Talking TAP

April Welcome from Claire Brookes

Hello and welcome to the April issue of the Talking TAP Newsletter.  In this issue we focus on the skills achieved by our TAP Qualified Professional of the Month, Mr Christophe Erembert.  Our TAP Partner of the Month is Buckinghamshire County Council.  Read on to hear how they became trainers of choice.

We have developed a new feature called Website Watch - here we will list all of the updates made to our website to help direct you to up to date L&D news, including our Training Tip of the Month - we hope that you enjoy surfing!

The 'My Training Nightmares' feature has proven to be very popular, in this issue we have some rather interesting training tales!  If you would like to contribute please do drop me an email on c.brookes@trainingfoundation.com.

I hope that you enjoy reading this issue, including Matt Hancocks and Paul Edmondson's road trip to visit NHS Yorks and the Humber e-Learning Club. 

We also have our regular Brain Teaser feature, this month supplied by The Purchase to Pay team at AstraZeneca.

All the best and enjoy the fresh shoots of spring.
Claire

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Matt Hancocks & Paul Edmondson on a Road Trip to Leeds...

The Training Foundation’s new initiative is to meet our delegates in their own regions.  I’ve recently travelled up to Leeds with my colleague Paul Edmondson to deliver an interactive workshop for the NHS Yorks and the Humber e-Learning Club.  A big thank you to Kate and the rest of the e-Learning Club for inviting us up to Leeds.

Paul facilitated a session called “The changing shape of learning to meet organisational and technological change".  This provided the 40 delegates from the e-Learning Club with an interactive session enabling them to learn about the new and exciting ways to deliver learning and offered an insight into what is on the horizon.  The session also explored the benefits they bring to the learner, the trainer and the organisation.  Delegates were also given an opportunity to participate and network in a Knowledge Café activity.



(Above: Paul Edmondson leading a Knowledge Café)

During the Knowledge Café the delegates were invited to share ideas on a range of discussion points, eg. what are the benefits of implementing a new learning strategy?  What are the concerns?  What advice would you pass onto someone working on their first e-Learning project?  How can you evaluate e-Learning?  After a few minutes conference delegates swap to different tables to generate more ideas and network with others.

A Knowledge Café is an ideal method of encouraging colleagues, delegates or audiences to mix, exchange ideas and reach a better understanding of a topic in an informal environment.  The success of the event has encouraged us to organise further events for a number of client organisations over spring and summer to help them learn more about how e-Learning and Blended Learning strategies can benefit them and the training they deliver.

(Above: Final result of Knowledge cafe) 

If you would like to learn more, or if you would like us attend a similar event at your premises please do contact me on m.hancocks@trainingfoundation.com.

All the best
Matt

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Website Watch

Welcome to a new feature in the newsletter - Website Watch!  Here we draw your attention to all the updates and new developments on our website, www.tap-training.com 

• We have developed a new Training Tip of the Month page on our website.  Bookmark this page to check our top Training Tips that are updated on a monthly basis:
  http://www.tap-training.com/page/communities/trainingtip.html
  
  
• For information on our new PTLLS upgrade course, so that PTLLS certificate holders can achive a TAP certificate, look here:
  http://www.tap-training.com/docs/ptlls_to_tap_certificate_in_training_delivery_skills.pdf
  
  
• Is PTLLS really suitable for you, please click here to learn more:
  http://www.tap-training.com/page/communities/ptlls.html
  
  
• Click here to view course outline for the 3 day TAP Certificate in Learner Engagement - as quoted in TAP Partner and TAP Qualified Professional of the Month articles:
  http://www.tap-training.com/page/courses/trainer_of_choice.html
  
  
• Also don't forget to look at the excellent testimonials for this course:
  http://www.tap-training.com/page/testimonials.html?filter=trainer_of_choice

Enjoy surfing!

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TAP Qualified Professional Of The Month, Christophe Erembert

I am a Training Manager within Covidien, a leading global healthcare products company that creates innovative medical solutions.  Covidien has more than 41,000 employees worldwide in 59 countries, and its products are sold in over 140 countries.

