Organising successful learning events
Sample from this book:
Establishing aims
Training and education opportunities exist for a variety of
purposes. The range is enormous. Personal and professional development
are at the heart of most of them. In social welfare type of work
that is most likely to mean providing opportunities for staff
to gain skills to do their jobs more effectively or to
provide improved services.
Some events and training offer some form of ‘accreditation’;
others are primarily opportunities for staff (and possibly their
clients or customers) to get together and debate practice and
policy. NVQs are an example of staged accreditation. They utilise
the credit accumulation system and offer opportunities for unqualified
or relatively poorly qualified staff in social welfare jobs, to
work up the ladder of credits, moving from one level of award
to the next as a natural progression. Each ‘award’
is a stage in the process of becoming ‘trained’ or
‘qualified’.
The idea of a beginning, a middle, and an end, is a familiar
and commonsense one to all who have ever been cajoled into writing
an essay, a book or thesis. Planning for training or conference
events is essentially a matter of establishing stages for the
process. Within a single event, even a relatively simple one,
such as a half-day induction training session for new staff joining
a local authority or voluntary organisation, a number of people
may have been involved in the:
- planning
- administration
- co-ordination
- presentation
- evaluation and follow-up
The event itself may be a ‘stand-alone’ affair, or
part of a series of workshops, a structured course or an accreditation
mechanism leading specifically to assessment and qualification.
In the organisation of conferences, workshops and training events,
the ‘getting started’ phase is of vital importance.
If the planner or planning group haven’t thought things
through, some of the ‘organisational variables’ may
get overlooked. This inevitably leads to recriminations, conflict
and potentially both lost opportunities and loss of money and
effectiveness. Any training event is an opportunity.
The opportunity will have boundaries and constraints. There will
also be potential areas where things can go a little or a lot
wrong. It is the job of the event organisers to take on board
the task of overseeing all the stages; that is the beginning,
the middle, and the end!
And in the beginning...
At the outset, the planning for any potential event may be assessed
using a checklist of questions which will help to focus attention
on what the group or trainer wants to achieve, how best to meet
identified aims, what resources will be required, and an appropriate
programme and timetable.
Why is an event going to be organised?
Any organiser, or organising group needs to discuss how best
to tackle this question. Often it is not as straightforward as
it may at first appear. ‘Training’ is usually seen
as a ‘good thing’ in most organisations, but in the
social care and education arenas, as much as anywhere else, it
can be easy to provide events on the basis of a ‘wing and
a prayer’. To organise events and training effectively and
efficiently, Hugh Koch has said in Total Quality Management
in Health Care that training in quality must satisfy the
following requirements:
- Unit level managers must be committed and involved in planning
and setting training priorities.
- Objectives must be adequately and realistically resourced
and timetabled.
- Training should be considered for all parts and levels of
the provider unit.
This is a whole organisation, or ‘holistic’ approach
to training, and holds equally true, in a modified form, for conferences
and events which are not seen specifically as training, but have
essentially the same structure. There is also an element of the
‘chicken and egg’ problem involved; is it better to
try and define a programme for an event first and then ‘sell’
it to the intended audience? Or, should the audience be consulted
as part of the process? In Hugh’s example, taken from the
world of health management, it is seen as fundamental that management
would support and ‘own’ a commitment to planned training.
This is equally important in any other ‘people-services’
training or conference, though it may be policy-makers, planners
or the members of a housing estate, who need to be seen as involved
and committed to the particular event being planned.
It is worth looking in a bit more detail, at how asking a series
of questions about the intention and aims of an event can help
to define the priorities for the planners. Perhaps too often in
the past, some organisers for events have sat around in a classic
social work or education circle of chairs and made some very rash
assumptions at the very beginning of the planning stage for a
conference or training event. For instance, it is relatively common
for national steering groups and specialist professional groups
to have a conference subgroup. Their accountability is to
the main organisation, which may, in turn, be elected under some
sort of process - often in a show of hands or ballot at the annual
conference, which the sub-group is selected from, or co-opted
to. In its worst excess, this group can become a self-perpetuating
example of too much power being delegated to a non-representative,
marginal grouping.
Why is an event going to be organised?
Any group should, at the outset, ask itself questions such as
those in Checklist 1 .1. If you are planning to organise an event,
Checklist 1 .1, at the end of this section, may be worth considering
for modification, as a starting point for planning a conference,
workshop or training event.
If a planning group or organiser works out the
answers to the Checklist 1 .1 questions, these will provide the
essential brief for the event and the beginning of a programme.
