[Baynet] Infopeople's new online course "Staff Development Essentials"

Tue Apr 24 10:07:07 PDT 2007

Since some people who may be interested in 
participating might not receive this notice 
directly, we would appreciate it if you would 
print and post or route this announcement to staff and colleagues. Thanks!

Title:  Staff Development Essentials (online learning course)

Date:  June 26, 2007 - July 31, 2007

To register for this workshop:  Use the online registration form at
http://infopeople.org/workshop/338

Fee: $75 for those in the California library 
community and $150 for those out-of-state.

Your library's employees are its most valuable 
resource. They must be skilled, knowledgeable and 
adaptive to user expectations no matter what your 
role in staff training and development—whether 
you are a library director or manager, a training 
coordinator, or the person with "accidental" 
responsibility in this area—you need strategies for skill building.

--Does your library have an effective staff training and development program?
--Do fair and consistent policies guide your decisions?
--Are you confused about how to identify gaps 
between current skills and future needs?
--Would you like to have better documentation of training?

Well-designed training and learning opportunities 
help your library attract, orient and retain 
talented employees. This online course will 
enable you to identify the strengths and weakness 
of your current efforts. You will be able to use 
the resources provided to implement and maintain 
an effective and realistic staff training and 
development program at your library.

Workshop Description: This four-week online 
course will provide practical resources, tools 
and methods that can be applied in any library 
setting. Learners will see examples of best 
practices in staff development plans, policies 
and procedures from libraries and other 
organizations. A glossary, handouts on needs 
assessment and a thorough list of print and web 
resources will be provided. In addition to the 
course content and resources, learners will 
participate in online discussion forums to share 
experiences and receive expert advice.

Preliminary Course Outline: Using your web 
browser and your Internet connection, you will 
log in to the Infopeople online learning site and 
complete the following learning modules:

Module One: Start with the Basics
--Understanding the terminology of human resource development
--Why organizational commitment is important
--How policies and procedures ensure fairness and consistency
--De-mystifying needs assessment and skills gap analysis
--Why you need tracking and documentation

Module Two: Methods for Needs Assessment and Skills Gap Analysis
--Three levels—organizational, task and individual
--How to determine whether training or performance management is the solution
--How to use individual development plans (IDPs)

Module Three: Policies and Procedures to Guide Your Program
--Areas that need to be addressed
--How to ensure equity and consistency in staff development decisions
--Rewarding and recognizing self-directed learning

Module Four: Tracking, Documentation and Evaluation
--Why documentation is important
--Methods for tracking data on training and development
--Linking training approval to the tracking process

Instructor:  Mary Ross.  Mary Ross has over 25 
years of experience working in public libraries 
and managed the staff training and development 
program at the Seattle Public Library for eight 
years. In addition to an MLIS, she has 
certificates in online learning design and in 
online classroom facilitation. Currently 
continuing education coordinator for the 
Washington Library Association, she is also on 
the board of directors of the Continuing Library 
Education Network and Round Table (CLENERT) and 
was a delegate to ALA’s 2nd and 3rd Congresses on Professional Education.

Online Learning Details:
This four-week course will last five-weeks as it 
falls over the July 4th week and will be taught 
online using the web. When you register, you will 
receive a registration confirmation that will 
include the URL to get to the course, as well as a username and password.

Every student proceeds through the online 
learning modules at his or her own pace. Students 
should expect to commit to spending a minimum of 
2 to 2½ hours per week on this course in order to 
be successful. You can work on each module at 
your own pace, at any hour of the day or night. 
However, you will be expected to log in to the 
course each week to do that week's assignment. We 
ask that you log in sometime during the first 
week of the course to begin the course work.

Your instructor will be available for limited 
consultation support for two weeks after the 
official end date of a course, and the course 
material will stay up for an additional two weeks 
after that, to give those who have fallen behind 
time to work independently on the course. 
However, you will be expected to accomplish the 
majority of the course in synchronization with 
your peers during the first five weeks.

Who Should Take This Course: This course is for 
anyone from the library community who has 
responsibility for staff training and 
development. That responsibility may be as a 
library director, human resources manager, 
supervisor, training coordinator or as an 
"accidental" coordinator of training and staff development.

Prerequisites:
This course is taught over the web. You must:

--Have an Internet connection and Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher.
--Be able to save Microsoft Word .doc or Adobe 
.pdf files to your computer and print them out. 
(For .doc files, a free Word Viewer is available 
at 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en. 
Search for "Word Viewer." For .pdf files, a free 
Adobe Acrobat Reader is available at 
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html).
--Be comfortable navigating on the web and 
navigating back and forward on a website that uses frames.

To be most successful in this course you should 
be willing to share information with your 
colleagues and be willing to spend time reading 
and participating in the weekly discussion boards.

System Requirements: The online learning product 
that Infopeople uses is called Angel. The 
following are minimum system requirements for 
using Angel. You will need access to a computer 
that has at least these specifications to participate in an online course:

Windows:
--Internet Explorer 6.0 and above, Netscape 7.1 
and above, or Firefox 1.5 and above

Macintosh:
--Mozilla 1.4 and above (which is the same engine 
as Netscape 7.1), Safari 2.0 and above, or Firefox 1.5 and above
--OS X and above (OS 9 will NOT work with our online learning product)

If you are not comfortable with any of the above, 
please consider taking this course with a 
colleague who does meet these requirements.

To view a complete list of Infopeople workshops 
and for general information about Infopeople 
training opportunities, go to the main Infopeople 
Workshops page at http://infopeople.org/workshop

If you have questions about registration or 
scheduling of workshops, please contact Linda 
Rodenspiel, the Infopeople Project Assistant, at 
assist at infopeople.org or by phone at 650-578-9685. 