One of the most exciting areas of working as a trainer is that of developing a new course. Naturally, the course has to be relevant if it is to attract and sign up students. What are we teaching and who will the students be? Courses and workshops vary in length and are sometimes conducted in different classrooms, are there any issues with resources and logistics? There are many things to think about... The Big Picture 'There is only one corner of the universe that you can change, and that is your own.' Aldous Huxley. At first glance, there is merit in Huxley's statement, but as a trainer we are blessed with an opportunity not only to change our own world, but those too of our learners. It's our duty to encourage positive change. The planning of a course of study is just as important as its delivery. If you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you get there? Learners like to know their target destination, i.e. what's in for them? In a time-strapped world we have limited time to made decisions and it's possible that important decisions are made on summary information. Some organizations sponsor certain courses and have a vested interest in their delivery and success. If you are to introduce a new course via one of these organizations it's vital to work closely with the sponsor to ensure that what you are delivering is what the sponsor is paying for. Organizations as part of their contract with you will refuse to pay for learning products that do not meet their acceptance criteria. Our prospective students would possibly learn of the course from their local college networks. The course synopsis would have been taken from the course syllabus. In the world of Information Technology for example, the curriculum is wide. We have Word, PowerPoint, Spreadsheets and relational databases. These applications are similar in terms of their menu structures but of course, achieve quite difficult things. Each activity would have its own syllabus, usually at different levels from beginner, intermediate and leading to advanced. There is a question we use in training: how do you eat an elephant? Answer in bite sized chunks. Microsoft Excel for example is a massive subject. So here the planner needs to 'chunk down' the major principles into a logical menu of activities. There's no point in teaching people to import pictures into documents if they don't know how to open the application first. Chunking down in this way leads the learners down a logical path to success, building on these foundations of a solid structure of learning. A concrete experience you might call it. Initially, the learner is interested in the broad strokes of the course held in the syllabus. The detail delivered at each lesson would be contained in the teacher's individual lesson plans. Here items such as the aims and objectives of the session would be present, perhaps including items such as headers/footers, changing the font or font size, cutting and pasting, along with the proposed timings of each learning session. The most valuable commodity as a trainer is time and it's our duty to encourage that the students receive the maximum return on their studies. A scheme of work is a planning document that gives information about the learning group as well as the aims and objectives of the learning opportunity. The venue, lesson timings and resources are vital aspects to incorporate. Reference to the official syllabus is important (where applicable) as well as discussing methods of evaluation. Standby for more information from the College of Public Speaking in subsequent articles. Copyright (c) 2009 The College Of Public Speaking
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