Staff Development Essentials

(An Infopeople Online Learning Course)
June 26, 2007 - July 30, 2007

Your library's employees are its most valuable resource. They must be skilled, knowledgeable, and adaptive to user expectations. No matter what your role in staff training and development—whether you are a library director or manager, a training coordinator, or the person with "accidental" responsibility in this area—you need strategies for skill building.

• Does your library have an effective staff training and development program?
• Do fair and consistent policies guide your decisions?
• Are you confused about how to identify gaps between current skills and future needs?
• Would you like to have better documentation of training?

Well-designed training and learning opportunities help your library attract, orient, and retain talented employees. This online course will enable you to identify the strengths and weakness of your current efforts. You will be able to use the resources provided to implement and maintain an effective and realistic staff training and development program at your library.

Workshop Description: This four-week online course will provide practical resources, tools and methods that can be applied in any library setting. Learners will see examples of best practices in staff development plans, policies, and procedures from libraries and other organizations. A glossary, handouts on needs assessment, and a thorough list of print and web resources will be provided. In addition to the course content and resources, learners will participate in online discussion forums to share experiences and receive expert advice.

Preliminary Course Outline: Using your web browser and your Internet connection, you will log in to the Infopeople online learning site and complete the following learning modules:

• Module One: Start with the Basics
  • Understanding the terminology of human resource development
  • Why organizational commitment is important
  • How policies and procedures ensure fairness and consistency
  • Demystifying needs assessment and skills gap analysis
  • Why you need tracking and documentation
• Module Two: Methods for Needs Assessment and Skills Gap Analysis
  • Three levels—organizational, task, and individual
  • How to determine whether training or performance management is the solution
  • How to use individual development plans (IDPs)
• Module Three: Policies and Procedures to Guide Your Program
  • Areas that need to be addressed
  • How to ensure equity and consistency in staff development decisions
  • Rewarding and recognizing self-directed learning
• Module Four: Tracking, Documentation, and Evaluation
  • Why documentation is important
  • Methods for tracking data on training and development
  • Linking training approval to the tracking process

Online Learning Details:
This four-week course will last five weeks, as it falls over the July 4th week and will be taught online using the web. When you register, you will receive a registration confirmation that will include the URL to get to the course, as well as a username and password.

Every student proceeds through the online learning modules at his or her own pace. Students should expect to commit to spending a minimum of 2 to 2½ hours per week on this course in order to be successful. You can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night. However, you will be expected to log in to the course each week to do that week's assignment. We ask that you log in sometime during the first week of the course to begin the course work.

Your instructor will be available for limited consultation support for two weeks after the official end date of a course, and the course material will stay up for an additional two weeks after that, to give those who have fallen behind time to work independently on the course. However, you will be expected to accomplish the majority of the course in synchronization with your peers during the first five weeks.

Who Should Take This Course: This course is for anyone from the library community who has responsibility for staff training and development. That responsibility may be as a library director, human resources manager, supervisor, training coordinator, or as an "accidental" coordinator of training and staff development.

Prerequisites:
This course is taught over the web. You must:

• Have an Internet connection and Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher.
• Be able to save Microsoft Word .doc or Adobe .pdf files to your computer and print them out. (For .doc files, a free Word Viewer is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en. Search for "Word Viewer." For .pdf files, a free Adobe Acrobat Reader is available at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html).
• Be comfortable navigating on the web and navigating back and forward on a website that uses frames.

To be most successful in this course you should be willing to share information with your colleagues and be willing to spend time reading and participating in the weekly discussion boards.

System Requirements: The online learning product that Infopeople uses is called Angel. The following are minimum system requirements for using Angel. You will need access to a computer that has at least these specifications to participate in an online course:

• Windows:
  • Internet Explorer 6.0 and above, Netscape 7.1 and above, or Firefox 1.5 and abovesss
• Macintosh:
  • Mozilla 1.4 and above (which is the same engine as Netscape 7.1), Safari 2.0 and above, or Firefox 1.5 and above
  • OS X and above (OS 9 will NOT work with our online learning product)

If you are not comfortable with any of the above, please consider taking this course with a colleague who does meet these requirements.

Fee: $75 for those in the California library community and $150 for those out-of-state.

Course Start: This four-week-long online learning course starts on June 26, 2007.