A Moodle for Parent Volunteers in Schools Introduce Little lighter No technical stuff in here - technomoron bit of a Case study on how Moodle is being used to help volunteers

Moodle Dept. eLearning Dept. Training Dept. Small organisation – 4 staff – might be at service of over 5000 volunteers P&Cs – PTAs etc You may also know them as beast you have avoided

Who and what? All are volunteers Corporate Governance training Who do we train and what would we train them in? Lot of literature on training volunteers and a lot on using moodle Difference – no assessments Motivation for engagement is different A lot of motivation is ntrinsic – but we threw in a few bribes Corporate governance – fundraise, money, employees In this light we started from scratch – one year old…. Still in nappies. Somethings have been very successful…and then sometimes we have had to change those nappies Forum conversion and loss

Volunteers and learning Motivated Split our volunteers in three levels – so you can see how we are targeting our moodle First level - motivated Always the first to put their hands up, do things such as organising bake sales

Credit: ‘Bad Moms’ 2016 STX Entertainment They are active at face-face training and in moodle. In fact they would do training no matter what format Some of these are also taking some of the workload off me in Moodle (bit later) Credit: ‘Bad Moms’ 2016 STX Entertainment

Volunteers and learning Motivated Reluctant reluctant to attend face to face training – main target with Moodle 1 Accessibility – own example Time poor – mums, jobs lacking in confidence – not turn up, do it in own home Training in a readily accessible format – mobile learning Last – probably not attend training or use moodle knowledge and skills– but target them indirectly

Why Moodle? Accessibility Community focus (forums) Costs (not-for-profit) Accessibility – face-to-face not for everyone Community -- Inspiration – membership of a few online forums 2500km – never see each other Forums major part Example – country school with 23 kids – hands in same pockets all the time Costs – travel, accommodation, insurances, time – then maybe 8 turn up Provide similar with webinars

What we’ve learnt Social media integration is key While we’ve only been doing this 12 months – we’ve been helping volunteers since 1921 Demographic – females, mums, home, employed, semi-employed, varying levels of education Feeding from Facebook to Moodle Eg discussion prompts Competitions – publications, memes surveys These are all baits to bring people in

What we’ve learnt Use volunteers Define roles for them Volunteer Regional Contributors Define a role for them – certain privileges

What we’ve learnt They lurk! Monitor activity Logs activity reports FAQ example – 100 FAQs Next challenge – get them out from hiding

What we’ve learnt Branding We don’t use term Moodle – sorry – we want to Keep it as a community Also make it visually appealing – lots going on and changed often 2nd marketing spot - Download the guide - prompts

What we’ve learnt Make it easy for them Sometimes taking next step is a barrier Looking into Facebook plug in authorisation method Branded app They are volunteers after all

Thanks Without developers we wouldn’t be able to do what we do