Technical Assistance
Introduction
| Providing
Technical Assistance Overview
Delivering Training Overview
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6As a leader in an intermediary organization, you probably have a strong interest in delivering training and technical assistance effectively. This is highly leveraged work because faith-based and community organizations can make huge gains in productivity and effectiveness by what they learn from you, the intermediary.
This guidebook will help you anticipate the requests for training and technical assistance you are bound to receive as an intermediary and help you determine the best approach for delivery. This will allow you to develop a comprehensive training and technical assistance plan for your organization.
Of course, submitting a training and technical assistance plan may also be a requirement for a state or Federal grant you have received. In that case, this guidebook will help you stay in compliance. If you have not received government funding but want to apply for a grant to serve as an intermediary, then a sound and realistic training and technical assistance plan will strengthen your grant proposal.
If you have received a grant to serve as an intermediary, you probably have plans for delivering workshops, seminars or a conference with a unique focus. All of these are effective ways to provide training. Training is a direct way to build capacity with a large number of nonprofit organizations in a short amount of time. To ensure that your training is effective, you need to take a systematic approach to designing and delivering your training.
Here are the five phases in a systematic approach to training:
These are the steps in a Systems Approach to Training, also called SAT. You may have heard of this referred to as Instructional Systems Design, or ISD. It is also called ADDIE after the first letter of each phase. No matter which term you use, a systematic approach to designing and delivering training helps you stay attuned to the participants, work more efficiently and achieve measurable outcomes. It is an orderly, logical process to help you work smarter and train better.
These are the phases you will want to use delivering all of your
workshops. First, analyze the situation
and the needs of the participants. Then design
the workshop by determining the objectives and outlining the learning
experiences and main topics. Next, develop
all of the supportive content, the training materials, media and
lesson plans. When you are ready to train, implement
the training plans. Finally, evaluate
the workshop to see how people liked it and if you achieved your
objectives. Then use this information to improve the training
experience.
| The Process of Designing and Delivering Training
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To illustrate these five phases another way, imagine you owned an empty lot on a busy street corner. You decide that you want to open a new store but aren’t sure about what kind of store to build. Your first phase would be to analyze the needs of people in the community. What kind of store do people want? A clothing store, gas station, restaurant or hardware store? After finding out what your customers need and want, you can hire an architect to design the store for you. When he delivers blueprints you like, then this phase is complete. Your next phase is to hire a contractor to actually build the store for you. He develops the structure according to specifications, and you fill it with merchandise. Next, you implement your plans by opening the store and inviting people in to shop. This is the fun part, though some people would rather wait outside in the car than go in your store. (You will have participants like this in your training sessions sometimes, too.) Last, you evaluate by asking customers how they like the store and checking the shelves to see what is selling. You make adjustments and keep going forward.
These five phases represent a logical, orderly process. When you design and deliver training, don’t shortcut the process. Some intermediaries assume that they already know what leaders of FBCOs want, so they skip the analyze phase. They may be very close to being accurate, but they will always learn something when they take the time to listen carefully to prospective participants. Some workshop leaders neglect to specify instructional objectives. Others combine and confuse the design and develop phases. They teach what they know instead of what the participants need. Some neglect to monitor implementation. And last but not least, others forget to evaluate their training.
As an intermediary, discipline yourself to work through the whole SAT process. Building capacity through training is too important to leave to gut instinct, hunches or what seemed to work before. Most likely, you are serving a new audience, different arena, more geography or at least a wider variety of organizations than you have worked with in the past. Your organization and your trainers will benefit from an organized, logical, systematic approach.
Analyze
The first phase in the process is sizing up the situation and assessing
the needs. This doesn’t require an expensive, exhaustive written
survey of all prospective participants. You may not even have basic
contact information yet for the leaders you expect to attend your
training. But you still need to get some information about the participants
and their world. You have to go on a fact-finding mission. This
is sometimes called the front-end analysis. You complete it before
you start putting the training together. Depending on the situation,
you may want to complete a system analysis, needs analysis or task
inventory. You can do one or all three for this phase.
To analyze a system, gather some experts and delve into why a larger system is not performing. For example, you may find nonprofits in a city who don’t know how to access Federal funding. You might look at all of the FBCOs serving homeless populations and discover that they are all small with weak boards. You will want to do some research so that you are dealing with facts as well as observations.
| To complete a needs
analysis, find prospective participants and ask them what they
need. A day of phone calls can yield enough information for
you to move on to the design phase. You can get more accurate
information by sending out a written survey by mail or email.
Provide multiple-choice as well as open-ended questions. Both
can yield helpful information. For example, list all the training
topics you have thought about providing and have them check
all that are highly interesting. Ask questions such as, "What
skills or topics would you like to see covered in our conference?"
To do a task inventory, you must be training towards a specific task or position. Look at a particular job and carefully list all the steps required to accomplish it satisfactorily. You may want to observe someone in action or interview seasoned practitioners. Ask, "What do you have to do?" and "What do you have to know?" For example, you may select a specific need area like grant-writing to help leaders of FBCOs learn how to write grants. The task inventory will yield all the steps and the supporting knowledge you need to design the training. |
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To complete the analysis phase, evaluate your findings and the process you used. If you are satisfied you did an adequate job on analysis, then you can proceed. After analyzing the needs, you are ready to begin designing the training experience.
Introduction
| Providing
Technical Assistance Overview