 Welcome to our webinar, Tech Trainer Panel. And this is part of the Tech Training for Nonprofits and Libraries 101 course. We are so excited you're here with us today. I'm Susan Hope-Ard. I'm the Training and Education Manager here at TechSoup. And we really appreciate you joining us today and going through the process of creating your training account in our training platform that we work with with Tech Change. And we also are really super excited to present our three experts today. And I'm going to transition to sharing my desktop so that I can go through a short presentation and explain how you can use this platform. Hold on a second. Okey-dokey. A couple things about the webinar platform. As you enter the platform and you see the live event, there are three tabs to the far right-hand side of the presentation. The first is your chat box. And this is where you can chat all of your questions. You can also indicate there if you're having problems with your audio or your visual, we'll try to help you on the back end so that you can both see and hear this event. We are recording this event, and it will be posted on this course shortly after today. The other tab is where you can see all of the other users. So all of your peers that are taking this course along with you. And then the third tab over are links. During the course today, we will be sharing out several links, both to TechSoup resources and to our experts' websites and their resources. Just keep in mind, if you lose your internet connection, you can always reconnect by just going back into the platform and logging into the course and just clicking Live Event. Most of your connectivity issues should be resolved by simply refreshing your browser. And here are our presenters today. We have three amazing, compassionate, and kind expert trainers. And I can tell you how grateful we are for them to be here today. We have Birgit. And Birgit is a web and mobile developer for Poly Systems and Relevanza. She serves businesses, professionals, and nonprofits with websites and digital marketing. She has also founded the Nonprofit NP-Tech Projects, which assists nonprofits with IT strategy, project management, and online learning spaces. She is also a TechSoup Net Squared organizer for Tech4Good Southwest Florida. We also have Danielle Jackson from GCFlearnFree.org, which is an online provider of free technology tutorials. And what Danielle is responsible for is interacting with learners, just like you, across the globe via social media and general support, helping to ensure that they know what's new on the organization's website. And then we have Ben Williams from Tech Impact. And what Ben does is he helps create training plans for tech adoption. He works with large and small nonprofits to adopt technology, such as Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business. And then also here with you today is Becky Wiegand, who is our master of webinars. And she is on the back end helping us with the tech support. We should tell you and share with you that this is our first time using Google Hangouts. So we, just like you, are learners. So thank you very much for your patience and advance. Hopefully everything will run smoothly. But again, make sure you chat with us if you're having any challenges or difficulties. And one quick note about TechSoup is we are global. And we provide resources. Actually, we're located here in San Francisco, California. For those of you out there that are on the platform, go ahead and chat in to us where you're from. Tell us your city and state or your city and country. And TechSoup is a 501C3 nonprofit, like many of you joining us. And we work to empower organizations around the world to help them get the latest tools, skills, and resources to help you achieve your mission. So that's a little bit about TechSoup. Now it's time to really turn it over to the people that are driving this wonderful presentation. And the first is Birgit. I'm going to turn it over to Birgit, who is joining us from Germany today. And I want to extend a special shout out to her for doing this presentation while she is on holiday. Thank you, Birgit. Three strategies to, yeah, it works. Does it work, right? Here you go. All right, so I'm going. Excellent. Yeah, but I'm not seeing it. Now I get it. All right, OK. So for the next few minutes, I'll talk a little bit what I do now and really brief about how I got there. And then we talk about the three strategy tips to manage technology change in an organization. You see it in the first module, but it's just kind of for the question. It would be good to have everybody else on the same page. Working with nonprofits for the last two decades in various capacities, I met a tremendous, a great technology implementers and fellow teachers. And a few of us got together to form NPTEC projects. And we felt that there's a great need in our community to help small and mid-sized nonprofit organization with a strategic approach to technology so they can increase their impact. NPTEC project has two programs. One is a WP for Good Club, an online community for nonprofits using WordPress as their website and making the central hub of communication. The second program is Impact Circles, a local roundtables where executive directors meet their peers and tackle technology strategy and implementations challenges together with our facilitators and subject matter experts. I'm also, as you heard, an organizer of NetSquared Group in Naples, Florida. And that's also a TechSoup program with local monthly meetings of non-profit staff, volunteers, and consultants around the world. We invite speakers on various technology topics and have dinner together, and a lot of time for network and QA. Apart from the presenter lecture type events, we also have socials or peer learning events like Show Off Your Tools, where participants take turns and tell us in five minutes about the new tool or particular combination of tech tools that they use to make their organization more efficient, that save money, time, and headache. It's always a good time hat. Maybe there's a group near you. Check out the netsquared.org website and learn about the next events. If you don't find a group near your area and you think there should be one, click on the Start a New Group button on that page or connect with me via a private message on this learning environment, which is really good to connecting with other teachers and the presenters. So when I started out as a computer trainer, I was an accidental