I am looking for some guideleines for trainers who are new to training teams
The group will attend a formal course in due course but this exercise will be designed to give them some pre-information regarding the role of the trainer and some techniques
I could throw a book at them but you may have some guideleines that would be helpful?
Thank you very much
Guy hunter
7 Responses
Patience
Remember that people on your courses are there to learn what you are already supposed to know, so be professional at all times, the minute your class looses confidence in your ability you will lose there attention and never get it back.
Make the course fun to be on without distracting from why they are there, remember at all times that their company is paying lots of money for them to be there to learn.
Get the delegates relaxed and on your side really on, first impressions are all important, don’t be over confident and to full of yourself, training is a great buzz, but nobody likes to be put down or belittled.
Give examples of what you are saying.
Learn the delegates names and use them even if you get them wrong, it can be a good ice breaker.
Most of all learn everything you can about your chosen subject.
Learn lots of shortcuts and wizzy things, these are always handy for those delegates who think that they know it all
Learn from your mistakes, what ever you are taught, those teachers cannot teach experience.
listen out for funny anecdotes, for examle: A caller to a help desk wanted to know how to create a shortcut to an application on their desktop. The help desk person asked the caller to right mouse click on the desktop, the caller could not understand how writing “mouse click” on his desk top was going to help, you know the type of thing.
Be precise and concise with instruction when you speak e.g. When you say “click infront of the word or behind the word” could be either on the left hand side or the right hand side of the word, depending on how you interperate it. If you mean the right say the right.
When you say “move the mouse around on the screen” some people can take your literally and pick up the mouse and move it around on the screen, you get my drift.
I hope that this helps.
and remember
Good Luck
Nick Cox
27 Garron Close
Aylesbury
Bucks
HP21 9LZ
Training and Development specialist
Some of the old cliches are worth considering here eg “variety is the spice of life” or everything in moderation” and “familiarity breeds contempt” etc..
Learners need stimulating which mostly comes from relevance to the learning subject matter and suitabilty of the learning pace. Try to establish the correct assessment techniques prior to introducing more learning.
Contact me if you need further help or advice
Good luck
Know your stuff and have fun
The best suggestion that I can give you is preparation. If you know your topic really well then you will feel confident teaching it.
The students will lose interest and confidence in the Instructor who seems unsure of their subject.
Prepare well, practice in front of colleagues or friends and ask them to throw awkward questions at you to practice with.
It is quite nice to run courses using some sort of theme as this keeps the course light and entertaining as well as informative. Students are more likely to remember a course which they enjoyed attending.
For example Beginning Word….tell students to pretend they have received a lottery win and all of the documents created throughout the day can be based on this theme….
Prepare your new trainers for the difficult situations and classroom control eg. how should they respond to questions they can’t answer, dealing with the ‘know it all’, what to do if the PC crashes etc..
These are just a few suggestions, there are many more if you need more help or advice just email me. Good luck and remember, if you enjoy yourself, your students will too!!! so relax and have fun!!
Kind Regards – Melanie Scott
My suggestions
To prepare your group before their course it would help to undertake some work with them on:
Identifying training needs
Preparing training objectives
Writing training notes
How people learn
Personal presentation
Question techniques
Group dynamics
All the above could be undertaken as short one subject sessions to enable them to build their skills ready for the training course.
Feel free to contact me if you want to know more. Good luck
Guidelines for New Instructors
I had a similar (providing guidelines for new instructors rather than for trainers new to training teams) challenge when I was installing a training process for an American aerospace company.
Contact me by e-mail if you would like me to send you a copy of the notes – ‘Developing and Delivering Training’ – I prepared for the new instructors.
The timescales that I had to work to meant that I used a process that perhaps I wouldn’t have chosen, but in practice proved very effective:
1. Give the new instructors a copy of the notes to read.
2. Coach them through developing their first lesson plan.
3. Observe and give feedback on the delivery of their first lesson.
4. Instructors attend a ‘Train-the-Trainer’ course.
The advantage of this was that by the end of the observation was that the new instructors had a list of behaviours which they could concentrate on improving during their course. We also had the course tailored to meet the observed needs of our group of instructors.
As part of this project, I also developed a trainer observation form, and a briefing paper on training for the managers of the organisation.
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http://www.mwls.com
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How about the Trainign Groups Award?
Guy,
As a former residential trainer of trainers – ‘though I prefer developer of developers – I think it may be worth you looking at the five unit Training Groups Award – a City and Guilds ‘mini award’ it provides an accredited route for your issue if you value that.
If nothing else it is an excellent framework to following in designing events to meet the needs of your folk.
Do get in touch if you want to know more.
All the best.
[email protected]
Trainer Guidelines
Guy, I can only tell you to check out http://www.thetrainingshop.co.uk! They are the only dedicated trainer training institution that I have come across at present, and have loads of goodies.
Cheers
Catherine