Koha-US KohaCon22, 27 Sep 2022

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From YouTube: Train the Trainer - Keeping your Staff Up-To-Date with Koha

Description

Presenters:
- Jessie Zairo (ByWater Solutions)
- Kelly McElligott (ByWater Solutions)

Slides:
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x8gucF_lj_V1zs4TT5_-U9tucps7K_Y6/view?usp=sharing

A

Hi, it's us again, I promise. This is our last.

B

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In honor of talking about train the trainer, we are wearing our Monday minutes shirts, which really kicked off this entire, like train the trainer.

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So again, uh We've introduced ourselves a hundred times, so uh we work at by Water Solutions. We both started out as educators um and we started doing Monday minutes as a way to share quick short ingestible videos that would teach people how to do something. In koha, we looked at our YouTube statistics to see how long people were actually watching the videos- and it was anywhere from about two to five minutes- was kind of like our sweet spot. After five minutes, people would fall off.

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So our goal with Monday minutes was to essentially create these digestible videos and make it really easy for people to learn something special in koha and we just realized. We hit three years foreign.

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And they go out all over the country all over the world really I mean we send them not only to our partners but to the koha community in general. So it's we wanted. We made it a mission to make sure that we essentially share that knowledge with with alcohol users. Well,.

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And Jesse and I don't think Brendan's here, but that's really what Brendan believes in in this company Bywater is to share the knowledge and the education. So it's giving everybody the opportunity to learn this, whether they're a partner of ours, it's all accessible online and to you know, continue to educate and keep people knowledgeable about this software foreign.

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Because we like to party um learning outcomes so today you know part of our job in the beginning and still to this day is, is creating content and making um education out there. So we want to talk to you all because, as Librarians you have new staff or you're migrating to koha or there's upgrades. So how are we going to get some best practices for engaging those Learners I mean we're going to talk about that, so I'm not going to jump into that.

C

Yet um we're also going to learn activities to encourage discussion so also important to think about is how to get your staff engaged and thought-provoking and workflow, and how are we going to make this an easy process like koha gives you many ways to do the same thing, and that's really how to engage that discussion with your staff to say it's: okay, if you go up here and I go over here, we're going to get to the same place and, finally, um how to plan for sessions to meet learner goals and objectives.

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It's really important to know that each individual staff member learn differently.

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You know whether those tutorial videos are the best digestible content, or is it step by step, or is it doing it themselves or is it something in their hand that they can hold versus looking it on the computer, all those things we should think about and making sure that we meet those goals and objectives of our staff and make them feel as most comfortable as we can so first got to develop a plan whether this plan is you're migrating to koha or you're.

C

Like you know what every time we have an upgrade staffer kind of on edge, so let's figure out what's the best plan to get them all ready to go on that upgrade.

C

So you know we think about these larger libraries that you have I came from a very small Library, so it's kind of different for me, but I know for the larger libraries out there or even 20 people. You need to realize that maybe it's better to start kind of a train. The trainer get.

C

Somebody involved get a few folks involved in your staff to um to pass on that word, because why consistency we want to make sure we're getting the same thing to the people, not hearing it from Jesse one way and hearing it from Kelly another! That's going to cause confusion and frustration overall. So consistency in the message and the education part getting acceptance of your library staff so making it so your library staff all know what to expect.

C

Okay, I'm gonna get a you know the release, notes or I'm going to get an overview or I'm going to get. This is specific to my area. What should I get and what I, what I'm going to see so that acceptance communication just that transparency, we all know Quahog gets upgraded twice a year, but do our staff so making sure that gets communicated. This is great. This is how we evolve.

C

This is how Koh is going to get better, so communicating and getting people prepared and again then again talking about that tailored learning, making sure that we're really getting all the ways we can communicate and teach our staff the best way possible. If we know that somebody prefers it in one format, let's make sure that that happens and tailor that learning to them. If they need 15 minutes to go, watch 10, YouTube videos and that works better for them.

C

That's absolutely something you should think about, because that's how they're going to feel the best that they can feel about their workflow.

