Anna Robinson won the Institute of IT Trainers Award for Trainer of the Year 2001 and when TrainingZONE asked what qualities made her stand out above the others, she very humbly replied that she felt that she must have only just about won the award as all entrants were of such high calibre.
Anna works on a part-time basis as the senior Microsoft Trainer for the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust, London whom she joined in August 1997. Anna stated that she is hoping that by working part-time will give her time to participate in other of her activities and interests that she felt she could not do if she was engaged in full-time employment.
The Trust entered Anna for the IITT Award of IT Trainer because they felt that her own career development had grown in the past year and took on new ideas and learning styles that may have obtained her this years award. She also became TAP accredited and followed the Instituted development plan, which the Trust stated had developed her into a truly excellent trainer.
Anna makes sure that all her training sessions are interactive and always encourages her trainees to think for themselves and work through problems as a group. This has resulted in extremely positive course feedback.
Anna has taken on the initiative of 'floor walking' around the hospital, offering support for users and helping to identify areas of needs for training for those people within the workplace. Anna was also given the target of researching fun ways of learning and has managed to bring new ideas into her training sessions and from this has also designed a board game that makes the learning of Microsoft Access database an interactive session whereby the trainer takes on the role of facilitator at the beginning and then takes a more active part in the teaching of this application at a later stage.
Anna herself thought that her individuality and training style is what makes her classroom training successful, for example, she likes to play music in the training room, before trainees start as she feels this helps to ease the situation and they feel more relaxed about the whole training experience.
Anna likes to adopt accelerated learning techniques and wherever possible is looking at ways of including these methods in her classroom delivery and likes to include ideas such as quizzes, jigsaws, games, dividing into groups and brainstorming facts and writing key points on the white board, that go towards making training sessions more interactive.
Another comment the Trust stated was that with her fun approach, questioning techniques and informative style, she always optimises the learning that is carried out on her courses. She encourages trainees to identify key areas within the course and ensures she spends more time on those particular areas, whilst still ensuring that course objectives are met.
Anna feels that by winning this award has made her more determined to continue with her own personal development by continually re-addressing her training techniques and introducing new ideas into the classroom, also by continually addressing her own professional standards which have been helped with the accreditation she has gained from the Institute of IT Trainers.
