In order to help media trainers to develop their own skills as effective and equipped trainers, MEDA developed its "train the trainers" program.

Effective TTT programs will teach trainers such skills as how to facilitate a training session, how to plan and design training courses, how to develop presentation skills, how to mange the classroom, how to deal with students/trainees who have some trouble or problems, how to learn and practice effective coaching, and how to develop a competency approach to instructional and hands-on training courses.

The following paragraphs provide definitions and brief description of these groups.

1) Teaching Skills:

The trainer as a teacher has to develop his/her teaching skills. A specialist in faculty development will help the trainers to develop their teaching skills, by providing consultation on teaching, including: class organization, evaluation of students, in-class presentation skills, questioning, and all aspects of design and presentation. The specialist will also advise the trainers on other aspects of teacher/student interaction, such as: tutoring, advising, discipline policies and administration. He will help the trainers to develop their ability to teach people at different skill levels.

2) Facilitation skills:

A trainer, in addition to being a teacher, is also a group facilitator. Given the diversity of skill levels and ability to work with a group of trainees is an important skill for the trainer to possess. Therefore, the trainer has to learn that moving too fast, or not explaining the information in a language that is familiar to all students, will make him lose at least some of them. Developing facilitation skills will help trainers to minimize the gap between the trainees on different skill levels.

3) Interpersonal skills:

Interpersonal skills are goal-directed behaviors used in face-to-face interactions, which are effective in bringing about a desired state of affairs. The level of interpersonal competence is a real distinguishing factor between the successful and unsuccessful trainer. People who are able to consciously manage the way they relate to others are much more successful in terms of achieving their goals.


4) Instructional Skills:

The main goal of this "TTT" session is to provide detailed guidelines for designing, developing and validating instructional materials based on principles of instructional design. In other words, this session will help the trainers to develop new skills that make them able to identify appropriate course structures and teaching strategies to achieve the goals of instruction, which will maximize learning.

A specialist in instructional design and curriculum development will help the trainers to produce and evaluate learning materials for use in their courses. Working with the specialist, the trainers will be able to learn methods for managing individual and small group instruction, to Identify methods for reinforcing students during tutoring activities and to describe techniques for reporting the results of the instructional activity.

5) Team Building Skills:

The main purpose of this session is to enable working relationships through exercises designed to promote team-building skills. Critical issues such as barriers, trust, integrated decisions and goals are addressed. Participants will be introduced to their role, and learn techniques and tips for developing team interfacing skills as they obtain understanding of different personality types and learn how to deal with them in order to develop successful Teams/Works Groups. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to develop the skills and the techniques that are needed for reducing barriers between Organizational Functions, Departments, Levels and Staff. Participants will also learn how to make group decisions, and how to reinforce the application of these skills to the workplace.

6) Research Skills:

This part of "TTT" program is designed to provide an introduction to research skills, including an understanding of how information and knowledge is produced in society and organized by libraries and indexing systems; how to develop and focus a research topic; how to create a strategy for finding information; how to determine the range of possible sources; how to use print and electronic sources to locate information; how to organize information from multiple sources and how to evaluate and cite information found.
This workshop will help the trainer to develop the main research skills necessary to becoming a successful researcher. Developing each skill is broken down into several detailed steps that the participants can follow while researching a particular topic in media related subjects, or any other subject.

7) Mentoring Skills:

MEDA trainers will not always be working in class environment. They will be asked from time to time to be mentors for some interns in the MEDA Internship Program. In order to be able to fulfill this task, MEDA trainers need to develop their own "Mentoring Skills".

This program introduces mentoring, and offers the skills and techniques needed to cope with the more difficult aspects of being a mentor. It will increase the trainer's understanding of his/her strengths and limitations as a mentor; and give him/her the chance to explore why some mentoring relationships work better than others.

8) Developing Assessment Skills

This workshop enables participants to develop the required skills needed to become qualified Workplace Assessors. It equips participants with skills to plan, conduct and review assessment of individuals' competency levels in the workplace. It is an in-depth look at the assessment stage of developing human resources.

This workshop is designed for the people who are involved in the assessment of competency in the workplace and/or at the conclusion of training. This may include trainers, consultants, human resource specialists, managers and frontline managers.