A

Yeah actually Nick gave us some really good feedback when he came to buy water solutions.

A

Traditionally we would have a blog post with a video on it and Nicole created this robust collection of videos, but they did not include step-by-step instructions and I. Remember Nick, saying like I am a you know, I like to read step-by-step instructions he's like the video is great, but I want to also see those those step-by-step instructions and so moving forward.

A

That was our goal was to include different types of mediums, whether you're, you know an auditory or a visual, or you know you want to see those step by step so like we take all of that into consideration to make sure that we're meeting all of those different needs.

A

So, who should be the trainer?

A

um Someone that you know you can rely on someone that you know is well respected, someone that gets along with staff, someone that staff feels really comfortable talking to so they can give feedback. You know how many times have you been in a presentation or in a meeting.

A

You ask a question and everyone just kind of sits there and looks at you, and you know, they're thinking something you can see it processing in their mind, but they're, not asking you know you want to make sure that you have somebody, that's comfortable, that they feel comfortable, asking questions to uh good communication skills, um as Kelly mentioned in the last slide. You want somebody to be able to express the correct message, um be transparent and make sure you're getting that um that level of communication across and then, of course, being flexible and open.

A

You know being able to process and work with those individuals at various times. You know maybe have warning sessions afternoon sessions or making on-demand videos or materials available for your staff.

C

um So you know overall, we know that. Probably if you have a staff of you know your library staff, one of the things that you know are going to come up is upgrades and that's where I always think that this is where you know. This is a great opportunity to think about what you can do and how you can build that curriculum um in in working with your staff, so defining the purpose, whether it's a migration, an upgrade or new staff moving into new roles.

C

That could be a different curriculum, but that purpose is to further the education of your staff, training outcomes, maybe a timeline or the expectations of what you're looking for your staff to see, give them that time period or a nice goal, or you know that expectation of what to have done at what point so setting those training outcomes, because we all want to be ready for a migration. We all want to be ready for an upgrade and have everyone feel really good and really solid about coming into that day, um ready to excel design.

C

What they'll learn I went to a I've, been to many um libraries training and it's amazing. What Librarians will bring to be prepared. I saw somebody print, the manual brought it in a binder and they were like and they had something um labeled on the front of it. You know one of those like dymo labels that you print out, and it said um oh shoot. It said like ah something: it was a Todd saying about a fire hydrant.

C

Do you know that saying or it's like the fire hydrant's gonna, like you, can't drink from a fire hydrant like something like that, so you can't learn at all, but just try to get little digestible again, digestible pieces of that, and she had that like on the binder to understand like this is a lot look at this binder, but I'm going to be fine I'm going to take it in little bits and little bits and to see people grow like that is amazing and they went in super happy and we should go back to training outcomes or mat back to who's the Train, the trainer, somebody who is positive as well like just that positivity, because you know we drive from each other's um feelings.

C

So if you have a you know, a Negative Nancy out there that that person is never going to give that same positive feeling, as somebody like, maybe Jesse, um who's gonna, bring. That excitement and like this is great um and then create training, materials. I know we all have so much time in the day to do this, but it's really great to have the opportunity to have like this is. This is what we are looking for.

C

You know how do we get a some material that we can repurpose time after time and just update as we go? We had an offline Circ binder. So how often do we run the offline Circ, not very often, but that binder was there. So we were like ready to go or having Circ policies at the desk somewhere, because then they know they can refer back to something in writing that they know.

C

So that could be as simple as something that training materials to give them the opportunity to have a backup, and they don't have to remember everything.

C

Oh bring the excitement, nine o'clock, they knew who'd a book for a nine o'clock right, so you know as well as being positive like just having that person. That's interactive, I, don't know anybody like that in this room. Do you Jesse? No, it's pretty sad um I think that everybody um has that person on their staff or knows who those folks are that are the interactive that are ready to help anybody to be fun, to make it fun to be positive and to engage.

C

We've all seen. Those staff members that are just kind of you know not really like I'm so excited to come to work today. So you need somebody, that's going to be fun and engage that person to say it's gonna be a great day, because that thing we wanted to happen in koha is happening today. Today is the upgrade and we're going to have so much fun or learn about it before you get there and then it's going to be super fun still talking.

