Synopsis
Even though Concourse is intuitive and user-friendly, your end users still need to be introduced to the platform and trained on its functionality in order to use it successfully. Before introducing Concourse to end users and expecting them to edit syllabi, you’ll need to make decisions about the amount and type of information to share, the format in which the information should be shared, and when the information should be shared with faculty. Additionally, there are many different ways your users will engage with Concourse, so it’s important to think about how you will provide training for all roles and responsibilities.
Keep in mind that the end users at your institution all have different experiences, skill levels, and preferences when it comes to technology, so the “right” choice for your training approach requires thoughtful conversation and careful planning. Continue reading to learn about the available options for training end users on Concourse so that you can make an informed decision.
Key Terms
- End users: end users are all the users at your institution who will engage with Concourse, from students to instructors, from template editors to reporters.
- Agnostic training: agnostic training is not specific to any institution’s Concourse environment; instead, it focuses on universal functionality of the platform, default labels and orders of items, and provides an overview of the ways Concourse may be used at different institutions.
- Syllabus Resource Center: Concourse’s live and on-demand agnostic training is facilitated in and hosted by the Syllabus Resource Center. The information available in this platform is free, but users must create an account to access the site and resources.
- Internal training: training developed by the institution for its users is considered internal. Internal training typically includes images and language that reflects your end users’ experience with Concourse.
Important to this Decision
Before making decisions about how your institution uses Concourse, you should consider how stakeholders, systems, timelines, and other factors are impacted. Review the important elements below to be better prepared to make changes to your Concourse configuration or implementation.
Academic leaders, faculty trainers, professional development staff, and your institution’s center for teaching and learning (if applicable) should all be consulted when making this decision.
The approach you use to train end users plays a role in adoption, usage, and accuracy. Choosing the best training option for your institution also equips users to engage with Concourse with less technical difficulties, thus decreasing the number of help tickets your IT support team receives.
Decisions about how to train end users need to be made in advance of training sessions, allowing enough time to develop and facilitate materials and/or sessions. Initial instructor training typically occurs near the end of the implementation process; however, you may choose to train users with more responsibility (e.g., domain editors) sooner since they may play a role in developing templates. Training new users and refreshing existing users about Concourse processes should become a standard part of your long-term workflow.
Training can be facilitated synchronously or asynchronously, in-person at your institution or virtually, through hands-on training sessions or via static materials. Your institution should choose the modality of training that best supports your end users.
You can use Concourse’s training materials, use Concourse’s training templates, develop your own training materials, or request custom training sessions and materials. How you approach training should be determined by two factors: the time and resources that can be invested into the project and what will best support your end users.
Providing adequate training for end users enables them to use Concourse successfully, meet institutional expectations, and ultimately provide students with a better syllabus experience. The choices you make for training will impact the long-term experience instructors and students have with Concourse.
Configuration Options
When it comes to training end users, your institution may use one of the following options:
- Option A: Agnostic Training Facilitated by Team Concourse
- Option B: Internal Training Guided by Concourse Training Templates
- Option C: Customized Training Facilitated by Team Concourse
It’s also possible that your institution may use some combination of resources from each training approach listed above. Because training will be offered to your end users regularly, not just once during implementation, your institutional Concourse Team will have several opportunities to reflect on the initial training approach and determine what elements to continue using, what elements can be improved upon, and what elements should be foregone entirely. You should expect to devote some time to reflecting on the success of training and remediation for future sessions or developing new materials. The more remediation or development you pursue in the future, the more time you can expect to invest in supporting and maintaining end user training.
If you have questions about training options after reading the options below, reach out to your implementation team for guidance.
Option A: Agnostic Training Facilitated by Team Concourse
- Approach: Concourse’s instructional designer develops and facilitates environment-agnostic live and on-demand training sessions that support faculty users. The images and demonstrations in these virtual sessions reflect the Concourse training environment and use default item labels. The sessions focus on Concourse functionality, which is consistent across the platform. These sessions advise instructors to reach out to their institutional Concourse team if the guidance provided does not answer all their questions.
- Effort: The time investment required for referring end users to agnostic training facilitated by Team Concourse is minimal. Links to Concourse training resources can be shared in an online toolkit, circulated at the start of term, or included in new faculty onboarding materials. If this is the training option your institution chooses, no additional time investment is required.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that do not have dedicated faculty trainers, professional development staff, or individuals on the Concourse Team who have experience with and feel comfortable developing and facilitating training for faculty.
