Alan says:
“Most of the time, the reasons why a participant has come on your course match up neatly with what you are planning to do on your course, but sometimes they do not. On one memorable occasion, I just about snatched victory from the jaws of defeat when I realised the course that had been advertised was really quite different from the course I had been asked to teach! Fortunately, on this occasion I practiced what I preached and every participant had been asked to write down what they wanted from the course before they arrived – by reading through these in the morning I was able to work out that there had been a misunderstanding and I rapidly re-planned what we were doing. Although the resultant day was not quite the course I would have planned, it worked: I was able to steer discussions a different way, alter some examples, and change the emphasis of the sessions – everyone left happy. I created a new rule that day, which is that I want to be copied in to the emails the participants receive!”
It is mid-morning and you are checking your emails as you sip a nice cup of coffee. One email intrigues you. You click it open …
Coffee SPRAYS out of your mouth, all over the kitchen table!
‘OH NO!’
Oh YES!
You’ve been given some pre-course tasks to do before you attend that training you are going on next week!
Whether or not this is you, in reality there are participants who will react negatively to being asked to undertake pre-course activities associated with your training. Part of this chapter introduction considers the various reasons for this and suggests ways through which this might be positively addressed. To begin with, we set out to clarify what is actually meant by ‘pre-course engagement’, what it means for participants and trainers, why pre-course engagement is considered to be important, and what kinds of activity can be used by trainers to engage participants before ‘Training Day’!
Pre-course engagement refers to any activity that gets participants ‘ready’ for the training they are booked on. By this, we mean the sharing of relevant information before participants attend your training, along with the undertaking of purposeful tasks that are linked to the training focus.
Quite simply this means participants doing something! This can range from them reading or writing, to undertaking a practical task. We present a selection of quality pre-course activities later on in this chapter introduction, but first we highlight that pre-course engagement for participants means actively engaging with something, be it an electronic information text, an online video or a paper-based questionnaire.
NOTE!
You do not always have to set participants a pre-course task, especially if it is not going to improve their learning. For a single day’s training, however, we consider it to be very important to set pre-course tasks due to the time constraints on covering all of the subject content.
Pre-course engagement for trainers also means doing something! This involves the preparation of pre-course materials that are sent out to participants in an electronic or paper-based format. Some trainers argue that this is just ‘extra work’ and so choose not to make pre-course engagement an integral part of their training – we strongly oppose this: it can play a very important first step in broadening the reach of your training, and ultimately increasing the overall impact. Once relevant materials have been prepared electronically, they may be adaptable for other training that you deliver, dependent (naturally) on the training focus. There are, of course, other reasons why we feel pre-course engagement is important:
■ It helps participants get the most out of the training you offer.
■ It sets an expectation that your training is about learning, not just ‘a day off work’.
■ It gets participants to start thinking about the training focus so that they do not come to it ‘cold’ on the day.
■ It allows you to pack as much training as possible into the time available.
The importance of pre-course materials cannot be underestimated either: Bradbury (2014) argues that ‘[a]s well as providing people with the necessary logistical information, pre-course materials tell people what to expect and what the benefits of attending will be. They can also let people know about any pre-course preparation they need to complete, along with anything they need to bring.’ Well-prepared pre-course materials can therefore help to deal effectively with the ‘excitement, anxiety, and fear’ (Conrad, 2002: 205) that participants are likely to feel prior to attending your training by offering them:
■ clear aims, objectives and outcomes
■ a concise description of the training
■ essential ‘logistical information’ that is often overlooked (see Table 1.1).
Sharing this information with participants is a crucial part of pre-course engagement – this can be included in the email sent to participants that signposts them to pre-course activities you would like them to engage with, or it can be summarised as part of an int...