A

uh At one time somebody called us an ILS counselor, um you know being able to come and talk to us and you know, share their feelings. Talk about what's going on. This is a big step. Change management is very hard um and I think a lot of times. We try to channel that positivity and that excitement to our users. So we can keep that momentum going and uh that's always been our approach.

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um You know to to keep that to keep that excitement going all right so now we're going to share some tools that we uh use to make training exciting for for users.

A

So the first thing we'll talk about is documentation. So in our presentation yesterday we showed off a couple different things: the community manual, which is available online. It's also embed right in the staff interface, so it makes it really easy for users to get out there tutorial videos. There are fantastic tutorial videos. We saw on the first day's presentation, all of those that are available for Wrath reflect. Thank you um great videos out there, um various vendors, ptfs, Europe, Carolyn um and Libro interleaf. Everybody has information that they can share out there that's available.

A

So you don't have to recreate the wheel. Take a look at those videos share them with your users. Also The Coho Wiki Christopher Jason. Everyone has talked about sharing like jQuery on there and uh CSS. This is a great place for you to go and start look at that information.

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Sql reports um you know and to bring that information in so don't recreate the wheel check those places first and if you are not signed up for the koha community newsletter, make sure that you're on that list as well, because once a month a link will come out and I know it's available on social media. It comes through email that has a list of all of the tutorial videos that are shared with the koha community.

A

So you can see any new Publications that have come out from all different types of vendors that are using the the koha system.

C

We didn't talk about the koha upgrades, so you know when you know that that's come out, that's documented. We send out and I I know. I saw ptfs Europe had some upgrade webinar upgrade um tutorial videos on YouTube to get you know, people up to date and and get excited I get excited about things coming and I don't get to play with them all day. Long like y'all do um but just having that documentation to say oh 2205 has been released.

C

You know these are great things or just focus on circulation or focus on the cataloging and and looking at what's coming is also well documented and something you can really embrace.

A

And kohai us has fantastic tutorial videos every other Thursday and then, if you go to the website, there's also a learn section where you can see a lot of fantastic information, including um some cheat sheets. I'm, not sure what terminology do we use to call those those sheets reference reference sheets where you can download those and and just have them available for staff.

C

And we haven't created this Resource page for all this, but we will link all this out. Foreign.

C

There are also products that you can use if you're looking for and I've seen, some great ones, I think Brown Rock has something. What do we as a round rock we're going to show um utilizing different products, because everyone's workflow is different and being able to document document that for your own Library Tango is a brand new piece of software that we've just recently found out about.

C

Has anyone heard of Tango, yep, yep, yep, okay, perfect and that's really cool, to be able to do that with screenshots, and then um text involved as well, and it's a kind of nice workflow product? So if you haven't looked at that, go ahead and look at that, that's really cool um canva, I'm sure everyone's heard of Gamba yeah, um that's another way to make something really pretty I want to say: I went to a library.

C

um We have a Consortium of academic libraries in Massachusetts in their Consortium called Helm and I went to their training and they had so many um posters like in the bathroom the staff bathrooms about like they were moving to kohat, and just these really positive signs, and just this kind of motivation of like koha and and learning- and you know it was- it was really great to see that that staff is was getting excited or there was somebody on the staff to say, let's get excited and they used canva um screencastify.

C

Anyone use that, oh, yes, okay, that is also I, think all these are free. That is also free, um or at least they have a free piece of software. Screencastify allows you to um for free. Do a five minute video. They have nice little pointers, so it like accentuates what you're pointing at and you can send that to somebody through Google drive or a link, and that makes it really nice. So that's that's another way to do it and then Niche Academy, who is it? Oh Niche, Academy I, don't know it.

C

Do you know if that one's free? Is it okay? Perfect? So that's another way to break down the steps and create videos and steps to help your staff go through the process.

C

So it might be something your library, you know your town has through the Community Resources or something.