Covidien’s main aim is to become the world leader in delivering premium products in the Healthcare environment.  Therefore everyday has become a challenge to reach that goal.  So, training our people (Products Specialist, Regional Sales Manager, and Business Unit Managers) and our customers (Surgeons and Nurses) has become vital in order to use our products correctly and to deliver best possible services to all Healthcare Professionals.

To make this happen there are 5 Training Centers Worldwide: USA, South America, France, China and Japan.  I work within the Covidien European Training Center in Elancourt in France.  We are responsible for the training delivery of 5 different divisions:

• Energy-based Devices
• General Surgery
• Sutures & Biosurgery
• Mesh & Biologics
• Respiratory

My main role as a Training Manager for Soft Tissue Repair -Mesh & Biologics- is to deliver courses for new Covidien Delegates comprising of anatomy,  pathology,  physiology, surgical procedures, consultative selling skills and competition’s products but to name a few!

When I joined the Covidien European Training Centre in January 2009 one of my colleagues, Andrew Cox, had already gained TAP qualifications.  Consequently TAP concept was already in place at Covidien European Training Center as a standard, and all trainers had to achieve at least the TAP Certificate in Training Delivery Skills.  I have since successfully achieved the TAP Certificate in Training Delivery Skills in May 2009, the TAP Certificate in Learner Engagement (AKA Trainer-of-CHOICE) in December 2009, the TAP Certificate in Facilitation Skills and the TAP Certificate in Coaching Skills in March 2010.

The introduction of the TAP training methodology has allowed for the production of training material in a standard format that is of excellent quality.  This allows for easy quality assurance.  This ensures that all of the training we deliver meet the organization’s goals and follows correct policies and procedures.

The Training Foundation provides a wide range of TAP training courses.  These can be delivered both on-site at our training centre in France, or at their training centre in Coventry, to suit the needs of their customers.  For us as a training team, this has allowed us to bring The Training Foundation trainer to us and allowed us to use our own existing training facilities thus greatly reducing costs.

The particular aspects of TAP that we are interested in are the methodology of building a course with learning objective, interactivity, knowledge assessment and managing challenging trainees or non confident trainees.

TAP methodology has given me more awareness of what I was doing intuitively or by experience and has given me a formal course structure to follow.  I am now able to handle and manage any course whatever the audience and subject.  This has given me more confidence, training skills, professionalism and effective results on the delegates success.  Feedback from delegates is excellent too!

Overall TAP has helped me to become more confident, I have become more aware of my delegates and it has improved my learning environment for both me as a trainer and for my delegates.

TAP is a fully integrated part of my training programme and I will be putting it in application in every course as much as possible.  In fact my aim is to complete the TAP Diploma in Learning Facilitation by Summer 2010.  Every course I deliver is an opportunity to practice and improve TAP techniques and eventually to adapt these according to the audience we have. 

Thank you, The Training Foundation
Christophe

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My Training 'Nightmares' - and How I Overcame Them

Many thanks for the excellent response to this new monthly feature - read on to discover more unusual training scenarios and see how they were resolved!
 

"I was sent to run a three day technical course for a local council on how to get the best from their heating systems.  When I arrived I was greeted with ‘Oh, that’s today is it?’.  After some scrabbling around they found that no room had been booked for the training and none was available so they took me to the plant room (heating plant, not foliage) and put a whiteboard in the vice on the workbench. It was quite noisy and every time the air compressors started I had to take a two minute break as I couldn’t be heard at all despite using all my best projection skills!  Initially everyone on the course was embarrassed, but soon the ridiculousness of the situation took over and we all had a good laugh – always good for bonding.  I managed to complete the course but lost my voice for several days afterwards"
Paul Millard
Phase Forward

"I arrived in plenty of time the day before an onsite course.  I planned to settle into my B&B and read up on my notes for the following day.  On unpacking my car I remembered my suits were still hung up behind the door at home.  As the keys to our second car were in my bag my husband couldn't meet me half way, so had to drive all the way home and back again.  Got to sleep at 1:00am.  The course went very well and the delegates had no idea!"
Dawn Elwell-Sutton
The Training Foundation

"My personal training nightmare is not hardware going wrong, or the wrong version installed or the application not even installed...Picture the scene - major rollout of a new email program. Plans in place for classroom training followed by floorwalking, backed up by open sessions.

