TIA Blended Learning & Performance Project of the Year: BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life)
November 17, 2008
BELL's Summer Teacher-Teacher's Assistant Training merges interactive classroom training with e-learning for extended program reach and extensive feedback.
By Margery Weinstein
Vendor: Kineo, Pteppic, John Abbott Photography, and David Washburn Photography
Project: Summer Teacher-Teacher's Assistant Training
Challenge: A training department with limited resources delivering training simultaneously to a dispersed staff. BELL is a rapidly growing organization that provides out-of-school-time tutoring to elementary school children living in low-income, urban communities. Its summer program commences simultaneously in all of its regions, due to parallel school calendars and vacation schedules that only allow for a six-week summer program. In the past, a training team of four could handle three-day, instructor-led classroom training in three regions, but as the organization expands, a training team of six cannot handle multi-day classroom training for hundreds of staff that happens simultaneously in five or more regions.
Solution: One day of interactive classroom training plus e-learning running on the Moodle platform with 13 modules, five regional information folders, a Help area, and a CEO blog. A prerequisite to the classroom training, the e-learning introduces BELL's program, policies, and curricula. The modules provide information and challenge learners with scenarios, drag-and-drop activities, and quizzes. The scenarios and quiz questions are based on real-life situations that have occurred in prior years of BELL's Summer Program. Feedback from managers identifies information to emphasize in activities. The graphics match BELL's branding and the look and feel of classrooms. Text is written in a conversational style to draw in learners; photos include real-life BELL scholars and staff; video and audio are of actual BELL staff rather than models; and animations are used sparingly to match the learning objectives. In the classroom training, instructors build on participants' prior knowledge from the e-learning to provide opportunities for them to demonstrate their learning, clarify any questions, create learning communities, and put the learning into context—learners are trained with their co-workers for the summer in the same room and with their managers present. All learners are provided with a participant workbook, and workshops are standardized through highly structured leaders' guides for the trainers, PowerPoints that accompany each workshop, and a train-the-trainer with the director of training. Innovations include a Web-based system checker that checks learners' computers and makes sure they are set up to run the e-learning. After users run the system checker, they are provided with links to information or downloads for how to meet the e-learning system requirements.
Results: The project cut the cost of classroom training by two-thirds—where classroom training used to be three days, it became one day, which meant the largest training expenses (trainers, space rentals, catering, and printing for multiple groups of 30 in three regions) were reduced to one-third of the previous year's cost. Because the development of the e-learning is a one-time cost that is funded by a capacity-building grant rather than the organization's operating budget, this is a cost-effective project. The project also allowed BELL to seamlessly expand to two new summer regions as learners completed the e-learning on their own schedule, and the one-day training was staggered in the five regions.
Some 90 percent of teachers and teaching assistants (TAs) said the e-learning gave them a good understanding of BELL's program model, according to a paper survey at the classroom training approximately one week after the e-learning was completed. Only three staff did not complete their e-learning requirement, although these three did complete at least half, according to Moodle tracking data on participation. Some 83 percent of staff were prepared to differentiate instruction or customize their teaching to meet individual scholar needs, which was a 5 percent increase from the previous year, according to an online survey of staff who participated in an initial pilot of the e-learning. To evaluate the summer e-learning pilot, the training department is collecting data in the following ways:
• Participation statistics reported by e-learning platform Moodle.
• Online surveys completed by staff at the end of each e-learning module.
• Paper surveys completed by teachers, TAs, and summer leaders at the classroom training for teachers and TAs.
• Focus groups with academic and enrichment teachers.
• Feedback discussion with the cross-functional leadership team and training team members.
• Lessons learned discussion with the recruiting team.
• Lessons learned discussion with e-learning consultant Kineo.
• Informal feedback from trainers and BELL team members. This data indicates that most learners found the e-learning user-friendly, easy to navigate, and interesting to complete. Some 99 percent of learners said the e-learning helped them identify ways to live the BELL mission, vision, and values in their daily work; 99 percent of learners said the e-learning enabled them to use efficacy to ensure their scholars' success; and at least 93 percent of learners said the e-learning prepared them to plan their literacy, math, and enrichment lessons effectively.
Judges' Comments:
• Extended the program's reach without more headcount.
• Solution targeted for the least common denominator desktop environment.
• Good opening home page.
• Good strategy to extend the program without staff.
• Interesting combination of tools used.
• Clear cost savings and increased capacity.
• Extensive feedback; learner and management satisfaction high.
• Good interactivity.
Lessons Learned
• Create ways that learners can help themselves with technical questions. In addition to a system checker, learners can post questions to a help forum.
• Use real images rather than models. Learners love seeing realistic images, and it makes the e-learning feel more relevant.
• Keep the directions as simple and explicit as possible. This will help learners without much experience with technology, and more experienced learners can easily skim the directions.
• Keep language as user-friendly and basic as possible—assume your learners don't know computer language.
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