Strategies for addressing range of teacher experience in PD

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Participants on the national "Professional Development" discussion list, are sharing strategies that address the question:
"What strategies do you use to ensure that the teacher new to adult literacy or ESOL doesn't leave feeling overwhelmed or confused, while the experienced teacher leaves with new ideas, even feeling 're-charged'?"

Below is a draft list of categories of suggestions, followed by bulleted lists of comments and specific strategies pertaining to each suggestion.

The Professional Development Discussion List is co-sponsored by the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) and the Association of Adult Literacy Professional Developers (AALPD).

Contents

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Be transparent with session goals

  • I try to be clear in describing the workshop/session/activity from the get go. Janet Isserlis
  • I have my goals for training clearly developed and present them to the participants at the beginning of the session. Chris Francisco
  • Over time, I've learned to present my goals and objectives clearly from the outset of the workshop - including in what ever materials are mailed out promoting the workshop or training session. Katrina Hinson
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Identify participant goals for the PD

  • My next step [after sharing session goals with the group] is to ask the group if they have any additional goals that I have not included. Being a great believer in the collective nature of the classroom there invariably are participant goals and learning opportunities that need to be met. Chris Fransisco
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Utilize the expertise of teachers

  • Model ways of including various degrees of expertise by hardwiring the sessions to include many places for participants to share their experience and to pose questions to one another, as well as to me. Janet Isserlis
  • If we have concern that a particular topic or group will have difficulties, recruit teacher experts to attend sessions as extra helpers. Duren Thompson
  • If we have enough helpers, and only or two people are *really* struggling, one helper simply hangs out with the "challenged" person(s) and the other helper works with the rest of the room. Duren Thompson
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Utilize the expertise of teachers: Pair Work

  • I sometimes ask people to pair up at one computer in a lab (if they wish) so they can help each other. This doesn't always help. I wonder if you -- or others -- have suggestions about how to pair people up. These might have applicability to other PD areas too. David Rosen
  • Have them rate themselves, on paper, as to how many years experience they have (or how "expert" they feel) with computers and then "line up" according to comfort level/experience and then the facilitator works to pair more experienced folks with less experience folks in class. Duren Thompson
  • I've not had much luck with pairing people up. In pairs, the most experienced person does everything and the novice does nothing. It makes class go smoother, but the novice learns a lot less. Bill McNutt
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Keep the PD flexible

  • I also - especially in multi-sessions workshops, keep the agenda flexible so that we can take more or less time along the way and so that after the first workshop I can make changes to remaining sessions in order to accommodate both strengths and needs. Janet Isserlis
  • Never plan an event so tightly that it isn't flexible enough to adjust to the varied experience of your audience. Jeff Fantine
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Understand your audience

  • My preparation and understanding of the participant population usually can accommodate everyone's needs. Chris Fransisco
  • I think it's important to know your audience ALWAYS. Jeff Fantine
  • Another thing to do when presenting is to be fully aware of who is attending. When we planned our recent workshop, we accounted for all the levels taught - ABE, AHS, GED And ESL. Katrina Hinson
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Open the dialogue

  • My preparation and understanding of the participant population usually can accommodate everyone's needs. This step opens the conversation. I have found this step very necessary and inviting for the groups of learners. Some may think that this is a "back to the basics" comment but sometimes that can be very affirming. Chris Fransisco
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Base PD upon a needs assessment (Pre-Assessment)

  • How about doing a needs assessment before the "pd offering" so you base what you do on the expressed needs of the participants? (Which might result in a variety of different kinds of pd offerings, including those for large groups as well as those for small groups or individuals.) Vicki Hoffman
  • Before training we try to "listen" to the people around us to get a feel for what they want and need. I or my colleagues may make adjustments into how something is presented based on that. We've tried a needs assessment before - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the ppl that fill out the needs assessment end up being the same people that do not attend the training. Katrina Hinson
  • Varying the way the "needs" assessment is completed is effective though - being sure to call, write, email or observe etc, tends to provide much more usable information. Katrina Hinson
  • Ask participants to complete a quiz (perhaps online) before coming to training that includes performing tasks that would be needed in the training (e.g. correctly typing or cutting and pasting a URL in a browser, minimizing a window, opening two windows and switching back and forth between them, etc.) If participants get below a certain % ask them to come to a one-hour pre-training activity where they will get special help with these skills. David Rosen
  • One neat *strategy* for "pre-assessment" I have seen was at pre-conference session at COABE 3 years ago. So simple and yet it changed my whole "take" on participating in the session. After the facilitator briefly went over the Agenda for the course, she said (something like):
"OK - that's the intent of this session - the information I planned to cover. Now I'd like you to think about *your* goals in coming to this session. Think a minute and jot down on a piece of paper *one thing* you want to get out of this session. *One thing* you'd like to walk away with."
We had think time, jotted our notes, and then she had everyone say what their one thing was and wrote it on Newsprint/Easel-sized sticky-note paper and stuck the pages up on the wall. When this was done she said (and this was the very important part):
"These are great - and some things I hadn't initially planned on covering. OK - now I want you to keep this goal of yours in mind during the session. It is your job to make sure that *you* leave this session with that goal met. Ask questions, remind me, the facilitator, to address the issue, work with your peers at your table, etc. *You* are responsible for ensuring that this session meets *your* needs."
She went on to explain that this was a great way to assist adult learners to take responsibility for their own learning as well.
Changed my whole approach to the session. At the end she went back to these pages and asked us to ask ourselves "Did I get what I wanted to get out of this session? If not, what can I do now/next to try to attain this goal?" Duren Thompson
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Build in an ongoing needs assessment

