What is trainers training

This means a new participant typically gets to watch an experienced trainer teach, complete the exercises, and then practice teaching segments to other participants. The main goal of the ToT model is to prepare instructors to present information effectively, respond to participant questions, and lead activities that reinforce learning.

Other goals include ensuring that trainers can:. Trainer participants also learn the importance of maintaining eye contact, presenting a positive attitude, speaking in a clear voice, gesturing appropriately, and maintaining interest and dissipating confusion.

When designing a ToT, it is necessary to allow enough time to ensure the effective transfer of learning. Consider the type and number of topics when determining how much time a training session needs, and include the following elements:. To be effective in achieving intended outcomes, prospective ToT participants must be highly qualified, seasoned trainers who have demonstrated the following:.

Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. CDC Healthy Schools. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Understanding the Training of Trainers Model. Minus Related Pages. The train the trainer model provides an effective strategy to equip employees and subject matter experts with new knowledge on how to teach others and how to foster an environment where everybody feels welcome to improve their skills.

Our team members at SessionLab have both participated in and organised various train the trainer events over the past years. Train the trainer courses are among the most challenging and comprehensive types of training courses. That is why we love designing and delivering them!

Perhaps you need to design short, day programs aimed at equipping subject matter experts with training design and facilitation skills. Or maybe you are preparing a 2-week-long intensive train the trainer course to develop competency in designing and delivering soft skill training sessions. In either case, there are a lot of interesting questions about how to build up an effective program. We have had the opportunity to observe a wide range of train the trainer programs at several international NGOs, and from them we have drawn some best practices outlined in the next chapters.

There are a myriad of options on how to structure a train the trainer course depending on your needs and timeframe. Here are some of the most common train the trainer formats:.

While there is no single best way to design a train the trainer event for each of the categories above, we have created a high-level template agenda to show the essential topics we would include in a train the trainer program over the course of a week.

The agenda below is optimised for a live week-long event, but you might also break this down into smaller blocks over a more extended period. That sounds like a lot of time to ask of both participants and the organisation. And funding such an initiative is a big commitment. Remember, the people you train to become trainers themselves will make a tremendous impact on your organisation.

They will likely train hundreds of people each year. That adds up to thousands of employee hours spent on training. Makes sense to ensure they will be trained by someone competent, right? In the course agenda above, you will find the most essential elements of a train the trainer program designed into a coherent flow. Every training course needs a proper framing, and it is no different with a train the trainer event. This is the right moment to present the agenda and discuss the expectations you have of your trainees.

Make sure also to discuss the expectations the trainees themselves have of the course. Whatever you do as a trainer during a particular session does not only serve the purpose of that specific session, it also models to your trainees how to do certain things as a trainer. Beware: trainees still primarily need to be active participants in your course and not just observe the process from the outside.

It is always useful to have some time dedicated to team building before things get serious and the intense learning begins. Team building activities enhance group cohesiveness and help participants get to know each other.

It is often an integral part of training courses because it creates a safe, welcoming atmosphere and helps participants check in to the event mentally. This is an important learning point for your trainees. Now, should you plan just a few activities to warm up the group and break the ice , or do you need a more elaborate process to facilitate the forming of a real team?

If the group of trainees will be working together in the future, then you might want to put an extra accent on team building. Lastly, it is highly useful for your participants to experience a few practical team building activities themselves so they will already have a few familiar tricks up their sleeves when they need a team building game for one of their future sessions.

We have also included an optional exercise for the welcome day — an opportunity for trainees to get on the stage and a chance for you to assess their skills. This exercise requires that you give trainees an assignment well before the course starts — to prepare a short presentation or knowledge transfer session on a topic of their expertise.

During this intro day, participants are given the opportunity to present what they prepared. You might even brief them to facilitate a short discussion afterward so that you get an initial idea of what their facilitation skills are like. In general, this intro day may range anywhere from hours to a full day.

If you need to do thorough team building and want to take advantage of the initial presentation activity, then you may take the whole day. Otherwise, you can just do the essential Introduction and Expectations sessions to kick off the course.

Most of the time spent at in-classroom training can be divided into a few distinct interaction types:. For the first two categories — beyond some degree of subject matter expertise — you will need to be able to present and facilitate effectively. This is why we have included one session to focus on presentation skills practice and another session to cover the most essential facilitation skills. As a trainer, you will frequently have the responsibility of standing in front of the room and presenting material.

The amount of time you spend presenting theory as a trainer may vary largely on the types of training sessions you will run. But in any case, it is important to have solid presentation skills to be able to introduce concepts and theories in an understandable, structured way.

The point of this session is to practice both how to structure a presentation and to practice different aspects of presenting, such as body language, voice and eye contact. Your trainees should get an opportunity to deliver short a few minutes presentations in front of each other and receive feedback from the group on their performance.