An organiser(s) must have decided on the objectives before trying
to work out the content. Discussing the aim of an event and the
objectives can be stimulated by taking some buzz words
and seeing if they can be used to stimulate the most appropriate
set of objectives. One set I generated with a conference planning
group included the words (in relation to objectives for participants):
- interest
- involve
- inform
- educate
- stimulate
- entertain
- engage
- professionalise
- challenge
- practical
- theory
- participate
- make controversial
- generate new ideas
- innovation
A different planning group might create a very different list
of objectives. It is worth considering the creation of such a
list to form the basis for a short planning exercise
for the organising group. The questions in Checklist 1 .2 offer
a second stage of detail.
In people-work services, training events and conferences increasingly
use fewer information giving sessions, and rather more exchanges
of information. Participants are encouraged to participate, exchange
views and to use their experiential knowledge,
based on their own personal life experiences. This makes them
much more active rather than passive
in the conduct, and indeed in the planning of training type events.
To enable this style of event, the organisers must:
- Brief all session organisers and workshop leaders on preferred
‘styles’ of presentation.
- Indicate in any briefing notes that sessions should be participative
and experiential.
- Make training inputs as relevant to participants as possible
and provide experiences and exercises which are challenging,
but also supportive and non-judgemental.
- Provide opportunities to build up the confidence and skills
of participants.
Consultation and planning
At the planning stage, the scale and format of the event may
determine some of the practical requirements for the planning
group or event organiser.
The complexity of the tasks facing the planning group will be
one of the variables for consideration based on a number of factors,
such as those set out in Checklist 1 .3.
Aims and goals
Because the range of aims and goals for conferences and training
events is so varied, it is not possible for me to emphasise too
strongly the need to determine these at an early stage. Checklist
1 offered some of the aims for training events. The list below
is based on the work of Leonard Nadler: The Conference Book
and Burke and Beckhard: Conference Planning.
Training events and related conferences assume that in the process
of training, or reflecting on work ‘away from base’,
participants should be given opportunities to leave their normal
work and domestic worlds and enter the world of the event. Depending
upon the nature of the event, for instance, whether it is the
conference of a professional association in probation, or a one-day
in-service course for housing staff on the implications of community
care in a local area, the participants should be encouraged to
assist in:
- The rule setting for the event (either before or during the
event).
- Setting objectives for the event.
- Determining how follow-up can be organised.
- The planning and co-ordination of the event.
- Choosing the programme, venue and contributors.
There is also a growing need to assess whether training is best
achieved away from base’ or in the workplace. Increasingly,
especially in training for qualifications, training takes place
in a mixture of locations. Training events should reinforce workplace
on-the-job training, and should be clearly relevant to the needs
of both individuals and organisations back in the workplace. Like
many people, who have been involved in putting training events
together, we all remember personal ‘horror stories’.
Many could be avoided if more active collaboration was encouraged
between planners, trainers and participants.
A salutory experience I well remember involved a planning group
consisting of senior, well-intentioned staff from a major national
voluntary child care organisation. They were planning a series
of youth participation conferences, which were due to be launched
at a national event. The trouble was that the members of the group
were fearful that the young people would ‘take over’
and, in so doing, bring bad publicity to the sponsoring agency.
In the event, a number of younger facilitators were invited to
help run the sessions at the conference, and the organisers then
quickly gave the power for the programme, and the running of the
event, over to the young people. The initial distrust took a bit
of overcoming, but the farther the original planning group moved
into the background, the more successful the event became and,
at the end of three days, all the participants were ‘members’
and ‘citizens’ of the event, and a lot of lively and
challenging debate had taken place about power; relationships
between young people and adults; sexism and racism, and how to
avoid the original problems of organising the national conference.
After the conference, many of the participants became the co-organisers
of local events back in their own areas of the United Kingdom,
and they put into practice the lessons learned about participation
and collaboration. It does serve as a prime example of an event
that lacked adequate consultation at the planning stages.
In more complex events, where many different types of ‘interested
parties’ could be consulted, there may be conflicts of interest.
These may not always be resolvable, but the process of consultation
will usually do a lot to allay fears and encourage the sense of
involvement and ‘ownership’ over the particular event.
Burke and Beckhard take the view that the most fruitful model
of participant is one who is:
a learner (an active participant)
They contrast this model of participation with two other, less
productive, forms of involvement, which they have called:
a tourist (a non-participant)
an expatriate (uncritical consumer)
In most of our people-work training events, the aims will reflect
a mixture of intended benefits. You may wish to organise a short
planning exercise based on Checklist 1 .4 to look at the benefits
of any event you are planning.
Looking at an event or piece of training in this way may help
to determine the ‘optimal’ balance within a programme
to meet the varying needs of organisation and individuals; the
personal and professional development needs of staff, and the
needs of consumers who are participating.
It may also be used to help in the process of consultation with
other interested parties, by focusing the attention of those advising
the planning group in areas which are likely to be constructive
and positive for all concerned.
