Developing Interpersonal Skills Training in Higher Education
The Institute offers to assist teachers in Higher Education Institutions (or other professional training groups and Colleges) wishing to develop their own Interpersonal Skills Training within their courses or programmes of courses. Two components may assist this.
- a facilitator training and/or development programme for the conduct of Interpersonal Skills Training in their own settings and
- an allied consultancy to assist them develop the elements, activities and materials of the training.
The training and consultancy are linked closely with the digital book “Interpersonal Skills Training in Higher Education” which will be available to and developed with staff involved.
This consultancy will be a piece of action research and collaborative inquiry developed with clients, who can be individual staff members, representatives of a Department or College or of a whole University. It will take any form agreeable to both parties and adapt to any developing situation and the progress of the learning.
For example, it might start by an open discussion exploring options, continue with a series of seminars and mini-worksphops by the consultant and the staff in the client group and lead to deeper and more thorough explorations of one or more selected appoaches. It might also include members of the client group seeking out external sources of training and skills development. An important option is for staff to offer facilitation of excerpts of training, together with sensitive and supportive self and peer assessment and accreditation. Once training trials were set up with students, regular review and problem-solving, coupled with re-enactment of critical incidents or trials of planned revisions could enhance staff skill and confidence.
Ultimately, staff would run all programmes together with their own peer support system and peer training. They would develop appropriate documentation, student learning materials and course- work, approaches to student application in live settings and individualised inquiry in the application, methods for self monitoring, recording and assessment, together with any approaches to peer review, critical incident analysis and replay of situations they determine as appropriate. Staff training for (or experience of) any element of the above, required by them, or as recommended by the consultant, could be provided in-house by the consultant or by selected internal or external experts of the relevant field.
Setting up the consultancy
To set up preliminary discussions about the feasibility and extent of any potential consultation, contact James by email initially.