So, after learning some tips from you, they will have another round of presenting and receiving feedback. It is best to do this exercise in small groups of participants. Facilitation skills are essential for any session, but especially for in-classroom trainings filled with human interaction.

In contrast to that one, in this session, trainees will practice essential verbal skills, such as Probing, Rephrasing, Redirecting questions and comments, and so on. Importantly, each trainee should have an opportunity to facilitate a group conversation during the session. While they facilitate, they should apply the various facilitation techniques they have learned. Most of the time, your participants will have varying levels of experience, so you can choose between these different tactics:.

Lastly, you can benefit a lot from a short session that gives a shared baseline for your preferred method of giving feedback.

One of the most essential skills for any trainer is to know how to structure and build a training session to be engaging and effective. It is important to understand the basics of how people, particularly adults, learn, what kind of learning styles they may have, and how to design a training program that respects different learning styles while also covering your learning objectives.

These are topics that could be their own full course; however, when there is only one day to cover the basics and give actionable learning during a train the trainer program, we would include the following:. There are a few general principles that can help you orientate yourself while designing your training sessions for your train the trainer course.

When we learn as adults, it is a different experience than when we were children. We are better able to make decisions, draw conclusions, and recognise patterns. We are less likely to do something just because , because we expect logical reasons and arguments to do it. Malcolm Knowles, an expert in adult learning, identified four principles that help us create an environment where adults learn best. These are key principles that should always be kept in mind when designing training sessions, so getting these clarified early in the training program gives a useful reference point.

Before you start preparing for any training project, you need information in order to know exactly what is expected of you. You need to understand what the needs of the participants are: what are their current situations, and what do they want to improve?

Sometimes a training is not going to fulfill certain needs, and this is something that must be considered by, and communicated early to, your trainees! You can explain to your trainees that the methods of their needs assessment will primarily depend on the time they have and the availability of their future participants. When there is finally enough information to work with, it is time to craft that information into learning goals.

Course Note: Due to the constraints of this specific train the trainer course participants have already picked the subject of their practice delivery by this time , trainees will not have the opportunity to do a real needs assessment here. So, the focus of this session is to communicate the proper mindset and approach to needs assessment. Every training session needs clear Learning Objectives, and in this session trainees will practice how to formulate sound Learning Objectives.

Fulfilling the Learning Objectives will be the most important guideline for the rest of the preparation process. In fact, as a principle, your trainees should learn to keep their Learning Objectives fixed and the content and process flexible in order to facilitate great learning experiences. In general, the Learning Objectives should come out of the needs assessment. It is better to have fewer goals that are attainable than have too many goals and shift the topic every 15 minutes.

A practical way for your trainees to familiarise themselves with setting learning objectives is if they start working on their Practice Training and set the relevant learning objectives.

When setting up Learning Objectives for a training session, they should be measurable, so the trainer can decide at the end of the training if the goals were achieved or not. Giving your trainees an exercise to set up their SMART goals will help make objectives measurable so they can decide at the end of the training what went well and how to improve on the session next time.

If you prefer a different method to set goals, then go ahead with that one. When dealing with a group, it is essential to know that most people learn and acquire knowledge in their own way. To fully involve everyone in a training session, trainers need to create an environment where every participant is able and welcomed to learn.

Often times, an organisation may already have a preference for a model they already use for planning training programs.

If not, then you have an opportunity to choose which model you prefer! For this template agenda, we would go with either the Kolb cycle or 4MAT. We have found that they work well for teaching structured agenda design at train the trainer events where there are time constraints, as in our course agenda. If you have already chosen a different one, just switch to the model you prefer in this block of the train the trainer event.

What is important is that your own trainer team must be confident and knowledgeable in using the learning styles framework you choose. David Kolb created his learning styles model more than 30 years ago. His experiential learning theory works on two levels: a four-stage cycle of learning and four separate learning styles.

The Kolb cycle emphasizes the cognitive process of how people go through an experience to form patterns based on that experience. Therefore, the Kolb learning style theory is presented as a learning cycle with four stages where learners should go through the full cycle.

Effective learning happens when a person progresses through a cycle of four stages in the following sequence:. It is important to ensure that activities in a training session are designed in a way that allows each learner to engage with the content in the style that suits them best.

This well-founded principle was clearly as important in the Malawian setting as it is in the UK. Yet, lack of properly trained endoscopy trainers in the country became an obstacle for meeting this requirement.

Given the interest on gastroscopy training from various hospitals in Malawi, an opportunity was identified, therefore, to develop a Train the Gastroscopy Trainers TGT course to provide teaching training and skills-enrichment for consultants.

