There's an App for That! Choosing Technology to Meet Your Org's PD Needs
It seems like everyone has a learning management system, an e-Learning portal or an app to deliver their online professional development. When you’re planning professional development, how do you figure out if online learning is a good solution and then, what kind of tech to use? Here are some considerations to inform your thinking.
1) Who are your learners and what do they need to learn?
As with planning any learning, you first identify who your learners are and what they need to learn. Are your learners dispersed across multiple sites, cities, states or are they all in one building? What are the demographics of your learners? Are they more likely to sit at a computer, use a tablet or a smartphone? How much time is available to them for learning during or outside the work day.
Ask yourself: What’s the learning purpose here? Clearly, you do not create an app or e-course just because it seems like everyone else is doing it. You create an app if and only if it supports your learners’ needs. In this initial step, it’s important to do your homework and find out what your learners need. That may mean surveys, observations aligned with your quality tools, staff meetings, focus groups, etc. Even if you’ve been running PD for a long time, it’s helpful to develop a few learner personas to help you visualize your end-user and their needs. Here’s an example of personas for a digital learning project.
Consider your learners and then design professional learning to help meet their needs.
2) Is online learning a good fit?
In a perfect world, we may want to bring all our learners together for a several day institute over multiple weeks, professionally facilitated by multiple field experts who meet learners’ individual needs through small group and one-on-one dialogues or projects. But, our organizations rarely have the funding, space or time to pull that off. And even if we could, our adult learners have jobs, families, commitments, lives outside of work that preclude the opportunity for them to set aside so much time for learning. Based on what you know of your learners, consider if online learning may be a good fit. Check out the Online Learning for Afterschool Leaders, Defined post as a refresher if you’d like.
Online learning can be a good fit for learners who:
Are dispersed across sites
Have a distance to travel for centralized PD
Have varied schedules or work hours
Cannot leave the program site for full day(s) of PD
Have regular access to technology and internet
Are interested and/or motivated by the content
Want/need access to expertise or relationships beyond their physical location
Online learning can mitigate in-person PD challenges like:
Low or no travel costs to centralized PD
Lack of meeting space
Need for frequent or ongoing touchpoints for learning
Dedicated days for PD
Paying experts for “one and done” PD
3) What kind of learning experience meets your learners’ needs?
Understanding who your learners are, what they need to learn and the broader contexts your professional learning occurs within, you can then decide what experiences they need in order to help them learn what they need to know. For example: Do they need to know basic definitions, history, human resource processes? If so, those might be suited for a self-guided e-learning course. Do they need to deepen skills and practice them with peer or facilitator feedback? If so, that might be suited more for an observational coaching model—which could be done in-person or virtually. Do they need access to articles, activities, lesson planning templates? Then, maybe an app would help.
Check out our free tips, Choosing the Right Tech for Your Professional Development Needs, to help you select the right online learning approach and tools that will best support your learners.