Following on from Leary’s Rose Snez gave the group the background to the development of the 360 and trios which were developed over the previous Guild meetings in Budapest and Ireland. She explained that the process is still under development and that the members who are working on this are keen to get feedback from the participants here in Austria.

The 360 is a two stage process which was piloted with participants of the meeting in Ireland. The steps are…

• 360 assessment – trainers request feedback from participants of their training courses, those who have employed them to deliver training and their peers. The feedback that is gathered from the three sets of people and it directly relates to the ETS competences that have been developed by SALTO. Once all the feedback has been received the trainer will receive a report including statistical information and text comments which will then be used in the trios.
• Trios – the trainers who have received their feedback reports form trios (groups of three) and together they share their feedback with each other. The trio then support each other to interpret their feedback and set personal goals and objectives in their professional development and build on their learning path.

Snez explained that the purpose of the 360 process was to actively encourage the continuous professional development of members of the Guild. As part of the membership application people are asked to give information about their learning path, which in turn feeds into the 360 process and allows them to build on this moving forward.

AppRaise your practice

Following the piloting of the 360 process and the Trios in Ireland, a full Erasmus+ KA2 application has been developed to create an app called AppRaisal which would support the implementation of the 360 process. To support the application the Guild carried out a consultation survey with trainers which had 118 responses providing valuable feedback and input into the design of the project and the app.

It is envisaged that the app will include five areas…

• An online space for trainers
• The 360 self assessment tool and process
• The ability to collect feedback from participants, colleagues, clients on a regular basis
• Tools to plan and monitor professional development, communication with Trios and opportunity to set goals
• Ongoing process with learning path

The outcomes of the Erasmus+ KA2 application to develop the app should be received in the coming week and will be a significant project for the Guild.

In order to continue to gather feedback from participants the group was invited to join five groups to discuss the following topics…

• What trainers think 360 is?
• Practices of reviewing trainers performance – analysing the survey results
• Self assessment process
• Completing the 360
• How to set learning objectives and plan
• How Trios work

The discussions from the groups will be shared on the blog following the seminar.

Reflecting on 360

To close the session the group were invited to give their reflections on the 360. The participants felt that the discussions in the groups were really valuable and generated new ideas that hadn’t previously been consider- its refreshing. Ultimately the important thing is whether people use the process and some people said they would definitely be interested in using the app and paying for it annual.

It was clear that many members of the Guild were extremely passionate and dedicated to making the 360 a reality for trainers and embedding it as a fundamental tool for the professional development of trainers.

Check back on the blog later today for the next instalment from Youth Trainers Reboot.