The classroom training goes well...
The floorwalking goes well...

The open session - all setup, door open and welcoming.
The session is scheduled for 2 hours.....tick tick tick

Slowly the 2 hours pass, no one walks through the door, the phone doesn't ring.

How do I overcome this: open sessions are scrapped - in their place surgery session, they have to be pre-booked"
Michelle Kaye
Boodle Hatfield

"When I first discovered Accelerated Learning I was very taken with the principles of sensory stimulation so even though my course contained something for my delegates to hear (auditory), something for my delegates to see (visual) and something for my delegates to do (kinaesthetic) I was keen to introduce smell and taste to complete their experience.  

So for taste (gustatory) I placed small bowls of chocolates, sweets and - as a healthy option, raisins - on every table.  For smell (olfactory), I bought a ceramic oil burner and chose rosemary oil as it was recommended for ‘enhancing wisdom, intelligence and memory retention’.  By mid morning break, one delegate had suffered an asthma attack, one delegate’s eyes were streaming so much she had to leave the building and another delegate’s eyes became so dry she had to remove her contact lenses (and couldn’t see much for the rest of the day).  To top it all …the ceramic oil burner oil exploded and the oil went all over my carefully laid-out handouts and up the wall.  I had to have the handouts re-printed and clean the walls. 

However, despite this experience, I still feel that it’s important to try out new ideas to ensure your courses are stimulating, creative and provide your delegates with the best possible experience.  After each learning event, try to make time to reflect on what went well and what you will do different next time."
Frances Day
The Training Foundation

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TAP Partner of the Month, Buckinghamshire County Council

Buckinghamshire County Council is proud to be one of the first organisations to participate in the new TAP Certificate in Learner Engagement run by The Training Foundation.  It has helped to hone the already extensive training skills of the ICT (Information Communication Technology) Training Team so that they can provide an even better learning experience for their internal customers.

The 10- strong team has been working with The Training Foundation for over 5 years under the guidance of the ICT Training Manager Sarah Barnes.  She wanted to ensure that “…our customers had the best possible learning experience so that they could not only see improvements in their working life but also to enjoy the sessions they attended and leave with the feeling of wanting to learn more…”

The organisational vision for the ICT service includes the desire to be “a continuously improving and learning organisation”, and the team encourage this by offering a wide range of scheduled and tailored courses, as well as offering training support for system rollouts and a floor-walking service.  This means that the team could be training anyone at all employed by the council – a school teacher, the chief executive, a planning officer or a care worker on any piece of generic or specialised software. It is vital that everyone within the organisation has the necessary ICT skills, and the nature of the training undertaken by the team presents unique challenges.  This is especially pertinent when recording data as there are often statutory and regulatory issues to be considered, especially within the social care and education fields.

The ICT training team has always been well regarded within the council, and the work that they have done over the last few years has led to formal recognition and acknowledgement of the professional nature of their work.  Council staff have reassurance that the training department is well run, and that the training they receive meets best practice standards for the industry which leads to benefits across the organisation.  When working on IT projects, the team’s reputation means that they will be asked for their involvement right at the start; the senior figures within the organisation now recognise that the high quality end-user training and support they offer is a valuable resource. 

The team have themselves undertaken a learning and development journey with The Training Foundation, leading to their new status as the 150^th TAP Partner organisation.  This partnership means that all formal training events are led by personnel holding a TAP Certificate in Delivery or Facilitation Skills, giving guaranteed consistent high-quality training.  Sarah is rightly proud of her team’s achievement, as it raises their profile even further, and recognises their hard work and success in becoming TAP Qualified Professionals.