techie. I fresh out of the university, in addition to my director's job, I also handled the office technology at headquarters and also on my visits to the provinces. It's not unlike some of you who are accidental techies too. You have a regular job and on top of it, you are also in-house support staff, hardware technician, and doing training in small groups. When my husband and I moved to the United States in 98, I was able to concentrate on learning more in-depth about internet technology and conducting formal tech trainings for the local free net. We taught residents how to connect to the internet and how to email and how to navigate the web. During my work with the neighbor's free net, I realized that training technology and becoming proficient in learning technology and becoming proficient in it is not age-related. Most of my fellow volunteers on the help desk, on the tech team and in education were 60 years and older. Turns out many people, although lifelong learners in their other areas, just don't want to deal with technology. It's an easy excuse and one that seems to be widely accepted. Believe me, it is not true. And if you encounter the argument, I'm too old to learn this, it is used as one of the many bogus counter arguments in people by people resisting change in an organization. Only babies with full diapers like change. The rest of us have a hard time with it, especially when we don't have a grasp on our skill set that's needed. We don't like to draw blank. When we do things the first time, we are not good at it. And it takes way too long to succeed. In the first module, you find a description of a exercise you can do with your implementation team. It gives people always an aha moment on what change feels like to people involved. Further in the module, you also read in detail about the stages we go through when adopting to change and learning new ways of doing things. And most of you probably have seen the Kubler-Ross curve stages of change. The first stage is shocked and surprised. People go into denial and frustration, reach a low point while learning new things. Then people experiment. With more confidence, they reach acceptance and are able to integrate the new ways into their daily work. For each person, the various stages have different facets. Some linger in certain stages longer than others. And it's your job as a leader and as a trainer to guide people through it. I met quite a few people who had a hard time because they expect themselves to pick up new skills right away and get impatient with themselves. Other people lack confidence in their own learning ability and fear failure. In the end, they all come around no matter what, but it takes time. If you want to lead people through learning new skills, you will have to meet them where they are. Pick them up and guide them to the journey. Another curve I wanted to show you is the so-called J-curve that tracks performance of an whole organization going through change. You might have noticed the resemblance to the Kubler-Ross. Leaders need to be aware that people need time. In the abstract, many leaders know that, but we see quite often in the planning stages that the time allocated to learning and processing is not enough. Some miss in their calculation that the organization itself it will be affected and the general speed in which things get done slows down. Looking at the curve, if your organization performance starts on the left along a horizontal line, then changes introduced and performance suffers. That's the denials. It's the trying to figure out things. Planning takes place. Resources need to be reshuffled. Leadership changes until the organization comes to a dip or the valley of death. With the plan coming together, training has taken place. Through practice and collaboration, the organization gets better and better. Eventually, the organization works on a much higher level of efficiency and productivity. In the jerk, J-curve, you also see a dotted blue line labeled what we expect. And that's the line and the line goes upwards from the point of change to the next level. If that's the expectation, that's sometimes a little hard for change makers and project managers because it's not based in reality but it also might be an unrealistic measuring stick for the implementation progress. Every roadblock you hit and every setback your team has will cause anxieties on the leadership level and on the staff level and maybe even on the funders level. Instead of holding steady, some will lose confidence and trust in the process and instead of managing the dip and everybody going through it, you have to justify why things are not improving. You and your fellow leaders in the organization need to be aware of the downhill path ahead so you can put the brakes on the worry. It's the path everybody will take and it gets worse before it gets better. If your training program is part of our larger technology implementation and you are changing the way your organization process is tasked, you are in a strong position to manage the dip and allow for a faster recovery. Now that we talked through the human nature of going through the change and the jaker, let's talk about the three strategies on how this plays together in your organization and I mentioned them in the, oops, I'm very fast, I'm sorry. Mentioned them in the introduction module of the course. So I'm just gonna go read the headlines. It's communicate and then I will be ready to take your questions and maybe answer them right now. So communicate 10 times more than usual. One of it is communicate failures, learn together, but it's also a reassure people it's okay to go slow. Then consider the with factor, with and means what is in it for me. Motivators are autonomy, mastery and purpose. That's kind of a quote from Daniel Pink, the surprising truth about what motivates us in the book drive. How can your training is part of the mastery, but how can it also, how you can organization organize autonomy of that time and also purpose. And purpose is a strong motivator in nonprofit organization. Your team will identify with the mission. So make that case, what does success look like? And then the last part is keep your eyes on the big picture, what is it for the mission? Don't get kind of bottomed by the minutiae, keep the spirits up. And sometimes of course you need to make hard choices in terms of your team, but that's so much what I wanted to tell you today. And I keep, I come back to not sharing my screen and then we can