Monday, August 1, 2011

Hiring Tips: Seven Ways To Train Staff Online

Often times, The NonProfit Times is updated with management tips designed to help nonprofit organizations. These tips cover a wide variety of categories, one of which is human resources. The most recent tip we put up deals with how to train staff online. With most activities being on the Internet these days, this is an important task for all nonprofits to learn. Below is that article in its entirety:

Nonprofit managers are starting to learn what most college administrators know already: that online education can be a low-cost way to offer training and professional development.

Unlike colleges, which are only looking to cut costs, nonprofits can use online training to fulfill the mission.
Laura Quinn, founder and executive director of Ideaware, a nonprofit technology organization in Portland, Maine, offers the following suggestions as options for inexpensive online professional development:

* Use existing recorded seminars. If the training is not organization-specific, utilize existing resources rather than reinventing the wheel.

* Online conferences. If your needs are relatively simple and cost is a concern, consider online tools that share slides, documents or anything else from your computer.

* Video conferencing. If there are trainers with whom you like to work, broadcast videos of them presenting lessons rather than trying to schedule onsite classes.

* Recorded seminars. Online seminars let you record and archive trainings for staff to watch at their convenience.

* Screencasts. These are videos of your computer screen, often with voiceover narrating your onscreen actions. They can be used to help train staff to use a particular software package or website.

* eLearning. This is a term that generally refers to packaged modules that provide a number of ways to interact with materials.

* Learning Management Systems. If an organization has a number of topics to teach, creating and maintaining an online curriculum through a Learning Management System might be the best way to train staff.

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