This dovetails with the training programme I have been writing up at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/For_trainers This aspect of it isn't written up yet, but here are the principles I'm working on:

The design of training sessions will be volunteer-led and collaborative, but I'm *hoping* that we can agree to follow the approach that I'm setting out. There will be different levels of training: at the most basic level, training involves a well-defined list of steps, which the trainer is of course encouraged to customise to the setting and audience. As learners progress beyond that, training is more based on group activities (I've put some ideas at the above link). Above that level, training takes the form of skill-sharing between peers, along the lines suggested by Tom.

The key idea is that we use a simplified form of problem-based learning, meaning that we don't have separate sessions for "learning how to be a Wikipedia admin" and "learning how to be a trainer". Instead, you have one session in which people learn *by teaching each other*. This means that the person who's leading a session on, say, how to write for the Signpost, doesn't have to prepare hours and hours of presentations. Instead, their role is more relaxed, breaking the core question ("How does Signpost get written?") into a set of small research topics, then challenging the room to research those topics for themselves and feed back. The role for the learners is more active, self-directed and it builds confidence because it involves being useful to other people.

This method involves everybody stepping a bit out of their comfort zone and is somewhat counterintuitive: if you're an expert on Commons and a novice about Wikisource, you don't attend the event to teach the others about Commons; you learn about Wikisource, then teach others what you've learnt *and* mentor someone who's teaching the room about Commons. It may seem arse-about-face, but this is how we make skill-sharing truly active and involving while helping a lot of our community become trainers.

Of the proposed sessions on the WMUK wiki, we should regard "Basic Wikipedia Training" as road-tested, because it codifies a session that has been delivered to various audiences by various trainers, with broadly positive feedback. The others are mere proposals, and they need road-testing and tightening up: somebody actually has to deliver them with a suitable audience, and report back on-wiki about what worked, how much time different objectives need and so on.

Regarding demand for training, we have lots of individual queries, as Richard explained in an earlier post. I've put some advice for inquirers here http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Training to the effect that the best way to get a training session is to request on behalf of a group. Thanks to the networking we did last year, we have interest from more than a dozen learned societies such as the Geological Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, Medical Research Council and British Psychological Society. Then there's our growing relationship with Girl Geek Dinner groups around the country. The Society of Geology have requested a training event in London for 30th March, the day after their big conference, and I'd like to hear from people willing to lead or help with that training. Obviously any background contributing geoscience content to Wikimedia projects would be a great bonus.

The question had been asked before about an audit of training needs. Right now it's simple: we need to give as many of these external groups as possible a basic level of training to get them over the "hump" of the intimidating interface and give them the confidence to edit. We need also to be running train-the-trainers events to share skills between ourselves. It'll be more complicated when we have people trained to multiple different levels.

Reflecting this priority, Wikimedia UK has a meaty budget to support trainer-training events. It's great that we can use the Development House facilities, but we really need to be doing events far from London as well. Tom or others who want to take the lead on setting up these events will get a lot of help from myself and other Board members.

I've also been thinking about how we recognise good training, and how we trainers can get constructive feedback and continual improvement. There are people doing an amazing, professional-quality job of training on behalf of WMUK, and we should more formally recognise this and make sure those people share those skills. I work in Higher Education, so I've seen how bureaucratic evaluation processes demoralise people- we simply can't risk that approach. So we need a lightweight peer-observation process that isn't about dividing everyone into "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory" but about helping everyone improve. Given the importance of getting this right, I'm sharing ideas with the Board before drafting on-wiki.

Feedback welcome here or on-wiki as always,

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 1:34 PM, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:

This has been nagging away at the back of my mind for a few months now. On IRC earlier, I was talking to Rock Drum, and it finally seemed sensible to propose it. Since the OTRS workshop, a few different groups have said "wouldn't it be good if we had a _____ workshop at the WMUK offices?"

Only, why not bundle them all together and have an intensive one-day event of skill sharing. I had initially thought of proposing a sister projects day, but the idea of this would be to have sister projects and other stuff all bundled together with the idea of enabling existing Wikimedia volunteers to try new things, and to increase cross-project coordination (really, despite what you may have heard, Wikinewsies and Wikisourcers and Wiktionarians etc. don't bite).

I've put a page up on the wiki with the broad idea and some ideas for sessions. Feel free to throw more ideas on the wiki, even if they are a bit half-baked or not well thought out. If the event actually happens, we'd obviously have to determine a schedule.

https://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_skill_swap

Is anyone interested in this? What steps would we have to go through to make this a reality?

-- Tom Morris http://tommorris.org/

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