answer question. If there are some already available. Thanks so much, Birgit. Yes, we do have a question that we received from someone that I think we could apply to your topic of tech training to manage change or organizational change through. It is what are some of the insights that you have based on experiences that you'd call a failure, specifically in implementing tech training, but that you learn from it and the organization learned from it. How much time do I have? About three hours, right? Yeah, we remember the lessons best when we learn from our mistakes or when we make mistakes. So one is certainly not enough. I remember very clearly, and it's when I was in starting teaching how to use the internet and search engine. And my first presentation was how to use search engines. And I went through 40 minutes of show and tell and then open it up for Q&A. And the first question was, what is a browser? And that made me realize that I obviously did not explain the tools people use to surf the internet and use a search engine because the terminology browser was not explained. And a similar thing happened with a Word class when the first question after I went through show and tell was what is a cursor? So it was really interesting. So the pretty much kind of pick them up where they are but also find out where they are. Is really, really important because if you just kind of throw them into, they are like learning swimming to going into the deep end of the pool is certainly a very adventurous one but it can also fail and you need to do a lot of recovery there. Great, thank you. You're welcome. Yes, we also do have a question from our participants today. Learners are asking, Missy is asking about can you say more about connecting with influencers in the context of a non-profit tech project? Well, the influencers in your own organization is meant by that. So those who are opinion leaders, those who are or people resist to change sometimes do it more active in advocating for not changing and kind of sabotaging it. These are actually great opportunities for you to reach out to them because as soon as you are able to convince them that there's something in it for them and they need to learn these things and what would their job be better after it? Once you convince them, they are also the opinion leaders advocating for your change. And that's kind of a, yeah, it worked most of the time, it works very well because people wanna do a good job and if you make the case one at a time but start with them, it kind of gives other people follow you, yeah. Does that answer the question? Thank you. Thank you. And I think Missy will chat more in the chat box if she has additional questions. And we do have questions time for Q&A at the end so that we'll be able to ask the entire panel questions. If we don't have any other questions for Birgit right now, I think we are ready to move on to our next presenter. So we'd like to introduce Ben from Tech Impact, who also has played a part in creating the content on this course. So Ben, and we are ready to turn it over to you. Thank you Birgit. Great, thanks Birgit, thanks Susan. Hopefully everyone's able to hear me. I am in a conference room so it might be a little echoey but it should be all right. So as Susan said, I work here at Tech Impact. We are also a 501c3 nonprofit. Let me go through our little data slides. So we work with other nonprofits specifically around advocating for them in the technology world. So as I'm sure everyone attending knows, technology is oftentimes one really, really expensive. So that certainly presents a pretty big challenge for us as nonprofits with our limited budgets. And then it's also oftentimes very difficult to learn and be able to use in an effective way. So we try to kind of bridge that gap where we're finding a technology that's out there that is catered directly to nonprofits or respects, has an option for nonprofits in their pricing model and is also something that folks are gonna be able to easily pick up on and that we have a lot of experience with so that we can work with them to really make sure that they understand all the capabilities and be using that technology to further their mission. This is me. I've been here for probably almost two years. I think it'll be two years in November or December. Most of what I do with our clients is actually implementing technologies, but part of that is absolutely training. So making sure, again, that as we're building this technology for you or making it available for you to use, that you actually understand how everything works and that it's gonna be something that you can use and feel comfortable using and maybe even are kind of happy to use to really make sure that you're getting your work done in a way that isn't gonna hinder you and make you super frustrated. Because as everyone knows, technology can be very, very frustrating. So we wanna give you all the tools that we can to make sure that you're able to do that. So we have a kind of a couple staged approach to putting together a training. My slides aren't as pretty as Birgit. She had a lot of nice images in there, but bear with me. Hopefully we'll be able to get some good content anyway. So kind of the first thing that we'll do is just talk to the client, talk to the person who we're gonna be delivering this training to. Generally speaking, we're gonna have a point of contact at that organization, who ideally is gonna have a lot of the needs with that organization on deck ready to tell us. But certainly, they don't always know everything that people are frustrated by with their current technology or what everyone in the organization is trying to accomplish with the new technology that we're implementing. So it is really beneficial to not just talk to one person. So kind of like Birgit was saying, making sure that you're talking to some influencers, just a good broad spectrum of people who are gonna actually be using the technology, because that one person isn't the only person who's gonna be taking advantage of the tech that we're implementing for the organization. So we wanna make sure that everyone's voice is kind of heard as we're gathering some information about what we need to focus on here. So we're gonna work on making sure that we understand kind of people's comfortability level, their tech savvy level, if they have any prior knowledge to the technology that we are implementing for them. And again, all of this stuff can absolutely be applied within your own organization. It