To wind up the consideration of how best to improve the planning
stage, the next model may give an idea of all the people who might
be consulted about the organisation and functioning of any particular
event. This is not the same as saying that they must be contacted,
but the more they can be involved at some stage, the greater the
likelihood of your getting more learners and less tourists amongst
the participants. It is also likely to offer something of a protection
strategy for the planning group against those other famous groups:
the snipers (those who are wise after the
event and say ‘I told you so...)
the whingers (those who do little but peevishly
complain)
No model of this kind can totally reflect the world of someone
else’s training event or conference - use it to build
up a model which does describe your event.
Ground rules for training events
In commerce and industry, there has been a tendency for training
to be closely linked with appraisal and assessment. In people-work,
the last decades of the twentieth century saw a move towards a
sharpening of focus, whereby staff and agencies were held increasingly
accountable for expenditure and provision of services, not just
to funders, administrators and politicians, but also to the consumers.
Patients in the health service are now aware of the national charter
standards and some of these seem appropriate as aims for ‘empowerment’,
and could also be curiously appropriate for all participants in
training events as a set of ground rules. In a slightly modified
form, these could read as in Checklist 1 .5.
In practice, a set of ground rules or safeguards should be developed
by any planning group in training or training and conference organisers.
These need to protect the participants from training being used
as an instrument of oppression, and to positively challenge behaviour
in training which may be seen as discriminatory.
Evaluation and assessment
A greater accent on quality, and the increase in monitoring of
training means that evaluation techniques should be built into
the planning process of any training event, rather than being
‘tacked on’, as a kind of ill-fitting afterthought.
Evaluation and monitoring are a continuous process.
They are at their most effective when aims and learning objectives
are easily quantifiable - not always so easy in people work.
However, if the aims and objectives are considered more clearly
at the outset, the level of success can be more clearly monitored.
Indeed, it seems reasonable to establish a model for evaluation
which also looks at the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning
and preparation stages of training events. In this way, Checklist
1 .6 shows what the model might look like.
Once again, it is a pretty obvious case of ‘horses for
courses. What is suitable as a means of assessment for a staff
training scheme for a very specific form of training such ‘best
practice in child protection’, will need modifying drastically
for a group planning a trade union, or delegate conference, where
an agenda will determine the proposers, seconders, and voting
structure for the event in a much more rigid fashion than with
a relatively open-ended, participative workshop.
Training, learning and qualifications
This book is meant to help anyone who may face the sometimes
frightening, but often exciting and challenging task of organising
some form of training event. At the wider, more macro-level, involvement
may be largely an administrative job — making sure that
all the stages of planning, preparation and implementation are
carried through efficiently. Or, you may as an individual, be
dealing with only one aspect of the event, the micro-level of
the event organisation, possibly designing the programme, liaising
with speakers and workshop leaders, or registration at the venue.
On the other hand, you may be charged with the task of seeing
where a particular training event ‘fits’ into the
larger scheme of personal and professional staff development.
This may require you to have to seek recognition and accreditation
for the event and provide certificates for those who attend.
Lifelong learning has moved beyond being a slogan.
More people are choosing to get involved in learning and training
at different times in their lives. This is also associated with
the move towards agencies re-inventing themselves as learning
organisations, meaning that they see empowerment of staff
through learning, as a major element of their mission
statement or aims.
It is way beyond the scope of this book to offer guidance on
the enormous and growing range of in-service, vocational, distance-learning,
NVQ, degree and post-graduate training, and other options for
staff in the people-services. What is known is that in the quest
for quality’ of service, longer training for professionals
has been decreed to be necessary. Two year courses are being replaced
by three-year degree-level courses, top-up specialist courses
are increasingly being run, and nearly every aspect of working
with people in welfare-type services is now associated with some
sort of accreditation. In fact, the situation sometimes reaches
almost farcical proportions, when, for instance, a part-time youth
worker needs a life saving certificate to take a group of kids
down to the beach to build sand castles!
Trends in training
In the 2000s, new trends in training and patterns of staff development
will inevitably have a knock-on effect in the way training events
and conferences and workshops are planned and structured. Training
to improve the competency of staff and achieve a more qualified
workforce is one key element in this evolution. Distance learning,
and training through the Internet and computer terminals and software
programs, are one element of this.
The implementation of new policies and new social priorities
often serve to direct the content of training. For instance, criminal
and anti-social behaviour and the impact of drugs on society are
‘shared problems’ for almost everyone working in the
wide range of welfare and educational services. New challenges
arise. For example, many welfare agencies have to respond to the
needs of refugees and asylum seekers. This gives rise to training
on a bespoke-tailored or a needs-to-know basis. There are also
fundamental aspects of ‘good practice’ that need to
be embedded into all training. These include:
- equal opportunities
- health and safety
- anti-sexist, harassment and racist strategies
As a last exercise, the planning group may wish
to consider Checklist 1 .7. Add your own changes to it, and other
trends in training that you can identify as specific to your own
‘profession’, ‘team’ or ‘agency’.