The new TAP Certificate in Learner Engagement offered by the Training Foundation focuses on learner engagement, emotional intelligence and inter-personal skills, and has truly changed how IT training is delivered within the council.  For example, as well as sharing their excellent IT knowledge, the trainers will also ensure that all the learners have the opportunity to participate in the sessions by including plenty of hands-on activities for different learning styles.  Trainer Sue Jones said that “Attending the TAP Training Delivery Skills course and the TAP Certificate in Learner Engagement has provided me with tools to assist me in keeping delegates continually engaged throughout their learning journey.”

It is also important to ensure that each learner feels included in the session, and that they are encouraged in their own personal learning.  The positive feedback from learners across the organisation reflects this inclusive approach, as does the excitement of those returning for another course.  As trainer Joanne Hoyte remarks, “It is easy to forget how learners may feel upon entering a learning environment and how to channel those feelings to enable an acceptable/good outcome for learners (including me!!)".  TAP Certificate in Learner Engagement helps trainers to achieve that good outcome.

The future for ICT Training looks exciting, introducing new technologies as they become available.  Blended learning solutions use electronic and distance learning combined with classroom sessions where appropriate to deliver the best and most appropriate training for different users in the council.  For example, the training offered for a new IT system might include drop-in sessions, e-Learning materials and electronic and/or hard copies of user guides as well as classroom sessions.  The team are keen to encourage use of e-learning, and have introduced a module into every course to give a taster.  Additionally, they are supporting monthly facilitated drop-in sessions, where users can try out e-Learning in a safe environment with a trainer on hand if necessary.

Sarah and her team are enjoying the results of their hard work and looking forward to making the learning experience in Buckinghamshire County Council even better in partnership with The Training Foundation.

Click here to view course outline for the 3 day TAP Certificate in Learner Engagement - as quoted in the TAP Partner Month:
http://www.tap-training.com/page/courses/trainer_of_choice.html

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Celebrate Success

Congratulations to all of our hardworking delegates who have achieved one of our role-based TAP Diplomas.  This month we celebrate the achievements of the following:

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Brain Teaser

Last month's Brain Teaser entitled The Boxer was a tricky one!  The solution is that the 'boxer' that left the ring to get his hair brushed and then went on to win the competition was, in fact, a Boxer Dog at Crufts!

Our congratulations go out to the following who successfully solved the brain teaser:

• Tessa Roberts, Aviva
• Paul Tarling, Datix
• Carol Ware, Land Registry
• Janice Pettitt, NHS Birmingham East & North
• Neil Evans, Gladiator Training (Part of the Admiral Group)
• Eddie Swan, William Grant & Sons Distillers Ltd
• Claire Dutton , Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Judy Paul, Bedell Group Services Limited
• Mikey Oliff, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust
• Nada Al-Ashbal, BP International Limited
• The Purchase to Pay team at AstraZeneca
• Paul Millard, Phase Forward
• Peter Langley, Warrington Primary Care Trust
• Jane Wigham , Vehicle and Operator Services Agency 
• Nicola Heffner, Aviva
• David Ball, Chelsea & Westminster Foundation Trust

The Purchase to Pay team at AstraZeneca donated this issue's ice breaker which is entitled Friday:

A man arrives in town on Friday, he stays for 48 hours and he leaves on Friday 

How does he do it?

Feel free to send in your ideas, or requests for the solution to me at c.brookes@trainingfoundation.com

Also don't forget that if you would like to suggest a brain teaser for next months issue then please do let me know!

As you hold a TAP Qualification you are entitled to receive a copy of this free Talking TAP Newsletter each month.  This will be forwarded to your email on a monthly basis.  If, however, you no longer wish to receive the Talking TAP Newsletter simply reply to the mail with the words remove in the subject line.

Many Thanks
The Training Foundation

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