doesn't have to just be for implementing technology for someone else. It's the same process internally as it is if you're doing it for someone else. And then just figuring out what specifically they want us to go over. So making sure that they almost definitely have objectives that they want to be covered. Either features or just things that we're fixing with this technology. So what issues have you been experiencing and how are those being resolved with this tech? What functionality are people excited to be able to use that they've heard about that we wanna showcase so that again, we're encouraging adoption during this training. So people actually want to go ahead and use that. And then I also as the person who is the expert on that technology and is implementing this for the organization, there are things that I know I'm going to want to cover regardless of their specific requests or needs or things that they're gonna think are cool. Just things that are essential to the use of that technology that we absolutely need to go over before we probably even get to kind of the cooler stuff that folks are really looking for. After that, we will, oops, slide is titled incorrectly. Pardon me. So we'll do research going over the different pieces of the technology. If it's something that's completely new that we're not familiar with already, we wanna get a demo, make sure that ideally we can work with someone at that tech company to go through all the functionality. Again, focusing on the things that that organization really wants to see or that your organization really wants to see. So having someone actually walk you through that tech. See if there's any things that people know are issues or limitations with that technology that as you're giving that training or giving people materials and asking them to go and do stuff in the technology that you're prepping them for anything that they might run into that might not work the way that they expected it to or might be a limitation that they run into. Yeah, and then just seeing if there's any documentation that's out there already about quick access or quick start, almost every technology company out there now when they release something new, they'll put like a quick start guide out there so that you can vary quickly and easily get right into things. And those are developed for this particular purpose of making sure that people can easily understand this and comfortably start doing some stuff in the solution so they get an idea of how things work. And all of it, you just wanna always be bringing back to those initial discussions that you had with the people who were gonna be using the tech making sure that you're addressing all of their needs and the features and functionality that they're really looking for with that new tech. And then you're gonna wanna develop some materials around that training. There's a couple of different ways that you can give a training. So whether you're in person, whether you're doing it remotely, if you're just kind of walking someone through something on the phone even, all of that counts. So it's useful to have materials as you're walking people through something. So PowerPoint presentation, if that's needed or wanted, we will almost always try to make screenshot it step-by-step instructions that go through each task that we go through in a webinar or in a presentation so that when we're done, we just give them that handout and not everyone's gonna remember every single thing that you talk about in that training. It might be half an hour or an hour, people are gonna pay attention to some things and not others. So for them to be able to have something that they can then reference that maybe I did miss this part, but I need to know how to do this. It'll make them a lot more comfortable. It takes a little bit of the responsibility off of your shoulders as the trainer. And then any issues or questions that they actually have and you can try to provide them with a way to follow up with you. We wanna also make sure, so one big thing, even though it's further down on our list here, we want to be using language that is accurate to the technology. However, jargon is bad. We don't wanna be talking about the 32-bit operating system that is most recently updated and I installed KV article XYZ to make sure that this feature is working. That's gonna go over millions of people's heads, like no one is gonna know what you're talking about. So we wanna be accurate and actually be giving them the correct information and terms that are used around the technology but aren't so technical and scary sounding that people kind of, it just goes in one and out the other, because then it doesn't end up being effective. Videos are always useful as well. Well, a lot of the times, well, not a lot of times, but in the past we've done episodic short little video clips kind of in the same ilk as the step-by-step screenshot of instructions where we just have one short couple minute video on how to open a document. Very simple, easy tasks that people can just go through very easily and I just need to know how to do this one thing and I don't wanna read through an entire manual so let me just go watch this one video. And then lastly, once you're done your training, that's not really where it ends. Those people then have to go and use that technology so if you're able to, and this isn't always gonna be possible depending on the technology or the organization or the situation of everything but being able to give some homework exercises for people to then take with them and accomplish, again, it's encouraging people to actually use that tech. It's got really dark. It's encouraging people to use that technology and also making sure that they're getting more familiar with it and it'll be something that they end up using later on so it's useful for them to start doing that from the very beginning as they're beginning with that solution. And then lastly and probably the most important thing in any training that we do of any kind for any organization is Q&A, making sure that you're addressing questions and concerns that people have preferably while you're going through the training so stopping whenever possible at logical points throughout what you're training on to just see if anyone has any questions about anything or is concerned or scared, just measuring the response that you're getting from the people who you're training and seeing how they feel, how comfortable they are with what you're talking