Training

Training is a fundamental tool in changing academic culture. Providing spaces for university staff to develop and test their tools in listening, empathy, dialogue, reflection and developing and implementing strategy are important to both their career as a public engagement practitioner, but also changing how they approach their future research, teaching or how they lead. 

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Over the last two years I have been developing training sessions that take into account the previous experience and context of those participating and looks to build their confidence and develop specific skills, ideas and knowledge.

 

My approach is to provide space for challenges, along with dicussion of theory and reflection spaces. While this means not as much content can be covered, participants will leave with more practical experience of the theory. This approach was developed and tested by my fantastic team while at UCL, and led to the sector-leading Public Engagement: Skills & Practice programme which delivered to over 1,000 members of staff at UCL over three years. Since then I have been adapting the approach as a freelancer. 

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The sessions work well for groups upto 20. I am happy to work with smaller groups going down to 3 people if needed! ​Sessions run for 90-120 minutes and can be delivered online or in-person. These sessions are ideal for smaller universities or disciplines that can't guarantee larger group sizes. 
 

• Introduction to Public Engagement
  A look at Public Engagement as a two way process. This training flips the more standard model and has an emphasis on empathy and listening over delivery. 
   

• Project Planning
  Looks at project planning from conception to the final summative evaluation. The training uses logic models as a basis and asks for participants to bring examples of projects they are developing or have developed to work on throughout. 
   

• Developing Inclusive Partnerships
  Community Engagement and Community-Led Research are becoming more popular Engagement methods, but are your university staff ready to start this type of work? Often community partners face the responisbility of introducing researchers to values led partnerships, and carry the emotional labour by developing the researcher's humility, empathy and honesty. This training develops academics practices before they reach out to the community, helping them consider values and their motivations behind their engagement. 
   

• Evaluation
  This training looks to build confidence in the evaluation skills of participants. Over the years we have often found academics will have the skill sets required to evaluate as part of their researcher skill set, but will lose confidence when it is presented as an evaluation of a research-adjacent project such as Public Engagement or EDI. This training will break down what evaluation in a context which is familiar to those participating. It disentangles reporting from wider evaluation processes. The final part of our evaluation package develops the skills of participants to pause and reflect on projects. In particular the session looks at how to learn from reflecting on experiences, in particular ones which may been challenging at the time. 
   

• Developing Strategy
  Developing a strategy for Public Engagement, EDI or Research Culture Change can feel like a big tangle. You're unsure of where to start and can't see what it could look like. This session breaks down the questions you need to ask yourself, and allows participants to break down the strategy to it's components and then build it up.

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Material will be curated for participants, so cost will include conversations with the client to determine their context and experience. 

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As a guideline developing and delivering one of the above topics starts at £600.

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Journeyed programmes can be created, for example Introduction to Public Engagement, Project Planning, Developing Inclusive Partnerships and some of the Evaluation course can be moulded into a three session journeyed training programme. Costs will be reduced when developing a journeyed programme. 

We can deliver training to:

• University Staff Development Programmes.

• Doctoral Schools and PhD Development programmes. 

• Departmental Training Days / Away Days.

• Faculty wide Training.

• Leadership Training Cohorts.

• Professional Services Training Programmes. 

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I also combine training with a mentoring packages for small cohorts and / or consultancy on your training programme. 

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