| Advantages of Agnostic Training Facilitated by Team Concourse | Disadvantages of Agnostic Training Facilitated by Team Concourse |
| Concourse hosts live training sessions for different end users experiences: a welcome and introduction to Concourse for instructors, syllabus functionality for instructors, and syllabus functionality for domain users. | The live training sessions are not client-specific and therefore feature basic images from the Concourse training environment and default syllabus language; you may need to socialize any differences in your set-up or use to end users to prevent confusion. |
| Agnostic training by Team Concourse is facilitated in half-hour sessions that feature demonstrations. Convincing end users to attend a half-hour session or watch a half-hour recording may be more feasible for your institution. | Live sessions are fast-paced and do not give participants the opportunity to pause, reflect, and practice what they learn. |
| Attendees can ask questions during live training sessions and get responses from Concourse experts. | Team Concourse cannot answer questions about institutional expectations or configuration choices, so users may approach your internal Concourse team to ask for clarification. |
| Sharing agnostic Concourse training sessions with faculty is free and does not subtract from your institution’s Concourse support package. | Live Concourse training sessions might not match up with your calendar; faculty-focused sessions might not align exactly with the time when your end users should be engaging heavily with Concourse.
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- Approach: Concourse has created a series of training templates that can be customized and used for live and on-demand (asynchronous) training. The slide deck (for live training) and document (for asynchronous training or reference) both include instructions for customization. These training templates include screenshots and terminology that can be replaced with images and language from your institution’s Concourse environment to match labels and branding to give faculty an immersive experience.
- Effort: The time investment required for developing internal training resources based on Concourse’s training templates is more than the time investment for using agnostic training materials, but it is not as significant as the time investment for developing custom training. Depending on the amount of customization (editing) that must be done on the template slide deck or document, the resources can be completed in as little as an hour. Facilitating live sessions or distributing asynchronous materials increases the time investment for this training option.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that have dedicated faculty trainers, professional development staff, or individuals on the Concourse Team who have experience with and feel comfortable developing training for faculty.
| Advantages of Internal Training Guided by Concourse Training Templates | Disadvantages of Internal Training Guided by Concourse Training Templates |
| Instructor Training Templates allow the institution to choose what resources to include in training; end users always get exactly what they need and nothing extra. | Training templates focus on functionality that exists in every Concourse system. Your users may want to know the “why” of processes, so you may need to elaborate on these templates significantly to support end users. |
| Once Instructor Training Templates are customized to fit your institution, they only have to be revised whenever updates are made to your system. | Whenever updates are made to Concourse, such as when a new feature is released, you have to evaluate if end user training materials should be updated to include the new feature. |
| You can host live training sessions and share asynchronous training materials whenever and however works best for your institution. | Figuring out how to schedule internal training sessions or socialize asynchronous resources can be challenging depending on your trainers’ workloads. |
| Using Instructor Training Templates is free and does not subtract from your institution’s Concourse support package. | Differentiating internal training for novice versus experienced users takes more time and consideration to implement. |
- Approach: Customized training is developed by the Concourse instructional designer and facilitated for your end users, either live or asynchronously. Your institution’s Concourse team and Concourse’s instructional designer discuss the best approach for training your end users, and customized training is facilitated in your Concourse environment so that end users have an immersive experience. Live custom training sessions can be recorded and used for future training sessions.
- Effort: The time investment for using customized training facilitated by Team Concourse is significant, but it is usually only invested once. The custom training sessions take several hours to plan, develop, and facilitate, but the recording can be shared for training or refreshing faculty in future sessions.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that do not have dedicated faculty trainers, professional development staff, or individuals on the Concourse Team who have experience with and feel comfortable developing and facilitating training for faculty.
| Advantages of Customized Training Facilitated by Team Concourse | Disadvantages of Customized Training Facilitated by Team Concourse |
| Team Concourse leads demonstrations and answers technical questions so you don’t have to. | Team Concourse cannot answer questions about institutional expectations or other technologies, so someone from your institution must be present to respond to those questions. |
| Planning meetings for customized training are a one-time investment. The training session that results from these meetings can be recorded and shared over and over again. | If end users do not find the training session as helpful as expected, you may consider not sharing the recording with future cohorts and instead spend time developing new training materials to support their needs better. |
| Training is facilitated in your own Concourse environment and uses your specific institutional labels and language. | If changes are made to your Concourse environment in the future, you will need to manage socializing those changes to users when sharing the recording/materials. |
| Customized training targets areas or skills you think will present challenges to end users. | Customized training is time-consuming to develop and does deduct from your institution’s support package. |
Related Topics and Additional Context
Before making a decision about training end users, you should be familiar with some related issues and contexts. See the following resources for more information:
- Learn how to Create a Syllabus Resource Center Account
- Review the Instructor Training Templates
- Review an example agnostic training course for instructors
- Review an example agnostic training course for Concourse Admins (domain users, template editors)
Tell Us About Your Experience
Did this article answer your question? If you made a decision like this for your Concourse instance, let us know how it turned out. If we missed something in this article or if you have a question that isn’t addressed in our Knowledge Base, let us know how we can help by reaching out to
support@campusconcourse.com.
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