In the beginning of November all four partner organisations from Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia gathered in Zoom to continue with our short-term training events. The Estonians and Latvians “e-flyed” to Slovakia, meaning as there are still due the Covid crises no options for us to meet in person, we continued in online mode. Our aim is to stay on the project track and introduce each other our organisations common practices and training themes, with the mission to develop along the project activities a curriculum with the special focus on increasing learning efficiency, learner-centeredness and basic skills of adult learners.
This time it was the turn of topcoach.sk from Slovakia. Topcoach is an innovative educational organisation, which has rich experiences in the design of trainings and workshops, to educate adults and youth. They have created their own keynote format leTalk and in-house academy for future leaders called NewLeaders Academy.
In this online session we focused on gamification, motivation and feedback in the training process. Ingrid Schostokova Krupickova introduced us to the topic gamification, and not only introduced, but also allowed us to experience it. For the bigger part of the participants gamification was known more or less, but not used as much. The session gave a glimpse to it as an option, but also questions arose – how to hold the balance in the learning process, so “playing” would not take over the deeper focusing. All agreed it needs more reading into, thinking and practicing. The topic related to motivation of participants in training was addressed by Jana Lednarova and giving feedback in the training process by Zora Inka Groholova. Amongst many other key principles for creating a learning environment which supports the learners self-directedness, the concept of a fixed and growth mindset, achieved special attention and should definitely be one of the core themes in our designed curriculum. We as well got a reading tip from Zora – Radical Candor by Kim Scott hits the waves in the professional circle of coaches and trainers.
But there is more to discover of the experiences of Topcoach – in spring 2021 we still hope to really fly to Slovakia to continue our short-term training event. When it is not possible, we continue in online mode. Until then we can already use the experiences in our curriculum development process. Right now every partner organisation is working on their training plans.