about. So a lot of this, we have kind of a formula that we're using but a lot of it really isn't something that you can formulate. You have to really be able to kind of feel out the room, gauge just from facial expressions or the tone of someone's voice, how they're feeling about what you're saying. And so things like jargon and stuff, I might be talking and think that I'm not being overly technical at all. Like in my head, I'm dumbing things down as much as I possibly can. But I'll be talking to someone else and I'll be able to tell that they're not really understanding what I'm talking about. So that's when I wanna maybe stop and check and see what it is about what I'm saying that they're not understanding, and see what their questions are around that. And whenever possible, we like to provide a way for folks to actually follow up with us after our training for those questions, because not everyone's gonna think of what their question is at the time that they need it, that you're doing that training for them. So giving them a way to either talk to someone on staff who has that knowledge who you've gone a little more in depth with and kind of prepared for that or giving them your email address or phone number, so that they can follow up with you around that is always great. And then, oh yeah, one more thing before I wrap up. Not knowing the answer to things about tech is really not a bad thing. No one is 100% an expert in anything. Being able to say, hey, I actually have not come across that yet before, but I will absolutely look into it and get back to you or can you shoot me an email just so that I know, I have a way to get back to you on that issue or that question that you were giving me is great. Cause features change, things break. You might just not have gone over that part. So you're not perfect and either the people you're training don't be too hard on yourself as well. All right, yeah, so that's kind of it. If folks have some questions that they wanna send over or Susan, anything that you have. Yeah, great. Thank you so much. And you've identified several things as Birgit did that are collateral materials of content in our online course. So we do wanna encourage folks to access those because all three of our experts in some ways have contributed to the content on the site. And some of the tips that Ben just talked about really were like the 10 tips for being a better presenter and for getting better. And what I really liked that you said is we're not perfect. Anyone that's a trainer also has to be a learner. So don't be afraid to make mistakes. You should practice and you should know your content but you can't possibly know everything. You're sharing that cause that hopefully will alleviate some of the folks on this presentation. Like a lot of people get very anxious before they give a training for the first time. And we have a couple of questions that I think are applicable to your presentation. The first is talk a little bit about simple and effective ways that you could train people in a spread out organization. We've identified some tips for some of the in-person trainings and you also identified those little micro, micro learnings, little videos. But what do you do if you have a national organization and you need to train a lot of people in various locations? Yeah, absolutely. So we actually do this all the time. Most of the organizations that we work with are spread out all across the country or have locations even in other countries around the world. So we do what we're doing right now. We'll have an online meeting. There's a ton of free screen sharing solutions that are out there. Join.me is one that we use all the time. Skype for Business, if you're in Office 365, is a great tool that we use all the time as well that is very similar to Google Hangouts where you can do voice and video as well as sharing your screen or sharing a program. If it's a massive amount of people who are attending, make sure that they're all muted, have a chat like we do right now so that you're able to monitor questions and still have that interactive aspect of things while making sure that you don't have a million different sounds happening at all times during the training. And then, yeah, I mean, in those situations, we'll often record the training since almost definitely not everyone is able to attend that training that we're doing. So we'll record audio and video that we can make available to that organization after we're done. Yeah, it's just making sure that everyone is kind of able to attend in some form so that they can get all that info. Great, thank you, Ben. There are a couple of questions in the chat box. I think one of the questions is testing the knowledge of the group that you're training. And I believe if I'm interpreting this correctly, it's kind of like what you talked about, assessing your learners from their facial expressions. And sometimes if you're training people remotely, you can't always read their facial expressions or their body language. What is a great interactive testing tool? Gotcha, so there's a couple ways that you can kind of handle that. One is making sure that you are stopping a lot of the time when I stop for questions. If no one's asking me anything, if it's completely silent, I'm gonna be like, someone needs to say something. I need to know that you're all still here and alive and listening, just actively engaging the people who you're talking to. So it's not just like, oh, do you have any questions? It's, hey, I'm still here. We're still talking, this is real. And then so checking in occasionally is a really good way because then you can be like, hey, is everyone feeling comfortable? Am I, is everyone still following me? Have I gone over people's heads? Do we need to circle back and talk about anything? And then also being able to, so certain tools will give you audience attention, like monitors that'll show you if someone is paying attention or not. So you can try to use one of those if that is something that's available to you, as well as, yeah, I mean, just, it takes practice. It takes a lot of time to do this, but a lot of the times I'll just be listening and I can just kind of, even if I'm also, most of the trainings that we do are remote, but after you've done enough of this, you can start to kind of, it's really weird. It's like this weird super human sense almost, but you can like just kind of hear in the air how people are feeling and what it is. And it's totally, I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's