What happens when 170 workers from all over Asia decide for themselves which local issues they would like to address through their training?
The vision and passion of Increase Course Writer Training has inspired the responses above - and other positive responses!
Increase Course Writer Training has been going strong for some years now. New courses are already in use and more are in development. In our session at the 2022 Conference we wanted to give people a taste of the training.
Context
New courses do not start with the expertise of the writer. They start with the context of the students. We want to create courses that have an impact on believers and - through them - the communities they live in. In order to achieve this, the Course Writer Training starts by mapping out the context. This is part of the framework we use in the training: Situation Response Development (SRD). In our session we ran a small taster of this. We asked people to look together at an issue in their context and think about the following questions:
Who are the students?
What is the situation?
What are the people doing - or not doing?
What do the people believe - or not believe?
We then asked them to consider this issue as if it were according to God’s vision. What would people believe now? What would they do differently now? What will change in their lives?
This taste of the Course Writer Training was significant because it gave more than one team a glimpse of the possibilities of a course that would speak to their own specific context.
Teamwork
Writing a course doesn’t happen on your own. Writing a new course requires a tremendous time investment, but you are supported by your coach, your programme leader and other writers. One of the writing teams that has already published their course shared how they worked together. Increase coach Freda Carey and programme leader Sergey also shared their stories.
Discernment
We also asked the participants to listen closely to God. Is He calling you to write a course? Is He telling you as leader that your programme needs new courses in the curriculum? Writing a new course is not about our success or our achievement. It is only possible when the Spirit of God leads us and works through us.
A new course starts with prayer, not with our ambitions.
Training materials
If people follow the call to write a new course, they can make use of a range of training materials made available by Increase. This is a way of managing the workflow and helping writers each step of the way with just-in-time learning. It starts with an introduction to the educational principles underlying new courses. Then it takes them through the SRD framework (of which mapping the context is an important step) to learning how to build up a course with relevant aims, and how to write lessons.
Resources
For people looking to get started with the Course Writer Training we have created a resource that gives a quick overview of the timeline and important decisions. You can also access a PowerPoint presentation that includes questions on mapping context and an overview of training materials. Click here to go to the 2022 Conference page where both these resources are available, along with the video of the Course Writer Training plenary.
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