TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Ognian Gadoularov
Aims
What skills, attitudes, actions and experience are developed during the training process?
• Improving the knowledge and skills of trainers in the field of working with groups;
• Ability to set and achieve educational goals;
• Development of competences for understanding and facilitating individual and group learning processes;
• Development of skills to design training programs based on the principles of non-formal learning;
• Development of skills for managing the process of self-directed learning;
• Development of skills for successful interaction and teamwork;
• Development of skills for effective communication in learning environments;
• Development of skills to use non-formal learning and interactive teaching methods as tools for training.
The group was composed from 16 participants (8 from Bulgaria and 8 from Romania), 2 trainers (Ognian Gadoularov and Bogdan Romanica) and 4 junior trainers.
The target group of the training process is composed of trainers and education professionals working in the field of non-formal learning and youth work. The program is aimed at people who are using interactive teaching methods for the development of competences involved in the project activities and active in the process of personal development and training.
Conducting the program is based entirely on interactive learning and the principles of NFL. Behind the methods selected for the training are the following principles:
• Active involvement of the participants - stimulating their initiative;
• Flexibility of the learning process - to meet their specific training needs;
• Sharing best practices and experience;
• Creating practical dimension of the learning process.
The participants in the program are placed in an environment that requires their active involvement and high level of participation and expression. They have to cope with challenges and tasks using limited resources to make decisions and to track the results of their actions. Trainers guide participants to effectively interpret lessons from experiences and turn them into skills and attitudes needed for future work.
The principle of learning by doing and experiencing helps participants to develop and practice real skills that will be useful to them in the future.
Certain working methods are planned for the training, all of them based on the non-formal approach. It is focused on the needs of participants and their experiences. The methods are participatory and leave space for individual involvement. Included in the learning process, guided experiences lead to the internalization of new theoretical fundamentals (the participants discover and understand new theoretical tools, instruments and methods), skills development (the participants get involved in methods and activities that develop the 8 key competencies of Life Long Learning), individual and group practice (the participants have the chance to create and implement methods, activities, plans for their own realities).
All activities and working methods contribute to the process of non-formal learning such as games, debates, simulations, energizers, icebreakers, communication games, get to know each other activities, group discussions, guided practice, coaching sessions, creativity activities, reflection activities, open space and many more. The training is focused on the personal development of the participants. The selected activities and methods have to empower the youth workers and trainers, to become more confident, more motivated and more competent. Thus they will contribute to social development by transferring the experiences and knowledge to their everyday work. Besides the Experiential learning principles, which are familiar to many trainers, there will be included in this training new principles and instruments, such as Socio-cognitive learning, Self-efficacy, Multiple intelligences, Learning styles - concepts that will enrich non-formal education.
The results of the process can be found in EU project database (http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/ ) as a results of the project - 2014-1-BG01-KA205-001743
At the end of the program, participants were able to:
• To plan, organize, conduct and evaluate a learning process based on NFL;
• To participate effectively as part of a team in executing tasks;
• To pass on knowledge using interactive methods and principles of NFL;
• To identify their own learning needs and actively seek opportunities to fulfill them;
• To apply several methods of NFL and interactive teaching.
At the end of the program, participants knew:
• Theories on the learning processes;
• Approaches for facilitating individual and group learning;
• Interactive teaching methods;
• Principles for the design of training programs;
• Methods for assessing learning outcomes.
I was main expert during preparation of project, methodologies, training manuals and implementation of the training.