Recruiting and Training Volunteers

Comment by Megan Gray on December 10, 2009 at 8:36pm

Follow up to ASTC listserve posting:

Our institution has an all volunteer exhibit floor staff. Without regular, trained, experienced, floor staff available to train, model, and evaluate volunteers in this role, volunteers have relied on mostly content information resources and other volunteers (many of whom have scientific backgrounds and experience versus educational background, especially in the area of pedagogy). While we have lots of formal expertise in the community, we feel this sort of didactic/information-focused approach is not as effective with our visitors in our informal environment. Therefore, we have developed and implemented a new training approach for exhibit volunteers that focuses on:

1) Building rapport with visitors and tuning into their needs
2) Creating a safe and inviting environment for exploration and inquiry
3) Using effective questioning strategies and unique “hooks” to engage and inspire

What are the experiences and challenges you've faced with volunteers in the role of exhibit explainers? Are you interested or have you started to modify your trainings to focus on modeling inquiry, facilitation or interpretation techniques over traditional content? Let's discuss!

Comment by Andrea Motto on December 27, 2009 at 12:39pm

Hi Megan. That's a common challenge, especially with adult volunteer programs- actually with teens as well, if they get their training from others who have didactic styles. I've tried to set time aside to do teacher PD-type inquiry lessons, so volunteers can gain an understanding of the style I'm going for. Sometimes it works, but sometimes folks aren't comfortable with the open-ended stuff. At COSI we had a 3 part series, pt 1 introduced inquiry with a 2 hour activity, pt 2 introduced process skills, which can be used sequentially to conduct an investigation, or individually with exhibits, part 3 was practical application in exhibits. And at the Hall of science, we had weekly peer training sessions where staff got together and explained to and critiqued each other.

Comment by Megan Gray on December 29, 2009 at 5:20pm

Thanks for the insight. Short PD meetings are definitely in my plan for the coming year! I've recently introduced mini discussion sessions at the start of a volunteer shift around a topic, posed a challenge to the group of volunteers working with school kids for the day, and then conducted a follow up meeting to discuss and reflect on their experiences. Due to time constraints, this can't be done all the time, but even just 1-2 times a month, I can see it will make a difference. It's really about the specifics of approach, language, practice, and then reflecting on the actual responses of the kids that seems to make a difference. Baby steps...Awareness 1st and then behavior modification:)

Comment by Maija Sedzielarz on May 26, 2010 at 4:03pm

We have a small pilot program at a couple of libraries to provide a nature trading post, entirely staffed by volunteers. Since we have such a small volunteer corps (and constantly seem to be looking for new volunteers - but that is another discussion...), we do quite a bit in a one-on-one mode. We seem to be having some success with providing new volunteers with 4-5 scenarios that allow them to condsider how they might respond to situations, allow us to assess their level of comfort, experience or creativity in talking with visitors, and discuss possible alternatives for facilitation. I say "seem to" , since we haven't evaluated this approach, and in fact, haven't been able to follow up to see if this helps. We are in the midst of doing some volunteer interviews to see what volunteers suggest for training.

Comment by Preeti Gupta on May 26, 2010 at 4:14pm

i would be interested to find out what you learn from the interviews. I think scenarios are a real valuable way of training, but alas, we don't seem to have effective rubrics for evaluating if we have been successful. We see evidence of floor staff mimicking the trainers. Is that a good thing or bad? I think good thing in the beginning because it is one way to get comfortable and a step to start developing your own strategies.

Comment by Maija Sedzielarz on May 28, 2010 at 6:34pm

I will try to share some of our learning regarding volunteer response to this training tool. I would be interested in hearing more about how others are using scenarios. Here is an example of what we have used: (in written format, to start a discussion) "You are in the process of conducting a trade with a 5-year-old trader. When you ask “what do you know about this leaf, rock, seed, etc.?”, the child says “Nothing.” How would you respond?"

What resources has anyone found to be particularly helpful in designing facilitation-based volunteer training? Articles, colleagues, others?

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