  • I try to build an ongoing assessment piece throughout the session/s. Janet Isserlis
  • For face to face sessions on using the internet, have participants go on a short web-quest (even just "open Internet Explorer and go to the web site on your handout" can tell us a LOT about a user's skill and comfort level)
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Write careful/clear session descriptions

  • One important piece that _is_ in our control as professional developers is to be sure that the course, workshop, presentation, study group or other PD offering is very carefully and clearly described. A good description might include:
1) intended participants' knowledge and experience (An "Excel Basics" workshop might describe the intended participants as those "who are comfortable using a computer and competent with basic word processing, but who have little or no experience using a spreadsheet")
2) what the PD offering is (and isn't) intended to do (e.g. "Enable participants to organize a set of numerical data in a basic spreadsheet, but not to use formulas other than those which involve addition or multiplication")
3) how the offering will be conducted: in a lab, a discussion group, as a presentation with opportunities to practice, as an online course, etc.
4) the presenter's name and experience
5) what is required of the participants (e.g. "Given a set of data, produce a functional spreadsheet with accurate labels and correct formulae.")
6) if credit or CEUs are available (or not).
7) referral to other related offerings, if available, which may be for more (or less) experienced participants.

Utilize the PD registration form and session evaluation

  • If the PD offering requires registration, the registration form could be designed so that it requires a signature after a sentence that says "I have read the description of this (course, workshop, etc.) and believe that it is intended for someone with my level of experience."
  • In the evaluation of the offering you could ask participants to say whether it was at the right level and, if not, to review the description and indicate how the description could be improved. David Rosen
I like all your strategies for writing a more accurate description - and we've used many of them. In particular, your phrasing "...who are comfortable using a computer and competent with basic word processing, but who have little or no experience using a spreadsheet" is almost word for word what we've used.
Our experience, however, is that folks attend anyway. We can only assume one of the following:
- they don't know what "competent with basic word processing" is. They can type a letter and print it, but they always save to the default location, and use the spacebar instead of tabs or indents (for example).
- They think of themselves as comfortable using a computer - but they've only ever worked on one computer, set up exactly their way, and are lost if the one at the training doesn't exactly match what they are used to.
- are desperate to learn anything about computers and this the only thing they could find, fit in their schedule, or that was recommended to them
- Someone told them they *had to come*
- What they wanted couldn't be found, so they came to this instead
Lastly, we've found that a lot of folks don't read past the title of the session to see the description (and check boxes that said "I read this" without reading either). Some folks have indicated that if the description is too long - they won't attend, or simply stop reading after the first paragraph (like in a newspaper).
No matter how hard we try on the front end, we will almost *always* end up with a challenging mix of folks in a workshop. Duren Thompson
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Tech-specific strategies

  • For computer classes, we do always try to build in some sort of "pre-assessment" task or question to get an idea of how comfortable people are with basic keyboarding and mouse tasks, and plan on at least one "helper" per 10 attendees (in addition to the facilitator).
  • Have them rate themselves, on paper, as to how many years experience they have (or how "expert" they feel) with computers and then "line up" according to comfort level/experience and then the facilitator works to pair more experienced folks with less experience folks in class.
  • For face to face sessions on using the internet, have participants go on a short web-quest (even just "open Internet Explorer and go to the web site on your handout" can tell us a LOT about a user's skill and comfort level)
  • For sessions not based on the internet, simply having them insert a floppy or CD and open a file will tell us a lot - asking them to save a file can be especially informative.
  • For online courses, we request they register using our online form. Anyone who faxes or US mails us their registration is tagged as someone who will need extra support. As are those who have to call us to ask how to fill in or submit an online form. Those that register using someone else's e-mail address (like their supervisor or their husband) are likewise "tagged."
  • If we have concern that a particular topic or group will have difficulties, recruit teacher experts to attend sessions as extra helpers.
  • If we have enough helpers, and only or two people are *really* struggling, one helper simply hangs out with the "challenged" person(s) and the other helper works with the rest of the room.
  • Helpers quickly identify left-handers or those with visual impairments and make adjustments to the computer they are working on.
  • If using laptops in your presentation, ALWAYS have a mouse for every laptop. Touchpads are a real challenge for almost everyone. Some will also have trouble with the more condensed keyboard.
  • For those who have trouble using a mouse, helpers show them how to use keyboard shortcuts and arrow keys to move around on the computer. For those with trouble keyboarding, show them how o use the mouse to do as much as possible.
  • Avoid session tasks that require folks to do a lot of keyboarding - unless that is what you are teaching. Have a file with pre-prepared data for them to work with in spreadsheets, word processing or databases. They can create a couple of records, and then move on with the other skills for the session. Duren Thompson
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