When Goalposts Change
Responding to Members' Training Needs in the Face of World-Wide Disruption
The TORCH Heritage Programme is pleased to circulate this call by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) to contribute to the development of their online training programme in response to the COVID-19 crisis. If you have any ideas on this (big or small), please get in touch with Elizabeth at conference@archaeologists.net
Explorations of remote access attendance have never been more essential than in the face of a world-wide lockdown, where all of us are having to (at short notice) re-evaluate and re-design how we deliver our work. Remote access attendance, to widen our geographical reach and reduce travel (and with that our carbon footprint) has always been a factor when designing training and workshops, but with this sudden change in working environment, comes the impetus to change expectations and explore different ways of delivering training by utilising the ever-increasing digital platforms and improved connectivity.
Re-evaluating and re-designing
By utilising digital platforms, we trialled a recent digital workshop looking at CIfA accreditation, funded through our Historic Environment Scotland grant. We are sustaining this momentum by working to expand our digital learning programme and are preparing a number of digital workshops and training opportunities. These range from live digital workshops and webinars to expanding our suite of e-learning modules.
We don’t know how long the pandemic is going to last, so it is crucial that we adapt our methods of service delivery to ensure our membership still has access to high quality training opportunities. We hope that one positive legacy of the lockdown is that it will change how we as a profession deliver and access training, CPD, network or attend meetings.
Can you help?
While we are already re-designing some of our planned workshops and events to be delivered via digital platforms, we are looking at what more we can create and facilitate through partnership and collaboration. This is where you come in!
Do you have any specialist skills that you would be able to share – this could range from career advice (general or perhaps a specific specialism) or a training workshop that you already have prepared? Are there other training opportunities we could be signposting to? Is there a specific theme we should be including within our digital learning programme? If you have any ideas on this (big or small), please get in touch with Elizabeth at conference@archaeologists.net
