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What is Train the Trainer?
At Foothold Technology, we believe that agencies are best served when they identify, train and support individuals on staff who will teach their colleagues how to use AWARDS. This "Train the Trainer" model enables our customers to put training into the context of their own agency's processes, improve the relevancy of the content, nurture a sense of ownership of the agency's database, and keep training costs to a minimum.
How do we implement Train the Trainer?
Training with any of the resources detailed here will help ensure that employees have the ability to complete their work in AWARDS accurately and efficiently, and is an investment in the future of your organization.
1. Start Up Training
Train the Trainer begins during the Start Up trainings that are included with agency contracts, where Foothold goes beyond simply demonstrating step-by-step instructions, and includes tips on how agency staff can successfully assist their colleagues in learning AWARDS. Foothold recommends that the staff selected to attend Start Up trainings include people who will be part of your internal training team.
2. Pre Work
Agencies are encouraged to have staff log in to AWARDS prior to formal training, with access restricted to practice-only areas of the software, with simple assignments to give trainees the opportunity to explore and begin getting comfortable with how to navigate the software and enter data.
Users can also be asked to review examples of AWARDS in use by watching recordings available in Online Help, here and here.
3. Your Staff
Having trainable staff begins with your hiring process. Are you assessing for basic computing skills? Previous experience with electronic charting? Willingness to adopt electronic charting?
Your Implementation Team should create a plan for how staff will be trained - both during your agency's implementation phase, and on an ongoing basis moving forward.
Identify potential trainers. Some of the best trainers are often front-line users who are comfortable with technology, with a good grasp of AWARDS, and who have an ability to communicate well with their colleagues. Implementation teams can look for potential trainers in Start Up trainings, by noting who is enthusiastic about the software, who catch on quickly, and who takes initiative to help their co-workers.
4. Post-Training Work
Giving assignments to trainees to complete soon after training is important to reinforce the learning process. Assignments can be doing work with "training" programs set up in your live database, or doing work entering real client data in actual client records. These assignments can be "open book" with the use of AWARDS Online Help or your own customized instruction documents.
Be sure to put deadlines on assignments and have a plan to monitor the assigned work, including offering constructive feedback once the deadline has passed.
Simple multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank quizzes can be a helpful way to reinforce learning.
5. Ongoing Training
FootholdConnect Events include free webinars that review new and existing functionality in AWARDS. Information and registration for those events is available here.
Recordings in Online Help can be accessed here and here.
6. Foothold Trainings
Foothold offers various training packages for your Training Team, as well as your front line users. Information about trainings available from Foothold can be found here.
7. Online Help
In addition to the recordings mentioned previously, there is an abundance of information about how to use AWARDS in our Online Help module, including sections called Tip of the Month and How Do I?.
8. Create Additional Resources
Creating agency specific workflow documents and instructional recordings is another way to reinforce the philosophy of Train the Trainer at your agency. There are several free and low cost options you can use to produce customized instruction documents and recordings.
https://demodb.footholdtechnology.com/help/?11978