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C

That's wonderful. Some some folks in the room are saying that through their state they get Niche Academy for the libraries for free, so something you could always look up as well. I think we have a lot of resources that we might not know about right so and then I talked to somebody else. They use guide on the side which I don't know, is if it's free or not, but that's nice that, like it pops out and they're step by steps as well.

C

Does anyone I should ask if any oh good job Jesse we're right on anyone else, use any other products that we might have forgotten about that you use.

C

Perfect um somebody in the room is using Camtasia. We also use Camtasia. We have very few subscriptions. You have to be a select view because it is kind of expensive and the upgrades don't come. Yeah Michael, oh techsmith capture. Is that free or do you pay for that? It's free, perfect.

C

Oh web Junction, yeah, perfect, okay, I, think I've, I think I've. Seen that good, that's awesome!

C

Oh! So now we have some examples of how you can use these tools, create tutorial videos so think about it. Screencastify Camtasia, even doing YouTube, you can like just use the Camtasia and then put it up or use screencastify and put it up into YouTube um to create those tutorial videos techsmith those step-by-step instructions. I still imagine those binders at my Cirque dust that just had that process already written out or a process.

C

We don't do very often claims returned or lost getting into the the weeds of circulation like oh, what am I supposed to do when I come across this thing, those step-by-step instructions are great to have offline. Circ is another good example.

C

um Create a workflow PDF I feel like the loss process in coha was very convoluted back in the 1605 1705 versions. It's gotten a little bit better, but those workflow PDFs are live, send to be able to say this is the workflow and you can have it on the desk or somewhere that you can refer back to it. So just a nice workflow document that you can print out make pretty.

A

Creating cereals from scratch, remembering which dates that you have to have exact in order for your prediction patterns to start I've, seen some good ones for that: okay, Internal Documentation, there's our offline circulation workflow.

A

um We are going to show one that um Round Rock shared with us many years ago, when they were first going, live with koha that they've created I think it was called a red book. It was called a red book and it had different policies. It had you know, guidelines that they could use and I just remember, sharing that with other people as they started to go live um you know on their system and it was truly helpful for them to have.

A

You know think about those first couple weeks when you're transitioning to a new system, how many just little questions of things you don't do every day, you know adding a guarantee, or you know, to a geared tour or um setting up duplicating a patron. You know just like easy steps that they can refer to in the system.

A

This is round rocks. This is just a screenshot, an example from Round Rock yeah. um So this one was processing a new purchase suggestion, so um you know they could see a breakdown for staff. There was a screenshot of what it looks like how they can get there and then, of course, um the the red highlighting, so they can see where they're managing this information, um who's making and approving the suggestions um and then, of course, those steps. So this you know is just something great that you can set up and use for your users.

A

This next one is Avalon free public library and they are using Tango, or is this Niche Academy Niche Academy?

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um This was an example that they were using to show people how to um navigate the catalog, make a request, access, reading history and things like that, so just being able to have this on the website, so they can see that information um easily for them.

A

This was a dream that we had from koha us when they created their learn. Section I believe this was Jason.

A

Looking at you Jason, um they set up a beautiful way for people to easily come in and find information, and when we were kind of redesigning our koha, tutorials and and layout, we took a lot of the ideas that kohai us created, because we didn't want to recreate the wheel and.

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C

um I believe in continuous learning and I think that you know anybody that has changed jobs or has been promoted or started. Working in a new area or just migrates to co-op should really know that um we all want to continue to learn. We all want to be better people better selves, better at our job, um so that continuous learning is really important. If you're not doing that, please do some self-care on yourself for being you're being here. So that's continuous learning, you're really doing that, but remember check in with yourself.

C

Every three to six months am I doing something that is going to make me a better person or can I do something to make my staff better at their job, so making sure we're always learning um and I think we still learn doing Monday minutes every week.

C

um Keep your content fresh. So maybe you need to just update some things in your Internal Documentation or on your website. Your search policies are really old and that's what your staff is going back to to look at and you're like.

