Get Your Students Hired
The importance of identifying and following through with training necessary to make students, faculty, and staff comfortable with learning management systems, time management, and communication tools cannot be emphasized enough. Many school leaders identify training needs, but don't a) require training; b) provide staff time to manage, audit, or update training; and c) evaluate training to see if it helps.
Anticipate some resistance to training- it represents change. Starting a successful online program is a change. Refresh the leadership team with strategies for managing change. Explore this useful website.
Many learning management systems provide online training tools or on-site training. Often the on-site training is limited to the system administrator, not the faculty and staff who will be using the system.
Requiring faculty and staff to enroll in and work through at least one module of an online course is a good first step. Prior to enrolling, it is often useful to have trainees provide a self-assessment of their computer skills. Determining that a trainee is a novice, intermediate, or skilled personal computer user will help the system administrator and course developer prioritize changes.
Hayme,
Agreed; how would you assess the training need of your organization? What processes would you engage to identify the scope of training needs and identify a facilitator to deliver the training to your staff and faculty?
Dr. Robert Roehrich
Training of all the people involved in online courses is crucial for the program to be successful.
What are the training needs for online delivery of courses and programs at your institution? Discuss how those needs were defined and who is responsible for implementing them.
This idea necessitates that human resources view candidates in a different light and must include HR in the online learning process. This is a great point and I am glad you brought it up.
Training needs have to be determined by the staff responsible for the online course, it is not a decision of one person, and that group is responsible for implementing them.
I think that in the initial stage of preparation, the implementation of a pilot or experimental course, at least with a subject is very important, in order to test the effectiveness of the system and the knowledge of the instructors.
As I have stated before we do not have any online courses at our institution. I do agree that training of staff, faculty and students are very important. I believe the training and implementation of an online class would happen at our corporate level.
training needs;
understanding on line learning technology
understanding how to support learners and facilitate content
I am the person responsible and am finding that convincing others of the opportunity for this direction is not as hard as they assume is a challenge.
I think that training needs have to be aligned with the students needs. What kind of students we are going to have. What do they need to achieve success in their goals the instructors should receive training to acquire the skills they need to deliver instruction online
In my opinion, training is important for teachers, staff and students, in order of priority.
Teachers first, because they are the responsible to create the course, staff because they are vital for the sale of the course, and students, because they need to know the advantages of this type of course.
The responsible for implementing the training actions should be the e-learning department if it exist or the academic department, joined to the IT section.
Staff's training needs are be consider as one of the most important issue before to implement online courses.
Faculty must be trained about the way to deliver online classes because it is very different to on site classes, also they have to learn how identify and satisfy student's needs in an online enviroment.
Also the staff have to be train about the Learning Management System.
Not only should there be an institutional plan of training for faculty, students, and targeted staff, there needs to be a sideline training plan for individual faculty members who may need more to get everyone on the same page.
We are looking at a variety of trainings that will allow each of our 4 instructors to become SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) who will teach back best practices learned and be the go-to person for future questions.
Pearson Education has POE (Pearson Online Educator) courses that will allow our faculty to train in online education using our LMS, once in place.
Additionally, we will have specific LMS training.
Mary,
So true--and often neglected until a crisis rears its head--like server issues!
Linda Scharp
Because it is important to match the student with the correct learning style, once you have decided to embark on the on-line journey, training is of utmost importance. On-line teachers need specific strategies in order to reach students appropriately and students must be well-equipped to handle the challenges of on-line learning. Although everyone involved in the process requires some sort of training, I believe the teachers and students are most important. The ultimate success of the program depends on this relationship and its success.
Training is the key to the success of an online program. Faculty, staff and students all need to know and be trained on how to communicate. In addition, all stakeholders need a basic understanding of the platform, policies and procedures.
Training needs to be school wide including admissions and students. Training should be targeted by department and trained by an expert in each. Outside training and cross training so all have a coordinated response if asked. Also a directory of who and how to get additional information should be the standard operating procedure.
At my institution both faculty and students were trained to use the program. There were also recorded tutorials, as welll as an IT department that one could call for assistance.
New students are the one that need more training, moreover at the begin with Black Board. Academic department normally are the one that train then.
We have a mandatory 3-day training program before instructors are allowed to teach online or hybrid sections(free and on-campus, offered every semester). This is a great system. I think the training could be improved a little by the suggestion offered in the course--have instructors take an online course. I know this would have helped me greatly make it more real and practical. I also don't think we offer training for admissions and marketing, and I will recommend that.