The Learnerspace offers a one-day training workshop to prepare staff for the development of such an initiative. The workshop, as befits the model, provides its own self case study in running through the same protocol with the teachers that seeks to be implemented with the students.
Starting with the school’s preferred format in terms of scheduling and the possibilities for a real-life implementation, the workshop walks participants through all stages in the process, resulting in a one-day abbreviated version that includes:
- The step-by-step protocol for development of the initiative, which can later be modified or tailored to the school’s needs by the teachers themselves, but which provides them with, if necessary, a sequence of stages that can be implemented immediately in order to develop the project.
- Training and project management. The key effort on the part of adults is keeping tabs and managing the learning process, which necessitates a clear focus on project management so that the learning outcomes are achieved. The workshop includes specific tools and strategies, including the use of interactive sites, to manage the learning process.
- Use of online interactive sites. All throughout the workshop, participants will be exposed to the same tools that they would be using with students, so that they can become proficient not only in their use, but understand their scope and objectives so that they can, eventually, even choose similar tools themselves with which they are more familiar.
- A reflection on the effectiveness of an innovative pedagogy. At the end of the workshop, having gone through a similar first-hand experience, participants will be able to reflect on how the new learning environment can, indeed, become conducive to a high-quality learning experience that fosters the development of the often elusive higher order skills that schools understand that their students need to acquire for the present and future learning landscape.
The proposed workshop is highly interactive, hands-on, tech enriched, and can be done with groups ranging up t0 100 participants, thus attempting to replicate a real-life situation and showing that even large numbers of students can be managed in such an initiative.