Training Top Hits

Our Community Engagement Officer, Matthew Airey, blogs about some of our most successful training sessions.

Here at Good Things Foundation, we want to make sure our Online Centres have all the training and knowledge they need to help them thrive. We offer training on a range of topics, from helping centres engage their learners to recruiting volunteers.

As well as hosting webinars with expert speakers on certain topics, we also create resources and guides to help our Online Centres.

To give you an idea about what training centres are engaging with, either by attending training sessions or watching our webinar recordings, I present you with the top five training top hits:

5. Introduction to Learn My Way

This training resource tells you everything you need to know when it comes to using our digital skills platform Learn My Way, so there’s no surprise that it makes our top 5. To access a recording of this training and find out more about how you can use Learn My Way to support people, click here

4. Writing Better Bids

This training has been running for several years and is essential for us to help centres secure funding. We run this session in two parts; part 1 covers the bid writing process to help members improve their success rates, whilst part 2 looks at more complex bid issues and how to work in partnership with other companies. Here’s the link to both Part 1 and Part 2 if you wanted to take a look at the recording. 

3. Recruiting volunteers remotely and supporting volunteers

This is a fantastic session for network members who are just starting to recruit volunteers. The training looks at how to find volunteers with the right skills and considers the characteristics of a great volunteer as well as how to advertise for them. It also covers how to keep in touch and support volunteers remotely. The training is delivered as part of a series. It looks at the full volunteer journey, from recruiting a volunteer to managing them. Here’s the links to the recordings of recruiting volunteers and supporting volunteers remotely.

2. Meet-ups

Meet-ups are a place for centres to ‘meet up’ with each other (virtually speaking). It’s a chance for members to network with each other to share best practice around certain subjects, and talk about the challenges they face when delivering digital skills training.

  • We have general meet-ups hosted by our CEO Helen Milner OBE allowing centres to ask Helen questions about Good Things Foundation. 
  • We also host specialist meet-ups bringing together centres with similarities, for example libraries or centres delivering to people for whom English is  a second language. These events have proven extremely popular, with one session reaching 120 attendees.

1. Supporting Learners remotely using Learn My Way

Coming in at number 1, this session helps members deliver digital skills remotely by providing tips for success and best practice when using our digital skills platform, Learn My Way. It has the highest attendance rating for a training session at just under 80 attendees. Our next live session is in May and you can sign up here.

All our training sits on the training page of the Online Centres Network website. Here, you can register for any of our live webinars or you can watch the replays of previous sessions too!

Thank you for reading my blog about the top training hits. If you have any ideas for training that you think we are missing please let me know. 

A profile photo of Matthew smiling

Matthew Airey

Community Engagement Officer

Matthew designs and develops resources, helping people to understand and learn as easily as possible. Matthew analyses learners' requirements so they get the best out of a resource, but his speciality really is developing online resources, courses, system simulations, and videos.