Staff Training

Status

Pending: Subject to church board Approval and member availability / interest.

Curriculum Goals

Primary Goal

To plan, implement and evaluate a training course for users and trainers using the Westminster computer lab. The intention of this series of three training sessions is to provide basic computer skills to allow users to conduct classes and meetings in Westminster computer lab. In this way, many people can learn how to use the computer lab, train other members, or provide assistance to help "distribute" the technical support workload. These courses will also enable users to coordinate with other users on-line to effectively plan, implement and evaluate future courses and/or church-related projects or initiatives.

Secondary Goal

In a broader sense (other than course development), these learned skills (from first 2 courses) will empower congregation members and Action Group Facilitators to plan, implement, and evaluate/monitor initiatives and projects. After taking first 2 courses, members will be able to collaborate using various applications (both from lab and at home) in order to effectively plan, coordinate and "follow-up" church projects and initiatives.

Future Goals

These courses can be viewed as a "test" to monitor congregation / public interest in taking computer-related courses at Westminster. Successful attendance and student enrolment would be critical if future fee-based curriculum design and course creation is to be considered.

I do not work for Humber College, but I suspect that delay on building a permanent campus could be linked to insufficient enrolment. In other words, perhaps Humber is not confident that they would recoup their investment in building a campus if the surrounding community is not committed to going to the "Orangeville Campus".

It is this author's opinion that failure to commit or support computer training courses at Westminster will hamper the ability for church members and facilitators to effectively implement and follow-up initiatives that are essential to Westminster's continued and future growth.

Curriculum Elements

Targeted Clients

Aimed primarily for Westminster congregation members and staff. In the future, other general user computer-related courses may incur a charge.

Course Charge

Since these sessions are designed to teach "users" and "teachers", these initial sessions will be free
(i.e. no charge).

Course Content / Learning Style

In order for Westminster staff, volunteers and general congregation to meet newer technical challenges for their church, training should focus on collaboration and follow-up skills through the use of technology as opposed to simply using technology to gain information. Today, individuals are aware that web-pages, e-mails, and electronic bulletin boards are interesting ways to access information, but individuals also need to develop the subtle art of online communication, collaboration, monitoring and follow-up in order to effect change. People need to recognize the advantages and limitations of each type of communication technology, and use each one to its maximum potential.

Great care must be taken to "deconstruct" (or remove built-in biases) from traditional learning methods that tend to hinder, and not empower the student in collaborating over the Internet.

These series of courses should adopt the following principles:

Movement away from tests, and more emphasis on group projects. Adults tend to be "tired" at the end of the day, but fun activities such as "break-out" sessions, ice-breakers, and group projects can be effective methods to keep students engaged and monitor participation. This is solidly supported by "Adult Learning Principles".
Immediate and graduated use of personal WIKIs. Students need to "drop the textbook", and move "towards the cloud" (i.e. contribute to online database) in order to interact and share vital information and ideas with their peers and with the World. Course notes and readings already contained in WIKIs allow instructors to direct students to edit their wiki to link to learning content. Students will slowly learn the value of a WIKI and rely on their WIKI as opposed to traditional hard-copy educational media.
Building a community of WIKIs (planet) to allow others to share information and collaborate.
Learn to check on WIKI activity via "Watch Lists". In this way, students learn to follow-up with group information sharing in a consistent and frequent manner.
Using informal evaluation (feedback) methods in order to identify and solve potential problems and mis-communication.
Realistic, practical, and fun projects that can benefit the church, as well as provide examples how they can continue to use these skills long after they have completed these series of courses.
Learn to revise and organise online content (as required).
Gain an appreciation of contributing to the "Global Database", and realize (self-actualization) that other people (including beyond the classroom) are viewing (benefiting) from the same content.
Open Source software used by students in Westminster computer lab should be "Multi-platform" which means available in other operating systems (like MicroSoft Windows and Apple OSX) in order to practice and use software from their home computer.

Requirement / Commitment

Members will be asked to participate (based on availability). Members must agree to commit to the full duration of each course (each course is estimated to last 6 weeks). The purpose for this "commitment" is to allow the members not only to become familiar, but actually master simple computer applications which will lead to better planning, coordination, implementation, and follow-up of church projects.

A minimum commitment of attending the first 2 courses is recommended to master online collaboration.

Candidates should be informed that although free, each course would have an approx value of $70-$80, and a higher value of $250 at a community college level (not to mention of the costs and time incurred of developing an effective and customized curriculum for Westminster United Church) . Each student must understand that excellent attendance is absolutely essential to not only gain skills, but help work as a team to achieve targeted project goals.

Proposed Courses

Click on each link for a full subject outline of each course:

Course Planning

PIE Curriculum Design Framework

The PIE framework is one of the must recognised approaches to designing curriculum. Elements of these training sessions will provide students with skills to help plan, implement, and evaluate courses. Although primarily used for course development, this framework could also be adapted for designing, implementing and monitoring church projects.

The PIE method of curriculum (project) development relates to 3 specific areas or stages:

Planning stage:	Identify and understand the needs of the student (clients), as well as the content to deliver (task to achieve).
Implementation stage:	Creation of course delivery (for example: lesson plans, projects, evaluation, etc.).
Evaluation stage:	to review the course's (project's) effectiveness in order to provide for future improvement.

All course content, teacher lesson plans, etc. should be contained on Westminster's WIKI in order to grow content, and not "re-invent the wheel". This online method will make it easier for new teachers to better prepare from a consistent and useful "support network". Other church Action Groups or departments may benefit from viewing this online organisation structure, and hence adopt and modify to meet their own needs.

It is this author's opinion that opposed to the United Church's online cafe (Top-Down approach), a complete support structure for the future growth of the United Church of Canada requires a growth from the "inside-out". In other words, each church needs to develop its own shareable online database (catering to each church's unique needs) to successfully solve most of their challenges (both traditional and technical). Eventually, individual church resources should be merged in a general WIKI to assist churchs to solve unique and specialised problems.

Initial Course Time-line

An initial course (Intro / Basics) will be run for the first 6 weeks, followed by (Intro /Basics) and (Curriculum Design Tools) run (in parallel) during the following 6 weeks, followed by (Curriculum Design Tools) and (Multimedia & Composition) run (in parallel) during the final 6 weeks.

This will allow some flexibility in case some member are not available to attend the first 6 weeks. Below is a diagram of the course time-lines. A minimum commitment of taking the first 2 courses is required to provide the members with computer lab basics and online and collaborative tools.

NOTE 1: Classes that land on a holiday weekend will be delayed until the following week.

NOTE2: These course will focus on collaboration and teamwork. It will be the responsibility of the other class members to help student "catch-up" on a missed class... It is NOT the responsibility for the instructor to provide "make-up" classes...

Curriculum Developer Contact Information

Murray Saul
Professor, School of Computer Studies,
Seneca College, Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: murray.saul@senecac.on.ca
webpage: murraysaul.wordpress.com

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