is the setup of the room you're training in? Do you need to request anything? Check out the technical checklist section for ideas.
- What session resources do you need to prepare in advance? Remember, you have the training materials to support your session and many trainings have extra resources to help with planning. However, depending on the session you're delivering, it might be worth having some resources that help your audience to engage with the training. For example, if you were delivering a training on Microsoft Forms for math teachers it would be great to have an example form that shows the use of the math equation features.
Technical checklist
When planning your training, it's worth having a checklist to follow. Here are some ideas on what you might need to consider.
- Is the training interactive/hands-on, or are attendees watching a presentation and/or a demonstration? If it's interactive, consider what you need to do so that everyone can join in.
In-person/face-to-face
- Ensure that you're able to connect to the projector/board. Check if you need any extra cables.
- If you need a wireless internet connection, ensure that you're able to connect. If you're training in a different organization than your own, you might need to arrange this in advance.
- If you need sound, check what facilities the room has.
Remote/online
- How is the training being facilitated? Are you using a Microsoft Teams meeting, webinar, or live event? Which you choose will depend on the size of your audience and the level of interaction you want to facilitate. Some extra information about the differences can be found in this quick start guide.
- If the training is interactive, plan for how and when people will interact and how you'll support them remotely.