totally just that you have to do it enough times and really kind of get that feel for that kind of vibe, I guess, that people put out as they're confused or concerned or just completely lost. Thank you, Ben. Excellent. Well, we do have, it's time to move on to our third presenter. Ben, thank you for sharing the way tech impact both assesses and builds and delivers content for your customers. And now what we're gonna talk about, Danielle is going to be sharing with us some information about how GCFlearnfree.org creates their instructional designers, create their content. So I am going to share my desktop as Danielle gets queued up to speak. All right, thank you, Susan. I am with GCFlearnfree.org. We are also a nonprofit. We are an educational program of Goodwill Community Foundation and Goodwill Industries of Eastern North Carolina. And as part of this, we offer 125 plus and counting free technology focused tutorials. A majority is focused on technology, but we also offer reading and math programs. We offer some learning English programs and other various technology related resources. And we have been, oh, I'm sorry, yeah, jumping ahead. We offer a combination of written lessons, videos and interactives and infographics. And I'll touch on that a little bit later when I talk more about kind of things to consider when you're developing your own curriculum as a kind of a way to give that broader appeal to a variety of learning types. We've served 58 plus million people since 1992, originally in a classroom setting, and then we moved online. And now everything we offer is 100% online. So I wanna talk a little bit about our process. And you'll see these here, I apologize. We have some transitions that I wasn't able to get rid of. So we have a kind of a three step process that we usually use. The step one is research the topic. Look at similar tutorials from other sources when you determine what you wanna teach and use Google and YouTube as much as possible. Our curriculum designers are on those two sites pretty frequently just looking to see what else is out there and how we can, of course, avoid duplicating it, but also looking at what they're doing right and what we'd like to do a little bit better if we can. Step two for us is to create an outline just like you would do with any research paper in school, just kind of lay out the plan of what you wanna do and in what order. We always, with every one of our lessons, we start with an introduction. You'll see the introduction on the top rate of this slide. Each of lesson we cover, whether it has to do with getting started with PowerPoint or using a web browser, talks about this is what you're going to learn here and that we feel like kind of alleviates any tension learners might have about diving headfirst into a particular topic. That maybe they know nothing about. Then we like to work through that topic based on our research and kind of take an outline-based approach, as you'll see in the tiles on the bottom. This is what most of our tutorials look like. It'll have a tile listing each individual lesson and we break it down as much as we possibly can to avoid cluttering or piggybacking on a particular subject. Our third step is to write those lessons and revise, revise, revise a whole bunch. We analyze what to leave in and what to exclude. We determine the level of difficulty for the subject matter. We sort of have the luxury, I guess, in a way of all of our tutorials are designed with beginning adult learners in mind. So it's very basic, very much a starter program for people who maybe have no familiarity with computers or very limited knowledge of computers who have never been on Facebook, who have never used Microsoft Word or who have used it a little bit but really don't know how to navigate it. So for us, it's very easy to say, okay, we have to treat it like nobody's ever been in these programs before, but you need to determine that difficulty level where your learners are. And then, as Ben kind of touched on, create practical examples that they can use to get that hands-on experience. And then, as I mentioned, review and revise as necessary. We go through a pretty lengthy process of kind of paring stuff down, making changes when needed. So realizing that we're not perfect, we don't always know everything either. So a little bit about our style. Got sort of six things that we focus on as our curriculum team. We are accountable, we meet our learner expectations whenever possible. There was a question in chat earlier about feedback. We ask for feedback from learners and accept feedback from learners consistently. We always wanna know what they think, good or bad, so we can improve upon it. We are instructional, we teach ourselves first, so we can help manage the learning curve and it helps in some cases, for instance, Microsoft Access is a program that really nobody in our office is that familiar with. It's extremely specialized. If you're a database manager, you know Access. If you're not, you probably don't know much about it. So they kind of had to teach themselves Access and in some ways that tutorial is extremely helpful to people because we were beginners too and we started it. We are user friendly. We use an approachable friendly tone rather than instructional or technical, something Ben also touched on. You know, we strip it down even though we're talking about technology, we strip it down and we take out that technical jargon every chance we get and if we have technical jargon, we will define it before we keep using it. We are experimental. We kind of like to think of ourselves as a think tank in that we're able to test something out. If it's not working, then try something different and keep going back to the drawing board. If it's not, we've used Vines to create a tutorial on Vine, which was an experiment. We didn't know how well it would go over and it did well, but that was something we'd never done before. We are basic. Again, we use step-by-step instructions and the simplest of terms, really just bare bones, breaking it down. And we are multidisciplinary. As I talked about earlier, we utilize multiple learning modalities, video, text-based instruction with step-by-step listing, literally one, two, three, four, five. This is how you do in this order. Interactives and infographics and the interactives are very helpful for people to practice what they've learned as well. And on the next slide, this kind of gives you an example of that multidisciplinary