Then think about the ways this needs to be reflected in your approach
to the organisation of training events.
Checklist 1.1: Why is an event going to be organised?
- Why are we organising an event?
- Who is it aimed at?
- What are we trying to achieve through the organisation of
the event?
- What type of event is it? For instance, is it about?:
- communicating information
- planning and policy-making
- skills training
- decision-making
- assessment and testing
- campaigning
- raising consciousness
- political agendas
- team-building
- resource allocation
- dealing with change
- legislation
- improving service delivery
- attitude or behaviour modification
- assertiveness
- confidence-building
- Will the event need to be evaluated and how?
Checklist 1.2: The next stage
- Does the event need to have a theme?
- Is a title important? What should it be?
- What sort of programme is required?
- What implications are there for the style; format; length;
cost and timing of the conference/event?
- How can this event be marketed to the audience?
What resource implications are there?
Think about the need for:
- funding requests and subsidies
- equipment
- geographical location and type of venue and accommodation
- personnel implications for: administration; speakers or
workshop leaders
- rapporteurs, convenors, spokespersons, chairpersons
- are there any special needs requirements, for instance,
for physically or mentally handicapped; parents with children;
participants on income support or with transport restrictions?
Checklist 1.3: Consultation
- How many participants will there be? What is the duration
of the event?
- Is the event part of any longer series of training?
- How many tasks can be identified for delegation/allocation
to the planning group members?
- Do other organisations and individuals need to be consulted
at the planning stage?
- Will the style, programme and venue for the event have any
implications for the amount of work required?
Consultation at this planning stage may have a number of benefits
for the organisers. It can help the team charged with putting
on an event to:
- Focus on the key aspects of the event and thereby get the
‘shape’ of the event right, and appropriate, for
the intended participants.
- Utilise the goodwill and expertise of more people, and help
ultimately in creating a constituency of support for the event.
- Check out if there is any competition or opposition to the
proposed event.
- Generate new ideas for the programme.
- Identify specific ‘problems’ and/or subjects
for inclusion
Checklist 1.4: Identifying benefits
How are the aims of the event going to bring:
- Benefits for the organisation and service?
- Benefits for staff teams or working units?
- Benefits for individual staff?
- Benefits for consumers?
Checklist 1.5: Ground rules for training
Training should:
- Encourage respect for privacy, dignity and religious and cultural
beliefs.
- Enable everyone, including people with special needs, to
use the service.
- Allow freedom of access to information and records.
To these, I would suggest adding:
- Encourage all to participate, regardless of background,
race, sexual orientation, job position, seniority or status.
- Assist in the resolution of workplace conflicts and disagreements.
- Encourage participants to ‘be all they can be’
and make the most of all training and staff development programmes.
- Relate to the actual practice in the workplace and provide
opportunities to examine, evaluate and improve that practice.
- Be empowering and enabling, allowing, as far as possible,
experiential approaches to be used.
- Establish learning objectives which explicitly and simply
state what a participant will learn from particular learning
modules, and which may be capable of being assessed.
Checklist 1.6: Evaluation and monitoring
There are four stages of a training event or conference:
- The planning stage.
- Preparation for the event.
- During the event.
- After the event.
To some degree, in all of these four stages, there should be
on-going evaluation as to how far:
- Aims were established and met.
- A transfer of knowledge and skills was accomplished.
- Effective methods, styles and ‘trainer’ resources
and inputs were utilised.
- Needs were identified, met, and solutions implemented back
in the workplace.
- Potential areas for improving individual, team and organisational
change and improvements have been recognised.
Checklist 1.7: Training trends
Other identifiable trends in training which
have evolved over the last 15-20 years include:
- More inter-disciplinary and multi-agency training.
- More modular training, which builds up credits, which may
be transferable to higher level courses and qualifications.
- More training which includes a high level of on-the-job assessment
of competencies and follows patterns established under City
and Guilds and National Vocational Qualification awards.
- Pressure from government for a greater proportion of staff
to have at least basic qualifications in social care and other
forms of care, education and welfare work.
- More one-off courses offering specialist, rather than generic
skills in areas such as counselling; financial and budgeting
practice; information technology applications; resource management
skills; specific legislation, etc.
- Increased use of courses and events as part of larger packages
which include consultancy; supervision and assessment at the
workplace; open and distance learning materials; appraisal schemes;
monitoring systems using computer-based ‘tracking’
and use of such ‘instruments’ for assessment, such
as performance indicators and client/patient trails.
- Involvement of more consumers in training events which ‘empower’
and encourage partnership working between staff in social welfare
and education agencies and their different consumers, whether
they are known as pupils and parents; patients; clients or customers.
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