C

Oh, my gosh, we probably should update that um making sure your staff is aware of updates to Cohan how it's going to improve their world, how they're going to better themselves with these new features that are coming in koha and then um staff promotion, making sure that that learning is getting to your staff and and promoting your staff when they are really driven to learn, maybe SQL or something and highlighting that area in their world and I. Think I put a little quote here.

C

Oh tell me and I forget teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

C

So that's really important: Benjamin Franklin, smart man um and I'm a doer like if I learn something I want to do it Hands-On so again, we'll go back to those test sites having that access and knowing letting your staff know you can just play around in here if you're interested in going potentially to tech services, if you're, if you're in Circ, why don't you give it a shot or see what's involved and play around with it and watch those self-paced learning tutorial videos.

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C

Okay, I think everybody knows who we are Jesse, but those are our emails know where to find us. um Where do we? Do we miss anything questions.

C

Oh come on: oh.

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C

Open shot editor, which is a what free and open source software.

C

Screencast-O-Matic.

C

Oh, the camera app on Windows 11 to create videos as well. That's that's great thanks, we'll we'll put all these down.

C

I I also think that this could be a community effort if you do have something like Rhonda. You know that you want to say this is really helpful to my staff. You can always share it with others through the listserv and say: hey I. Have this or I'm looking for this? Does anyone already have this created?

C

um That's a great way to start to say this is really important. Oh um somebody that Andrew that used to work with us at Bywater who's now back to a public library. He had all the admin codes, so authorized values like printed up because you didn't have access to the admin when he was in whatever job he did at his library, but he had the code. So he could run the reports so giving people tools like that, where you don't have permission to get to that place.

C

But I have the access point to be able to get that and not have to ask somebody. Every time can I get the authorized values for collection codes to run a report.

D

Okay, I, don't remember exactly but I think we create a Wiki page a while ago for um education resources.

C

We did oh, we did yeah sure I think we did yeah yeah yeah. We do have a really good documentation team at koha community and we're doing great things. We just forget. We do them, that's how great we are if anyone's not been to the kohlha wiki I think it's wiki.cohot um hyphencommunity.org.

C

Training resources.

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C

Mentioned Jason the first open shot.

C

Okay, so Fred said it has some early challenges in learning the process, but then it gets better. Oh perfect,.

C

You can also get a login to edit the wiki I think you can request. If you ever want to this this also. um If anyone uses the koha report Wiki, you can add reports to the koha wiki with a login. There is a blog post on bywater's website to say how to add a report to a Wiki, because it's really fantastic. Of course we have them on a databases if you're not using that or you're, not sharing with that. You can do that as well.

C

But I know people are like I'm, a creature of habit and I'll go to the koha report with you before I do Mana most days you have a question Ray. Yes,.

C

Thought of wearing my sneakers today.

E

That way, I um so we're new to Kauai and uh I'm just curious. uh How often are people training their trainers because we're still in the newish phase, but I'm curious for y'all who've been with koha for a while? How often do you uh either drag people through training or strongly encourage it? Okay,.

B

Michael, oh.

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Honestly, it depends I mean we're just one single library, but it depends on what's in the upgrade so like depending on, if it's, if there's wide, ranging circulation stuff, that's new I might have a training for everybody that works at circulation desk, which is pretty much all our staff. But if it's just individual, like Acquisitions OR tech services, we sort of talk to the people who are in those areas and say you know: do you need more support, then other than what you're seeing provided by by water?

F

And we just kind of feel it out as we go? We don't have a huge staff so.

G

um I'm part of the Central Kansas library system, Consortium and we've got every time we have an upgrade. We have 53 libraries that all upgrade together and so that's a lot of training to do and what we, what I usually do is I, go through all the upgrade notes and just take note of things that there is actually going to affect them. We have a lot of one person, libraries, so they don't have time to sit down and watch along a long, webinar or a long tutorial, and then I'll just create a print tutorial.

G

That lists either are the things you need to know and if you have any more problems, just contact me because there's a lot of things that they don't really need to know and it's it's helpful to not overwhelm them with that.

D

um Just to add a slightly different perspective in my company, we provide support to libraries around Ireland and Europe and I'm often the one going into train and we have all kinds of different libraries. So we have Pub, um we have school libraries, we have.

