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littledotryan posted an update in the group Enthusing staff to engage with TEL 10 years, 6 months ago
This was one of my ‘Big questions’. How do with engage staff? I work as an eLearning Support Officer and as such I support staff in the use of TEL. A lot of the conversations are about engaging students but my job is trying to encourage staff to embrace new technologies and break through their ‘fear’ of trying new things.
I think this is like painting the Forth Bridge, it’s a job that will never be finished!
Have you done anything to find out why people don’t want to engage with technology? (I’m not suggesting you haven’t, just wondering what you might have done!)
You’re right – it is never-ending. We are quite pro-active in encouraging staff to engage with the technology (and with us) – we do standard training of all our teaching and learning systems, we do ‘huddles’ which enables staff to share good practice and ideas with their peers (part of our Community of Practice). We’ve done ‘munch’ sessions (lunchtime training on more unusual subjects to prompt decision) and presentations ‘1hr Wonders’ on a variety of subjects…. a long list! However inventive we think we are, we still can’t get the numbers in.
But in answer to your original question, why don’t people want to engage? I think an element of it is down to insufficient time. They are interested but lack the time to learn something new and the initial effort needed may be considered too time-consuming. Also, the ‘fear’ of breaking the software puts people off using our more simpler systems at their most basic level. They seem scared to even get started so this is down to their digital confidence or lack of it! Sometimes, I don’t know stuff but I’m not scared to have a play. I don’t know how we address that…… but with more training that nobody attends!!!!