Face-to-Face Staff Development

Goal of Training: Staff will be able to support teachers by referring them to appropriate areas in BrightSpace to complete their online training requirements and find supplemental resources.

Instructional goals
Upon completion of this training, learners will be able to :

1. Navigate the LMS to view course materials and resources
2. Navigate to the resources offered within the course
3. Take and submit a quiz
4. Create, respond, and view VoiceThreads

Video of face-to-face staff development:

Email sent to potential participants

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PowerPoint Slides used in the presentation

Below is the document distributed in the training. As a reference, participants will have access to the course through September, 2018.

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Design Document for Face-to-Face & Online Staff Development

Participant Evaluation Data & Results

Assessment Data

Assignments completed in the training. Names were removed.

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Face-to-Face Reflection

Results from the various forms of assessment indicate that the participants of the face-to-face training left feeling they could support pre-k teachers with using the LMS. The feedback was largely positive. Suggestions included providing more time and having an assistant to walk around and make sure people are on the correct screen. When I looked into the LMS for completions, I found that although some participants indicated they were on target and following along on their screens, they were not all actually completing the assignments. In those cases, I still consider the objectives and training goals to have been met. 

There are several things I would do differently, based on the feedback and from my observation and this experience.

1. Visit the learning space and "plan b", early on in the design process. I did not get in to see the learning space until the day before the training. I was booked for one room, which I loved the set-up, but it meant the training would have to end thirty minutes early or we could switch rooms after thirty minutes. There is more on that in my blog post from that week. The room I ended up in was set-up more along the lines I had planned for, which was what I needed. I needed the room to align with the way I had already designed the instruction. If the other room had worked out, I would have had less than a day to redesign aspects of the training. I distinctly remember the FRIT Instructional design course accounting for the learning environment and I did not address it in my design document or research because I did not feel it was necessary. I will not make that mistake again.
2.  Set-up earlier. I had planned an hour to get everything set up. I had about forty minutes. Because the attendees were non-GSU personnel, they would need to use guest information to log into the computers. When I had visited the room in advance of the training, I did a test log-in as myself on a couple of the computers to time about how long it would take. They took awhile to get going, even though they were already turned on. For this reason, I wanted to get in early and use the guest login to log into the computers for the participants. I did not get to do that and it affected the start of my training.
3. Adjust the time. I received two survey responses that were at odds with each other. One applauded that I was "respectful" of everyone's time, while the other politely recommended more practice time. From the learner analysis and experience I was aware of the range of technological savviness. I was also aware that several of the participants had a meetings to attend after the training. I allotted about an hour for the training, but expected it to be 45 minutes. In the future I will plan for it to take an hour and a half, and after I get through the material, give a formal break and inform anyone who needs to leave or who is sufficient with the material that it is okay for them to do so. Then I would go back to working with the remaining participants to go over the portions of the training content they wanted to practices or that they struggled with.
4. Rearrange the room. This is not a realistic change, but it does warrant consideration. Despite the nice room, set up with rows of computers and a sweet monitor set up. I realized that, like one of the survey responses suggested, I need a second pair of eyes or to arrange the room so that the computers are along the wall where the participants have their backs to me. During the practice parts of the training, I would be able to see the screens of the participants more freely and determine whether or not I had lost them. In this training, there were several times when the more knowledgeable participants would help the struggling ones, And for that I am grateful.

Issues that arose:

1.  There were 11 attendees in my session. When I sent out the email to gather participants, five people signed up. The day before the session, three additional participants let me know they were coming. The morning of, there was one more. The day of the training two participants came, who I did not know were coming. One reason I needed people to sign up, was so I could add them to the LMS and the course before the training. I had it timed so they would receive their login information while on the way to the training, so they would not be too confused about it in the days or weeks leading up to it. That I had walk-ins was fine, as you can see in the video, I was able to add them to the course while everyone else worked on an activity.
2. Participants could not check their email accounts. I did not know that was possible, but in order to check their work email accounts off-campus, they were required to use a VPN protocol or check it on their phone. I was floored when they told me they couldn't open the email upon which my training was based. I was able to assign them passwords so they could log in, but I was really sweating when that happened.
3. I did not account for the types of computers being used! That was a major mistake. The machines in the room were Macs and not everyone can use them. I had one participant in particular who, after taking some time get logged into the computer, sat for a minute before letting me know she had not pulled up any webpages. When I got to the computer to help her, she said "oh, that one is the internet." But that was not her problem, it was mine. Another participant had signed into the Windows partition of the Mac, and she was fine. One of the survey responses referenced working on someone else's machine, and another mentioned working on an unfamiliar one. In all, this took away from the beginning of my training, but once they got going, it was all downhill from there.

In sum, the beginning of the training was bumpy for me, with the issues mentioned above. In my head I kept thinking, OH MY GOODNESS! WHAT IS HAPPENING! THIS IS HORRIBLE! I knew the whole training was derailed and that I'd get an email about what a waste of time it was. Fortunately, after everyone got into the system, almost everything was smooth. There were a few hiccups here and there, but I expected those. I did not expect the large hurdle at the beginning of the training. I was able to rely on the documentation I had created for the task analysis and it worked wonderfully. I did rearrange a couple of things at the last minute though. I removed the assessment and activity where participants would submit a document for the assignment, because they were not on their own computers and it would take too long for them to figure out how to do it on foreign computers. So I walked them through it on screen instead. They did the thumbs-up indicators to let me know they understood the process. I was and still am quite proud of the product, the training, because I could see its relevance and worth in both the evaluation survey and the discussions that took place during and after the training.  I would definitely do this one again.