The long-term expectation was to establish a National Endoscopy Training Centre by attracting official recognition and funding both from within the country and from overseas. The TGT programme was developed to specifically and effectively enhance the teaching skills of the local faculty in a limited timeframe. The training involved local faculty personnel observing UK trainers teaching the TGT, then delivering part of the training themselves with the support and supervision of the UK team, thus simultaneously training new trainers and enhancing the skills of the existing local faculty to deliver future ToT.

Of significant concern was the fact that the running of training courses would affect the vital provision of health services by taking staff out of their jobs for periods of time.

The partnership addressed this concern by incorporating training practice on live patients and by effective coordination with the hospital to ensure that courses were delivered and staff were released only when service provision could be guaranteed. Such embedding of training activities within the cycle of service provision ensured a positive attitude towards local trainers and good support from their unit and employer. The MoU clearly outlines the division of responsibilities between partners.

For instance, the WGO has committed to promote the centre and its courses among its networks, the BSC offers free international membership to local trainer faculty in Malawi and local training centre delegates.

In May , the Centre was inaugurated as a WGO training centre, cementing the commitment of international and local partners to jointly develop and run educational programmes through the Centre. Becoming a trainer, thus, should be recognised as part of a career path and not as an adjunct duty if attrition is to be avoided.

GHP are rarely justified if their activities are not tailored to the local context and health needs [ 21 ]. Similarly, ToT should feed into local needs and organisational priorities. Such support can materialise, for example, in successful lobbying at supra-organisational levels to establish policies and processes that facilitate the up-skilling of specific cadres.

Alignment with regional or country priorities is also important, and this will require the establishment of formal and informal coalitions of different organisations hospitals, districts, professional bodies to influence the policy environment Table 4.

Maternal mortality in Zimbabwe remains among the highest in the world, standing at per , live births [ 22 ]. This motivated the establishment of a partnership between one of the largest hospitals in Zimbabwe and an NHS Foundation Trust in the UK, with the aim to improve the quality of maternity services offered by the former.

The course has been directly associated with improvements in perinatal outcome and enhanced knowledge, clinical skills and team working [ 23 ]. The partnership hoped that introducing this training in Zimbabwe would improve outcomes for expectant mothers and save many lives. From the outset, the partnership engaged the local hospital board and key leaders across the institution in their discussions to set up a maternity quality improvement package of in-hospital training, tools and performance monitoring.

For example, acknowledging the competing demands on staff time, the Board agreed the release of all maternity staff from their clinical duties to attend a one-day training course at the hospital. Furthermore, it considered the training as part of staff normal duties, thus paying staff their usual salary during the training instead of the usual per diems for off-site training. By removing per diems, the hospital helped cement a new attitude to training, not as an additional duty but as integral part of their professional responsibility for continuous development.

This alignment between hospital policy and the partnership activities enabled the delivery of 10 one-day training courses.

In addition to conducting PROMPT training, Zimbabwean staff made a number of practical improvements to their working environment which enabled a better monitoring of clinical outcomes. The partnership was also able to engage with an important body running health delivery institutions across the country. Seeing the success of the PROMT training, this body agreed to support the roll out of the training to the 52 health facilities that they own and run across the country.

They followed a similar model, making training mandatory for all staff and agreeing to their release from clinical duties without additional per diems. This experience demonstrates the importance of embedding training duties into the career path of health professionals through effective management that aligns hospital policy to training objectives. ToT evaluation usually involves assessing learning outcomes through post-course questionnaires, i. Yet, the long-term effectiveness of the intervention is often poorly measured.

ToT success depends on whether LTs implement a sustainable training cascade, i. A clear implementation strategy at the organisational or supra-organisational level is critical to cascade the training. This may mean making training mandatory within an organisation or establishing educational programmes that make use of LTs.

Implementation by local managers or government officials ensures the sustainable integration of the training into local mechanisms policies, processes, etc. In other words, the sustainability of a ToT initiative depends on the successful transfer of ownership to a strong local leadership Table 5.

It was soon identified by CHS staff that mentorship in practice was an important development opportunity that would enhance student clinical placement experience and retention. Mentorship of student nurses during clinical placements was not a formal element of nursing education in Malawi but conducted on an ad-hoc basis.

Students arriving in their placements lacked appropriate supervision and were not able to integrate well in the workplace and gain valuable learning opportunities, and this contributed to increasing levels of attrition.

The partnership set out, therefore, to establish a mentorship training programme for clinical teachers and tutors at CHS and the other nursing schools run by the NGHP.

The role of these tutors was to train nurses at a number of Malawian colleges and hospitals in the principles of mentoring. The mentoring training programme was rolled out to the seven hospitals in Northern Malawi, and by the end of the project a number of clinical teachers and tutors had completed ToT courses and cascaded the training to approximately nurses and clinical tutors who went to become student trainers and mentors.

