SC's Training Team Highly Commended at OCN NI Awards

Karla Turner, Aidan Kearney, and Conor Flanagan at Titanic Belfast.

Supporting Communities was honoured to be recognised at this year’s Open College Network Northern Ireland Learning Endeavour Awards held at the Titanic Hotel on 15 June. Our training programme was awarded a commendation for a new category in the awards, ‘Advancing Learning through Innovation’.

When submitting us for the awards, our training officer, Karla Turner, wrote about her experience getting learners online during the pandemic.

“Supporting Communities was well placed to react swiftly and effectively to working from home during the pandemic”, wrote Karla. “Our team has always been spread around NI so working remotely was nothing new for us. The challenge was to bring our community groups with us when the delivery of our services changed, including the change to new online platforms to facilitate our training courses - something we had never done before.”

The training team used a combination of Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom to bring their students online, always finding ways to continue to support them in a friendly, approachable way even through a screen. We found this approach really worked for a lot of people, more so than in-person training which could limit access for those who had work or family responsibilities at the same time as a session.

Our training team also worked closely with OCN NI to assist in the development of ‘Ambition’, their new online platform that streamlines the delivery of our accredited courses, providing a complete learner experience, including virtual classrooms, online assessments, tutor feedback, and even a digital certificate when the course is completed.

Karla says our training service has advanced and adapted so much for our learners’ needs in such a short time, and it is very evident that the students like it. Attendance at our courses is up and we have been able to train far more people online these past few years than we ever managed to train in person before.

Rebecca Chambers is a recent graduate from our OCN NI accredited series in Community Development. She says these courses came along at the perfect time for her.

She writes, “My work at Lisburn Downtown Centre has allowed me to pursue my passion for mental health, but I knew a limited amount about community development when I first began. The Supporting Communities courses have developed my understanding of the values, processes, and principles underpinning community development and the benefits and challenges of community development practice. Completing the courses online has made it much more flexible and convenient – learning from the comfort of your own home without the worry of traveling, expense of fuel, or parking. Plus, you can do it all in your pajama bottoms!”

More Information

Supporting Communities offers a range of accredited and non-accredited courses to suit community groups wishing to develop their skills. We can help you identify the course which is best suited to your needs.

The Community Capacity Building series of accredited courses are an excellent foundation for any group and can lead on to further study at Ulster University for those who wish to continue towards a degree in Community Development.

These courses book up months in advance! If you are considering doing any further education this year, get in touch with karla@supportingcommunities.org to discuss your needs.