The Open University (OU) has launched a new course designed to support trainers working for a charity, non-governmental agency, or similar third sector organisation, to move their face to face training online.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, many charities and NGOs were challenged with the task of moving their training online, often working at high speed and with little previous experience of running online training.
The OU’s new course, known as ‘Take your training online’, aims to help practitioners globally in the NGO and charity space improve the online training they developed at speed, and to develop new resources in the future. It has been developed with the input of international development practitioners to ensure it provides trainers with the tools they need.
Take your training online focuses on what is distinctive to delivering training online and how trainers can improve the quality of online training. In particular, the resources aim to help trainers to move beyond webinar and online lecture styles of training, towards the more interactive styles of training that many use in face-to-face settings.
Consisting of five main sections that can be studied independently and in any order, the course covers the following:
- Knowing your learners
- Different activities for learning
- Online communication and collaboration
- Off the shelf: using existing online materials
- Making your own: creating and adapting content
The course is available for free via OpenLearn Create and requires 6 – 8 hours of study time. A statement of participation is available upon completion of the full course, which could be used as part of the participant’s Continuing Professional Development.
Dr Rebecca Jones, Senior Lecturer in Health in the School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care at The Open University, commented:
“Voluntary sector trainers did an amazing job taking their training online during Covid-19. But the trainers we worked with were very aware that they still had lots to learn about working in such a different way. They also saw clear benefits to keeping some training online, even once face-to-face training is possible again.”
Emma Parnham, a Programme Support Officer from the Making Abortion Safe project and one of the course Development Testers said:
‘’The course gave me a strong understanding of some of the theory behind online learning but also gave lots of practical examples that I am now using all the time.’’
This course has been funded by UK aid from the UK government.