approach. On the left-hand side, you'll see that there's text instruction, but then there's a video that people can click on if they're like, listen, I can't read all these five pages of text. I'd rather have somebody tell me how to do it. So we realize, again, learners learn differently. So on the right-hand side, you've got an interactive that kind of breaks down what an Excel workbook looks like and the various aspects of it down to how to save, because some people don't know how to save. They've never been in Excel before. So we just make sure we start from the beginning and just be as basic as we can. And on the next slide is a couple other examples. Again, an example of some text instruction and underneath a video that they can play. On the right-hand side, we've got an interactive where, in our computer basics tutorial, people can literally connect cables using three different types of technology so they can practice how to plug something in, how to get their headphones plugged in, how to use that computer as effectively as possible. And then lastly, we've got some things to consider. I've got six of them that we kind of put our heads together to think about. The first consideration that I would say would be to always think about your audience. Assume that they know nothing about the subject. That's what we do all the time. We just assume that people, this is their first time with this information. Even think of a specific person like your grandmother, who maybe doesn't know anything about technology, and pretend you're talking to her as you're developing this curriculum. It'll help you come across as more personable. It'll be more natural. It'll be more approachable and friendly. And it'll help those people who may be completely intimidated by what you're teaching. And then evaluate what you're doing as you're going along. Think, would you wanna learn this way? Is this something you would get something out of? If your subject matter is technical, break it down in the most non-technical terms that you possibly can, or again, defining things whenever possible. The second consideration would be be upfront about your limitations. We're a nonprofit. Most of you are nonprofits, if not all. Understand, let your audience know you don't know everything. Again, like Ben said, we don't know everything. Feel free to ask us and we'll get back to you, or we'll develop a tutorial on it and teach ourselves. Use that introduction lesson to explain what that tutorial class is about. Don't dive too far into specifics because it may intimidate some of your learners. And then use external resources whenever possible. I'm gonna do a, I'll send a link here to, we have, in terms of use application, if any of you who are ever interested in using us, sometimes to compliment or supplement, we know educators, libraries, career centers across the globe use us to help fill in the gaps of maybe something they're not able to offer. So we just have that link there. If you're interested in using us in any way, everything we offer is free all the time and we do know a lot of educators use us to help people with technology as well. But use those resources wherever you can find them because there's a lot of free stuff out there. And that brings me to look for existing tutorials and courses, teaching what you're teaching, analyze them, get ideas, learn what to do, learn what not to do, use that Google and YouTube, use them as resources to figure out, to familiarize yourself with the topic as well as to see what else everybody else is doing. And see what software options you have. I know there's a lot of budgets in some cases, no budgets, but some software is free. Your computer may have some built in stuff like taking screenshots. We use screenshots consistently on our website for that visual elements to show people. It's one thing to explain something, it's another thing that they can actually see what you're doing at that time. So see what's on your computer that you're able to use that you might not have to pay for. And determine how you'll teach. At this point, you probably know how you'll be teaching, but if you don't, figure out if it's gonna be a classroom or online setting, it'll be discussion or will it be just straight up instruction? Will you need handouts? Will participants use their computers? How will that look logistically? And even consider using a blogging platform to teach. WordPress is very popular for this, as are Sway and Tumblr. They're just easy ways to get disseminate information and their platforms for chat and other ways to communicate. And lastly, keep it simple. Break the course or tutorial into digestible lessons. Make it as easy as possible. Even we have lessons on how to save in Word and that will be a three page lesson, really breaking down how to do it and what people might encounter. So don't be afraid to break that down as much as possible. Also start slowly, use that introduction as much as you can. Take the less is more minimalistic approach so your audience doesn't get overwhelmed. And lastly, strip unimportant information to keep those lessons or whatever you're teaching to keep it uncluttered. Keep it as simple as possible and so hopefully people will come away retaining just that information, just what you've taught. So that's all I have for you. Great, thank you so much, Danielle. Hi, I'm just going to stop sharing for a moment. And we do have quite a few questions. So, and I did wanna piggyback on some things that you and Ben said that are also reflected in our course. Some of that is the process that you take for creating your content and each of you identified that analysis doing the search on the web. Finding things that are already out there that might work for you. Keeping it simple for yourself and also understanding that you may not have all the answers. So for all of our potential trainers out there, you understand that you have a lot of resources here. You have tech impact, you've got Birgit and we also have GCF Learn Free. So, and here at TechSoup, we also can provide you with resources for delivering content and training. Danielle, a question that we did get was about how can you draw insightful questions from your learners in an effective manner? And since you deliver online content, primarily asynchronous, right? So folks do that independently. How do you, I guess, get that feedback from your learners so that I guess both that informs how you modify what you have online and also engage with your learners. All