Tips and Tricks to Incorporating FPT Values in the Design of Your Training

The following tips have been arranged according to their appropriate values.

Grounded in Women's Realities

• Contextualise your training. Use examples that are relevant to your participants' cultures, age, nationality, race.
• Present different scenarios and examples. This is a good way to cover a range of realities and experiences that your participants can relate to (this is especially applicable to regional or internation training, or if the participants come from different communities and /or cover a broad age range).
• Allow time for the participants to check in on their 'real lives'. Multiple burdens outside the training may impede learning and participation. If participants have time to deal with what's happening at home or at work, they will be more focused during session.

Secure

• Create spaces within the training that will allow participants to raise issues and ask questions anonymously. For example, set up a box where the participants can put in their questions during breaks and then make sure to check the box regularly to respond to their questions and issues. This is particularly important in technology-type training because women are often intimidated because of the way they’ve been socialised into thinking that men and boys are more technologically inclined that women and girl
• Balance between raising issues about security in communications and creating fear within your participants. Make sure that if you are raising an online security issue, that you are prepared to give solutions or further material to solutions so that you don't create unnecessary anxiety in your participants.

Appropriate / Sustainable Technologies

• In planning your training and selecting the technologies that you will teach, base it on the technologies that your participants are already using and what is available in their contexts.
• Please don't waste time on technologies that you know will not be useful. For example, teaching mobile phone applications that only work with high-end mobile phones when you know that not all of your participants can afford it. This is both disempowering and a waste of time.

Creative / Strategic

• Use examples of clever ways other women's rights activists have used the technology that you are teaching.
• Open discussions on participants' ideas around using the technology you are teaching.
• Synthesise hands on exercises with discussions on how the participants can appropriate the technology they just learned.

Emphasising the Role of Women in Technology

• Get familiar with women in your participants' contexts who have had impact on technologies.
• Be conscious of which stories you are telling as examples in your training: are they all stories of men techies and leaders of industry? If so, make sure that you tell the stories of women in technology as well.
• Women have diverse experiences in technology. Make sure that you cover a range of experiences (i.e., from women who are afraid of technology to women who have made significant contributions to technology).

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Emphasising Women's Control of Technology

• It's in bad form to take the mouse away from a participant during hands on. If they are having trouble with the hard ware, try to talk them through it first.
• Don't shy away from being too technical. But don't be too technical that the participants' don't understand you. If you're going to go into heavy technical detail, try to use metaphors to explain the technical terms.

Transparent / Open

• Make your intended learning outcomes clear from the start of each session. This way the participants will be able to locate where they are in the training.
• Revisit the agenda everyday and negotiate changes based on what has transpired. Do not make changes to the agreed upon agenda without discussing with the participants.

Participatory / Inclusive

• A good rule of thumb is to limit presentations to 15 mins. This would allow for more time for questions and discussions. Cover the basics and the broad topics, and then deepen when the participants ask questions.
• Technology training works best when there is a lot of room for hands-on exercises. Augment your hands-on with a post-exercise discussion that deals with how they can use that technology that they just learned.
• If time permits, get to know your participants before you meet face to face. Learn as much as you an about them. This will help you customise your training more.
• You can survey them to find out what kind of learners they are http://www.personal.psu.edu/bxb11/LSI/LSI.htm. It would inform you as to how to prepare your training.
• To allow for different learning styles, use a variety of methods in a training session. For example, in a training for blogging, it might be good to complement your presentation (for auditory learners) with hand outs (for visual learners) and hands-on exercises (for tactile learners).
• Managing beginners and advanced participants. One way to do this is to bring those that already know that topic in as facilitators or “mentors” that will assist the beginners.
• Manage the talkers and the quiet ones. If someone is taking over all of the discussions, then the training becomes an exclusionary space. Prioritise those that speak less by checking in with them privately to find out if there are barriers to their participation.
• Have small group discussions. This is a great way to get those who are less comfortable talking in big groups to share.

Fun!

• Don't rely too much on power point presentations. There are other more interactive visual tools and methodologies that you can use.
• In some contexts, ice breakers diffuse tension and facilitate a more engaging atmosphere. But make sure that your ice breakers are appropriate for your participants.
• Allow for time and activities that show that technology can be fun. Guided hands on exercises can be designed in ways that make their experience of technology fun.