The visit was pivotal to promote mentoring as an effective method of facilitating learning in practice, and the MNMC, responsible for setting the standards for nursing education in the country, recognised the value of mentoring and became enthusiastic advocates for its inclusion in the nursing curriculum.

Following on from this conference, the MNMC developed a set of national competencies and standards for nursing and midwifery education which includes a requirement for all student nurses on clinical placements to be supervised by a mentor. Such requirement created a need for the mentorship training programme to be adopted across the whole of Malawi, thus ensuring the long-term continuity of the training.

The partnership strategically influenced MNMC and other key policy makers to appreciate the importance of the training programme. Through early engagement, the programme became owned and shaped by local actors. In this regard, having the opportunity to conduct training under the supervision of a MT is key to the success of a ToT [ 9 ].

ToT are usually short workshops embedded into larger training programmes [e. This limits the opportunities for LTs to conduct supervised training. It also means that emphasis is generally on the initial transfer of skills from MTs to LTs. However, the sustainability of the ToT depends not only on LTs being trained which includes opportunity for MT supervision and feedback but crucially on preventing de-skilling over time.

Sustainable upskilling of the workforce requires opportunities for CPD to be integrated into the long-term vision of the partnership Table 6. This should include not only the ongoing one-to-one peer-support that is at the heart of GHP but should extend to providing access to relevant literature, further courses, and networking opportunities beyond the partnership. Nurturing LTs should not be limited to the initial training but should be gradually integrated into local mechanisms with decreasing support from the partnership.

This was seen as necessary to compensate for the small number of mental health professionals - approximately 10—20 psychiatrists and community registered mental health nurses RMNs to serve a population of circa 24 million people. The new cadre would be entirely community-based and focus particularly on rural areas, thus helping shift the focus of care away from large psychiatric hospitals and into the community where it was most needed.

The challenge for the project was to establish a predominantly practice-oriented and reflective educational programme for practitioners that did not exist in Ghana at the time. Seventy percent of the teaching time would be spent in practice and the remainder at the College where students would prepare for and reflect on their practical experiences.

Given the very practical and reflective nature of the programme, adequate mentorship was key. The first mentors were recruited among practicing psychiatrists and community based RMNs who attended ToT workshops. These mentors were therefore expected to train a new and different kind of workforce whose remit was still to be delineated. For this reason, developing their skills and identity as educators was considered paramount to the success of the programme.

To this end, groups of CoHK senior educators spent short periods at a UK university to support their development needs. Some have been appointed as teaching assistants at CoHK. In addition, educational ToT workshops were held in Kintampo annually between and supported by UK grants.

By —16 CoHK staff and the graduated mental health workers themselves were independently running the programme. The ToT workshops latterly became a combination of ToT and CPD for the new workforce and this kept more practitioners involved, avoided exclusivity and galvanized the interest of those who would like to focus more strongly on the trainer aspect of their service work. ToT is widely used as an efficient and effective approach to address the shortage of healthcare workers in LMICs through upskilling and to improve their performance, commitment and ultimately retention.

Yet, we know little about the conditions necessary for ToT to achieve these positive results. Our findings highlight that whilst a variety of approaches to ToT exist, there are a number of limitations that can prevent this model of capacity-building from being both effective and sustainable. Whilst most partnerships strive to ensure the long-term sustainability of the training by focusing on adequate training provision and support of local trainers, the wider issues that can facilitate or prevent the continuation of training are not always considered.

These can include the negotiation of workloads and financial responsibilities, the effective engagement with decision makers through alignment of objectives and post-project support.

The TRAIN framework offers a blueprint against which ToT interventions can be mapped, allows a structure of requirements at various levels that allows individual capabilities and opportunities for training to translate into the achievement of a long-term training cascade. Although the framework will be valuable to health partnerships as a guidance in the design and operationalisation of ToT, we recognise that in practice it may be difficult to implement it in its entirety.

Of the five constitutive elements, it may be more feasible to address Talent, Implementation and Nurture and Development as these are more within the reach of a small-scale partnership. Resources and Alignment may be much more demanding because they require ToT to be embedded at individual, organisational and supra-organisational level and projects may not have the scope to influence decision making at all these levels. The TRAIN framework is intended as a starting point for further refinements and discussions about the factors affecting capacity building strategies based on training cascades.

Crisp N, Chen L. Global supply of health professionals. N Engl J Med. Easterbrook PJ. This Training of Trainers ToT program offered at Nepal Administrative Staff College NASC would provide opportunities for a trainer or potential trainer, training coordinators and training professionals to develop their core competencies in training.

The main aims of the program is to develop a pool of in house trainers who will deliver capacity building programs in various areas and cascade the effect to different functional streams and levels. The course will be implemented by using participatory learning approach. Participants will also be involved in practical sessions for providing them with an opportunity to learn from direct experience of doing and interacting with each other.