right. Well, a couple of different ways. One is we have a feature for support tickets on our website which is used quite a bit. So we connect directly with them that way. I also mentioned in the chat earlier, the Google Forms. We use those a lot to survey our learners and to see what they would like to see. And we also have a request a topic link on our website that is another Google Form, which basically gives them a list of potential tutorials and then a box that they can fill in and tell us exactly what they'd like to see. But social media is really where we get a lot of feedback from people, good, bad, indifferent, but we're very in tune with our users that way because we don't have a way to connect with them otherwise. We're pretty, none of us have phones here. We're all pretty sheltered as far as being online, but we make sure to connect with them via social media as quickly as possible on all the major platforms. Thank you. One more question that we have from our audience is from Mike. Are you aware of any tools for tech skills assessment or resources to create surveys that probe for specific skill sets, such as Excel? So like a pre-screening tool? We actually are in the process of creating assessments. It's something that we're just diving into because we realize that there are more advanced learners who are accessing our site. We're hearing from a lot of them too and they're saying, listen, I understand Excel, I've learned from your site, but how can I take it to the next level? So we're doing that, but as far as I know, I don't know of any other sites or organizations that might already have those assessments in place. That's something we'll be working on the next year or two. Thank you. Let me open that question up to the rest of the panel then. Mike, to see if either Tech Impact or Beurgut have any ideas of resources where there are tools that would run those skills assessments or things that you can kind of hack to make work for you. Ben or Beurgut, maybe we'll start with Ben. Any ideas? I think Ideal Rare might have... Okay, go ahead. Ideal Rare might have some Ideal Rare.org, might have some worksheets that you could use and kind of... But I'm not quite sure. I might also be on the TechSoup website, actually, some, at least articles about it. And then you can build your own Google form, which is a very good tools. Another one is Paul Dady or SurveyMonkey to do online assessments. Thank you. Ben? Beurgut took the words right out of my mouth. So Ideal Rare is one that we work with as well. They have a lot of really great tools for all kinds of different kind of assessments. I don't actually know if they have one for TechSabbiness, but that would probably be a good place to start. And yeah, I mean, most of the assessments that we do are either through feedback around the trainings that we're giving or just those initial in-person, a person, not necessarily in-person, but person-to-person conversations. Surveys are great. They're super helpful, but you can only get so much information from a survey. I personally don't like relying on a piece of paper or a form to tell me kind of where people are with that. But again, that's me personally as a trainer. There's obviously merit and value to all of the different approaches that folks can take, so. Thank you. Thanks to both of you. We have one more minute left, so if there are any other questions, and we wanna make sure that we answer all of your questions because you guys have taken the time to join us today. And before we completely wrap up, I'll give folks another minute to chat their questions and also for you to keep in mind that you can continue to connect with your fellow learners on the learning platform you're on right now with us here at TechSoup and with Danielle, Ben, and Birgit. So there are lots of ways for you to get additional information. It's not just relegated to this one hour. And I am gonna switch very quickly to share my PowerPoint again. And like I said, we're learners too. So this is our first time using this platform. And as we're doing that, we're learning too. So a couple of things, as you log off, if you will still be in the learning platform, you can go back to the tab that has September 15th, expert tech trainer panel live event, and there is an event survey. I will also be sending you an email with a link to that survey so you can tell us what you thought. Please give us feedback because just like Birgit, Ben, and Danielle said, the most important thing you can do is give us information on what you need so what we can do better because we also reassess our content and make it better based on your feedback. And just a quick note, this is our training platform. For those of you that just signed up for this live event and that may not have accessed all of the course content, I just wanna point out a couple of things in the top menu bar. You have a link to the live events. You can also click on members and see your fellow peers from libraries, other nonprofits, or other locations that are sharing this learning with you and you can connect with them. Also, our course is broken down into modules and then into tabs. We have, pardon me, short videos, activities and downloadable assets. Upcoming webinars and events, please do check our upcoming webinars and events. The first thing we have coming up is a GrantStation special. We just had two extraordinary webinars that you can watch on our TechSoup site. We also have some upcoming library webinars and you can go to TechSoup.org to learn more. A huge thank you to all of you learners that are on this course platform and that joined us today. We know the most valuable thing you can give us is your time so thank you for this hour out of your day and for the hours that you spend in the course. Next, I do wanna extend a huge thank you to Birgit, Ben and Danielle, who are all volunteers who took their time to develop content and think about what you needed to learn as new trainers or in your libraries or nonprofits. So thank you, all three of you have been amazing and we appreciate your time as well. And another huge thank you to Becky who is here on the back end doing all of the tech support and trying to queue up questions. Again, this is our first time so we appreciate you being patient with us. And we hope that you have a great rest of your week. Please do reach out to us if you have any questions. My email is on the course platform or webinars at our alias email. So thank you and have a great rest of your week.