D

um You know medical libraries, but uh one thing we do. We started doing this by two years ago, we kind of every year at the end of the year we go through how much training the different libraries have left. So if they've purchased training from us, we go through how much they have left and then we tend to send out an email just to update them.

D

Just so you're aware you have X amount of hours, left of official training and I'm, just saying that, because I've been shocked at the amount of libraries that don't realize they actually are entitled to more training from us. So if you're in a position of a support company, it's an idea just to remind people, but if you're a library I do think it's worthwhile contacting your support provider and just say I just want to confirm: do we have anything left?

D

Do we not because it's amazing how um frequent it is that people just don't take a note of the fact they have stuff left on the Dockers? Just to add that thanks.

C

Anybody else that was a good question, Ray.

C

Any other question: oh.

G

um I was inspired by Kelly and Jesse to create my own series of videos called five minute Fridays and.

G

I started that last year and we have um a lot of librarians where accessibility is a big concern. And so one of the things I learned was before recording a video is to increase the cursor size a lot so that it's easier to see what you're doing, and it's also really important to have a headset mic or something so that the sound is is always consistent. And it's always clear and loud.

C

We have to see these.

G

I decided to have some fun with it too, and our youth services department has tons and tons of fun, hats and so I always show up at the very end of the video wearing a different hat and it's kind of people's reward for sitting through the whole video.

C

Oh, that's, awesome, I know we're horrible with our sounds. We always forget to put our headsets on we'll learn.

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H

One problem I have encountered in doing videos actually two problems. First of all, if I use my headset mic, I keep hearing, so I got a phone foam cover, but the other thing is and I noticed this when I was listening to uh of something I was doing here earlier this week is uh when I take a break breath. It sounds like I'm about to die.

H

uh Do you have any suggestions? How someone with asthma, uh you know I tried using a nebulizer, but how can you do you have a wheeze filter.

C

We add closed captioning, which comes in YouTube. um We turn that on when we upload them. So you could always add your closed captioning so see what YouTube decides. Koha is spelled always wrong. Every time we use closed, caption I have to go and fix every Kohan.

I

This is not going to be of great help to you've read, but we have a um noise reduction feature in Camtasia that I use for everything, because I also do a.

J

Lot of the uh The Spits and the pops with my lips, and so that just calms it down, you might want to check with the open source thing and see if there's just a noise reduction filter that you can use.

C

Oh, that's good I'm, going to look at our Camtasia.

B

K

I was just going to say that we use I, can't remember what the software is and I think it was paid for, but um uh I do a lot of sort of uh sound editing on the videos before I put them out so take off the little pops and the wheezers, because they're actually quite distinct in the sound um feed. I, don't know the right word, um you know the thing: that's got lots of uppie Downey things um and you can really see the uh the wheezes and the ums.

K

You know I take out a lot of ums and R's and your nose so uh I do a lot of that audacity. Is that what it was foreign.

C

G

um As far as editing videos I use shortcut, which is a free free, video, editing, software.

C

Thanks this is I was also excited. Oh Andrew,.

K

uh I was just gonna also say that, um uh obviously, this event is great for sharing ideas, but we and other support companies and and Geographic user groups will do this. So we have an annual customer day and we always use that for um giving signposting the new features um that are coming out and sign posting our videos and our tutorials.

K

So we kind of have a Roundup at that event to make sure everyone's aware of what's either coming up or come up and then what resources are available for people to to check in on and use um so I'm sure kind of cover us might do that and other support companies who organize annual events might do that. But it's a good idea to do a sort of annual Roundup foreign.

L

Hardware hack, if you're having problems with plosives, which are those uh sort of explosions of sound uh foam, will help. But the best thing is to keep them away from the mic at all, and you can get what's called a pop filter for around ten dollars. U.S and they'll help a lot.

C

Oh, it's like a round screen you put in front of the microphone hop filter, perfect.

C

Anybody else anyhow, I've learned something today: Jesse have you yeah?

C

Thank you so much. Thank you and safe travels. Everybody, as you.