Learning Technology Platforms: The Next Step in Training Volunteers

A fantastic and informative post Sue. We've had a specialist volunteer helping us to create a Moodle e-learning platform for our organisation and I'm excited that we are about to start offering some online learning options for both our volunteers and trustees. We've experimented with running webinar briefing sessions for volunteers too, with very positive feedback. I think it's important to factor in that you may need to provide some additional support to some volunteers, so that they can participate using new technology. Often this isn't particularly time consuming and is more a quick "how to" session and confidence building. We also asked a question in our annual volunteer survey about who had access to the internet at home and whether volunteers had used e-learning before. 40% said they had used e-learning before and 91% said they had access to the internet at home (with the majority having broadband). Obviously, this only represents those who completed the survey, and those without internet access may have been less likely to complete it! We did also run a focus group, to capture the opinions of a diverse cross section of volunteers. This was useful in terms of highlighting what some of the barriers might be to people accessing e-learning and ensured that volunteers were involved in shaping the design of this online resource from the beginning.