Design your training plan

Owned by Matt Kepple
Last updated: Apr 02, 2024
5 min read

You can design your training plan using your Blueprints

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Style of training: interactive sessions

We find that interactive training sessions work best.

How they work:

  • A trainer demonstrates what needs to be done on the platform

  • Learners then have the chance to have a go at doing the step themselves, and can ask questions if they get stuck

  • As such, it’s best to have no more than 10 learners in a single training session as that way you’ll have the capacity to answer their questions and be able to check that each individual person has mastered each workflow they’re taught.

Steps

Go to the Workflows per User Group tab in your blueprints spreadsheet

1. User Groups: which groups of people will be using your platform?

Group your users into User Groups based on the features they will have in common, even if they work on different projects.

Typical user groups are:

  • Administrators

  • Facilitators / Case workers / Frontline workers: people who work directly with your participants

  • Project officers / Project managers: people who manage individual projects

  • Operations Managers / Programme managers: people who manage Project Managers

  • Fundraising & Marketing: people who need to generate reports

Each user group should have their own column on the spreadsheet tab (see the purple box) - you might need to scroll across to the right side to see it all

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2. Workflows & Phases: what does each User Group need to know and when?

Workflows

Each row in the spreadsheet is a workflow. For example

  • How to process an inbound referral

  • How to record attendance

  • How to set up a report for a new funder or stakeholder 

You should be able to find a workflow for every type of action you might want to do on Makerble. If you can’t contact support.

Phases

There is so much that you can use Makerble to do

  • You might find it helpful to stagger your rollout over two phases whereby

    • Phase 1 gets people to use the basics of the platform

    • Phase 2 gets people to use some of the more advanced features

  • In your Blueprints: you can indicate which phase you’d like to cover each workflow in.

Levels: staggered training for each User Group

People can start using Makerble even without a training session but if you’d like people to be trained, a single training session is sufficient for them to get started. If you have the time, you could stagger your training for each User Group over four training sessions as outlined below

  • Phase 1: The first two training sessions for a User Group could happen within the same week or they could even be on the same day.

    • 1st: Phase 1 Basic: these are the core actions that people need to be able to do

    • 2nd: Phase 1 Advanced: these are actions that people need to be able to do from the outset, but which are easier to cover once people are confident doing the Basic actions.

    • For example, a Level 1 Basic action might be how to create a contact whereas a Level 1 Advanced action might be how to create an automation that sends an SMS to every new contact on this project.

  • Phase 2: You might choose to do this in users' 2nd month of using Makerble. Admittedly you could do it earlier.

    • 3rd: Phase 2 Basic: these are actions that in an ideal world you’d like people to be able to do. These actions are technically easy but you’ve put them in Phase 2 so that you don’t overload your team with too much information when they first get started.

    • 4th: Phase 2 Advanced: these actions require a good understanding of the system. E.g. creating a new set of outcomes and assigning them to several projects.

3. How many training sessions will you need?

We recommend that you provide training sessions that are

  • 1 hour long for up to 10 frontline staff

  • 2 hours long for up to 10 other staff

If the topics you want to cover will take longer, we advise you to run several training sessions.

There are several benefits to this

  • People have short attention spans

  • Spreading out the training over several sessions gives people time to practice and for the content to sink in before they have to learn the next part

  • It’s easier to find a 1 or 2 hour slot that works for everyone rather than a longer slot

  • In your Blueprints: you can calculate the amount of time that’s needed to train people in the workflows you’ve selected

4. Staffing: Who will deliver the training and where will they be held

  • You can train your coworkers to use Makerble and/or you can work with the Makerble Team to deliver or co-deliver your training

  • Each trainee should have their own device so they can interact with the steps covered in training

Online training sessions

General requirements

  • If the training is being delivered by Makerble Team Members and conducted remotely, ensure that trainee:

    • is individually connected to Zoom

    • knows how to switch between their web browser (to use Makerble) and the Zoom screen that contains content being shared by the training facilitator

    • knows how to mute and unmute themselves

Requirements when there are several trainees in the same room

  • All of the general requirements still apply. In addition:

    • Either use a big screen with a centralised speaker,

    • But if you are not using a big screen with a centralised speaker, ensure that each trainee has headphones so that they can still hear the content of the session without generating a feedback-echo that distorts the audio of the call for everybody else

Next steps