Professional Development Courses

What is Courseware?

Welcome to Practical Learning Group’s Courseware, a whole new training experience! Our courseware packages offer you top-quality training materials that are customisable, user-friendly, educational, and fun. We provide your materials, materials for the student, your PowerPoint slides, and a take-home reference sheet for the student. You simply need to prepare and train!

Best of all, our courseware packages are created in Microsoft Office and can be opened using any version of Word and PowerPoint, from 97 to 2013. (Most other word processing and presentation programs support these formats.) This means that you can customise the content by adding your logo, change the colour scheme, and easily print and e-mail training materials.

How Do I Customise My Course?

Customising your course is easy. To edit text, just click and type as you would with any document. This is particularly convenient if you want to add customised statistics for your region, special examples for your participants’ industry, or additional information. You can also use all of your word processor’s other features, including text formatting and editing tools (such as cutting and pasting).

To remove modules, simply select the text and press Delete on your keyboard. Then, navigate to the Table of Contents, right-click, and click Update Field. You may see a dialog box; if so, click “Update entire table” and press OK.

(You will also want to perform this step if you add modules or move them around.)

If you want to change the way text looks, you can format any piece of text any way you want. However, to make it easy, we’ve used styles so that you can update all the text at once.

If you’re using Word 97 to 2003, start by clicking the Format menu followed by Styles and Formatting. In Word 2007 to 2013, click the option button in the Styles group and then right-click on your chosen style and click Modify.

For example, if we wanted to change our Heading 1 style, used for Module Titles, this is what we would do:
Now, we can change our formatting and it will be applied to all the headings in the document.

For more information on making Word work for you, please refer to Word 2010 Essentials by Practical Learning Group’s Courseware.
Materials Required

All of our courses use flip chart paper and markers extensively. (If you prefer, you can use a whiteboard or chalkboard instead.)

We recommend that each participant have a copy of the Student Training Guide, and that you review each module before training to ensure you have any special materials required. We include worksheets that can be reproduced and used where indicated. If you would like to save paper, these worksheets can often be transferred to flip chart paper, instead of having individual worksheets.

We recommend these additional materials for all workshops:

Laptop with projector, for PowerPoint slides
Tips and Tricks Tutorial for students to take home
Timer or watch (separate from your laptop)
Masking tape
Blank paper

Other optional (but fun) materials include:

Name cards
Stuffed toy
Small prizes or candy

Housekeeping Items

Take a few moments to cover basic housekeeping items.

Let participants know where they can find washrooms, break facilities, and fire exits.
Ask participants to turn off their cell phones or at least turn them to vibrate. If they must take a call, request that they do it outside.
Take this time to encourage the group to ask questions and make this an interactive workshop. Stop occasionally to provide an opening for questions to be asked.
Tape a sheet of flip chart paper to the wall and mark it “Parking Lot.” Explain that any questions that can’t be answered, or that are more appropriate for a post-workshop explanation, will be placed here and dealt with at the end of the day.
Write the words Respect, Confidentiality, and Practice on a piece of flip chart paper and tape it to the wall. Explain to participants that in order to get the most out of this workshop, we must all work together, listen to each other, explore new ideas, and make mistakes. After all, that’s how we learn!

Maximising Your Training Power

We have just one more thing for you before you get started. Our business is built for trainers, by trainers, so we thought we would share some of our tips with you, to help you create an engaging, unforgettable experience for your audience.

Make it customised. By tailoring each course to your participants, you will find that your results will increase a thousand-fold.

Use examples, case studies, and stories that are relevant to the group.
Identify whether your participants are strangers or whether they work together. Tailor your approach appropriately.
Different people learn in different ways, so use different types of activities to balance it all out. (For example, some people learn by reading, while others learn by talking about it, while still others need a hands-on approach. For more information, we suggest Experiential Learning by David Kolb.)

Make it fun and interactive. Most people do not enjoy sitting and listening to someone else talk for hours at a time. Make use of the tips in this book and your own experience to keep your participants engaged. Mix up the activities to include individual work, small group work, large group discussions, and mini-lectures.

Make it relevant. Participants are much more receptive to learning if they understand why they are learning, and how they can apply it in their daily lives. Most importantly, they want to know how it will benefit them and make their lives easier. Take every opportunity to tie what you are teaching back to real life.

Keep an open mind. Many trainers find that they learn something each time they teach a workshop. If you go into a training session with that attitude, you will find that there can be an amazing two-way flow of information between the trainer and trainees. Enjoy it, learn from it, and make the most of it in your workshops.