How to run a course during a pandemic

By Aygul Khalaileh

To say that the global pandemic has put a major test on our lives both professionally and personally as well as on our collective resilience is to say nothing. The past several months have been devastating for many, and extremely challenging for many more. But through all of this, we heard the amazing stories of individuals and communities pivoting and thriving, showing unprecedented kindness and generosity, leading in ingenuity and innovation, and finding creative ways to help those that have been affected the most. The Rent Smart team has had the privilege of interacting with many RentSmart educators across BC, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, who refused to let the pandemic stand in the way of them delivering valuable knowledge and support to the people that, unfortunately, have been hit the worst by it. Many phone calls, emails and virtual meetings later, we can say proudly that over 130 RentSmart courses (which we are aware of) have been delivered one way or another to roughly 550 participants that were exposed to the valuable knowledge they would need to navigate their tenancies. And there was no shortage of creative approaches to make the most of every individual circumstance that an educator faced: we have heard of courses being delivered in-person in a social distanced manner, virtually via a plethora of different video conferencing platforms, by phone, one-on-one, on a picnic table outdoors, and even via video recordings.

Especially since early fall, we are seeing a rise in interest to resume delivering courses that have now become more relevant than ever due to the housing crisis that was exacerbated by the pandemic. In this blog post, we would like to share a few stories and ideas from some of the educators in hope that they will inspire and help others to “dust off” their educator binders and engage their clients in some fun and interactive learning. Our hope as well, is that after reading this blogpost more educators will reach out to us to share their unique experiences and creative approaches to keep the momentum going, to inspire and to build a “community of best practices”.

For this story, we will share our own experience as well as stories kindly shared by the South Okanagan Brain Injury Society (SOSBIS) and Fraser Region Aboriginal Friendship Centre Association (FRAFCA) from BC, TBA Coaching from Alberta, North End Community Renewal Corporation (NECRC) and Chalmers Neighborhood Renewal Corporation (CNRC) from Manitoba.

How courses were delivered

Our educators truly had limitless creativity and flexibility in their endeavor to offer education, but to do it in a safe way. Each organizations’ circumstances were and continue to be different in terms of available space and resources, technology, and time. Of course, many educators like Amber Halpenny (TBA Coaching, Calgary, AB), Alana Ring-Woodard (North End Community Renewal Corporation, Winnipeg, MB) and Michelle McElroy (Rent Smart, Victoria, BC) had to quickly become “video-conferencing experts” and were delivering courses virtually via web conferencing apps like Zoom. For the participants who had no access to technology or for whom using Zoom would mean big charges on their data plans, Alana Ring-Woodard also delivered Basics courses one-to-one by phone. Lindsay Moore of SOSBIS in Penticton BC ran a course in several two-hour sessions for two clients outdoors at a picnic table by their building. Needless to say, it was a pleasant experience on the days it was sunny and warm but required rescheduling a couple of times due to rainy weather! Liz Plett of CNRC in Winnipeg, MB was fortunate to have a workshop room that could accommodate social-distanced in-person courses, however the pressure of responsibility to ensure everyone’s safety added to the stress of running a course in these times. Another approach was used by Louise Sallai of FRAFCA in Surrey, BC. Thanks to her creativity and perseverance, she was able to deliver a RentSmart Certificate course to men at a correctional facility despite the lockdown using a blend of recorded video presentations and interactive worksheets that participants needed to fill out.

Challenges & lessons learnt

Having to rapidly and drastically change your habitual method of facilitating a course is a tremendous challenge in itself. Many of our educators, had to learn fast to adapt to the new realities. We would like to highlight a few of their learnings along the way.

For virtual courses, apart from the educators’ steep learning curve with technology, the biggest challenge and barrier was participants’ computer literacy and access to technology. Michelle McElroy (Rent Smart, BC) suggests doing quick pre-course meetings with participants on the same video conferencing platform that will be used for the virtual course. For her courses, she schedules a session on Zoom to precede the formal course sessions to give everyone a chance to see how Zoom works and learn the different things that Zoom can do, like finding the chat feature and the Annotate button.

When delivering a course for the Aboriginal Friendship Centre of Calgary, Amber found that having the video camera on or at least active participation if video is off needs to be a requirement. In her first virtual Basics course, only half the participants had their video on and those with the video on were participating a lot more and easier to engage with. It is difficult to assess whether a participant was engaged and participated if all that a facilitator can see is a cluster of black screens and muted mics. Another challenge that Amber faced, much like many other educators, was getting participants to sign up and attend. She is currently planning to split her virtual Basics course into two 1.5 hour sessions over two days and is considering to run sessions regularly “drop-in style” in the future where there are 2-3 courses being run simultaneously and people can attend day 1 and 2 with various options.

With in-person courses, safety remains the biggest concern for Liz Plett. In such an interactive course where formerly there used to be a lot of group activities and shared objects, ensuring proper distancing, and avoiding cross-contamination creates a lot of pressure on the educator. Reducing the number of participants and religiously following public health guidelines is a good place to start in preparation for an in-person course. Smaller groups are also better for engagement as participants feel safer and more open to participation and sharing.

Ideas and tips

Here are a few creative ideas that you could implement in your upcoming course:

• Turn printed PPT slides into a visual. For in-person courses outdoors, Lindsay could not use the PowerPoint slides, which she usually finds very useful. So, she printed them out, put them in a binder separated by module and used the book as a visual tool during her course.
• Individual care packages. For in-person courses, Alana created individual care packages for each participant. Educators can get creative with what to include in such packages – from masks to fidgets to treats. Alana’s package included:
  • • • • • • • • • information resources
                  • stress ball
                  • pen, pencil, crayons, pad
                  • mandala for coloring
                  • 2 rockets
                  • 2 chocolate coins
• Laminated sheets for ease of disinfection. Alana laminated some of the sheets she uses with participants of in-person courses, such as Condition report pictures, cards for the cash flow activity and puzzle pieces for the communication activity. Facilitators or participants can write on such laminated sheets with dry erase markers.
• Poll and Annotate functions on Zoom. Michelle recommends the poll function to pepper in some fun knowledge-testing quizzes throughout the course. The Annotate feature is also great, as participants can answer questions right on the slide or they can use “stamps” to make marks beside answers, which can add fun and a pop of color to the sessions.
• For Amber, using AhaSlides got the conversation flowing in the group. It was a fun activity where participants got the opportunity to put in an anonymous answer and to participate in a discussion around those answers.
• Amber also recommends using funny memes in the PowerPoint slides to increase engagement.
• Alana recommends using the Jeopardy Game at the end of the course as a fun way to recap all the information. The template for the game was created by Eric Curts and is available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license. Any educator may use it to populate with RentSmart related questions and answers. We currently have a template for BC and MB that is ready to use. If you are interested, please reach out to Aygul.
• For participants at a Correctional facility where Louise was not able to failitate neither in-person nor via video conferencing, she used interactive participant worksheets. Participants watched pre-recorded videos of her presentations, then filled out worksheets with activities, questions and exercises that were reviewed by Louise later.

 

These past several months were arguably the most challenging ones for many of our educators and participants. However, they revealed that for many RentSmart Educators, no barriers are big enough to prevent them from supporting their clients and sharing knowledge with them in ways that meet their needs and safety the most, ensuring that it is fun and engaging along the way.

If you would like to share the story of how you delivered RentSmart at your organization, the lessons you learnt and tips you’d like to offer other educators, please reach out to Aygul and we’ll feature you in our next newsletter.