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Whether you are leading a staff development training session, or bringing a class of college or graduate students online, these tips may be helpful for you in introducing TAPPED IN. Before the Training Session People should be aware that they are logging into a professional environment and act in a polite and professional manner. At first glance TAPPED IN looks like a chat room, but we are very different from a chat room. If you can get your group to log in once (on their own) before your training, the whole environment will be less foreign to them. Volunteers in our community do a great job at personalizing the first experience and making it relevant. Encourage your group to log in for the first time before the training session. A good webpage to share with people is our TAPestry example page as it shows what TAPestry looks like (the two windows) and how to navigate. We have a webtour that will explain more about TAPPED IN and give examples of what occurs online. Here is a sample email you can copy and modify and send to your group before your training. Before the training make sure you and your group knows the answer to the question, why are you using this online environment? Is it to save your group from having to drive to meetings? Is it to allow them to get together between meetings? People need to understand why you are using an online venue. Don't make the mistake of introducing your group to the environment before you understand it well, and have a vision for using it. To learn more about TAPPED IN attend online sessions. The New to TAPPED IN sessions can be very helpful. See the calendar for the schedule. Make sure you have follow-up activities planned for after your training. Be sensitive to your group's comfort level with technology. If a group is not comfortable with technology, it will take more introduction to the concept of working and collaborating online. You should also expect less retention from the training session. We have many helpguides online. Feel free to use any/all of them in your trainings. Face-to-Face Training Tips 1. Make sure you understand the technology and feel comfortable presenting it. 2. If you've never done a training session on the Internet before, you may want to manage the session closely. It's hard to keep people's attention when the Internet is up in front of them. Make sure people know whether they are supposed to be listening to you or watching the computer. If you are comfortable with training people to use the Internet, you may want to have intervals in the session where people listen to you talk, then explore on their own, then come back and discuss as a group. 3. People learn at different rates. It helps to know the expertise of your group to know how to gauge the pace of your training and you may want to assess their levels before the training session. If you have a very heterogeneous group, you may want to consider multiple training sessions, e.g., first training the people who will learn quickly and then recruiting from them to help you at the next training you have for people less familiar with technology. 4. Encourage ownership in the process from the beginning. In a training, you may want to log people in as guests, show them some of the relevant features, and then have them apply for membership on the website. Make sure they understand the whole process: logging in, getting membership, and why they are doing this. (People can get membership by clicking on the yellow link on our home page or going to http://www.tappedin.org/info/membership.html) 5. If you are doing a training late in the day and it's appropriate, Feed Your Group! It helps keep their energy up and their attention. They will appreciate it too. 6. Obtain regular feedback from trainees. Find out what is working and not working for them. 7. Emphasize activities. Organizations we have worked with have said, "People were productive and learned the most when the training involved activities such as the scavenger hunt." (Learning by doing.) It can be difficult to balance teaching people how to do things and demonstrating the power of online interactions. Make sure that your group realizes that learning how to use the different features of the environment will serve to help them find resources and interact online, don't get so caught up in the "how to" that you forget the "why." If you have a small and technologically sophisticated group, plan a discussion to take place during the training session. Perhaps discuss an article that your group has read, or meet with an expert online. It is sometimes difficult to demonstrate the power that online interactions can have when the whole group is in the same room for the training sessions. Inviting an expert from somewhere else is a great way to demonstrate the connectivity online interactions can provide. 8. Have regular team meetings online as soon as you can after the training--otherwise people forget what they learned. It's important to have your follow-up planned before you introduce people to the environment. 8b. Tell people to write scheduled online meetings into their calendar, dayplanner or whatever organizer they use. It is very easy to forget about an online meeting. 9. Tell people how to learn more about the environment (share our calendar of events with them--maybe require them to attend at least one event). Before they leave a training session make sure that you have the next meeting scheduled, or tell them the next steps they need to take. See our Successful Conversation Tips, and our Successful Meeting Tips. Technology & Other Tips: Make sure the computers in the lab work before the demo. If you are using TAPestry, please check the lab before the day the class is supposed to log in. One professor did not do this and though things worked fine in her office, the lab was set up differently. Tip: If you are using Netscape on Macintosh, make sure that you allocate plenty of memory to Netscape (15-20,000 if possible). We do have alternative ways of logging in to TAPPED IN. Our server can handle ~200 simultaneous connections, but many times a group doing a training together in the same room will experience slow connections. This is due to Network issues and happens when all the students try to connect at the same time from the same computer lab. Having 4-5 people log in at a time and staggering logins by a minute or so can help. Transcripts of your training session: If you want a transcript of the session to share with your group, make sure that you have a personal recorder (and that you are in the same virual room as your group during the online discussion). You can forward your version of the transcript to the members of your group. Any member of TAPPED IN may get their own personal recorder. If you are having students go into multiple rooms for discussions please talk with us if you have questions about getting transcripts from all the conversations. TAPPED IN staff can help facilitate discussion: If you would like a TAPPED IN staff member or HelpDesk leader to assist you with your class visit please let us know at least a week in advance. |
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©1995-2002 SRI International.
TAPPED IN is a trademark of SRI International. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers REC9725528 and REC0106926. |
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