Yorkshire and Humber Learning Community has been developed as an online learning tool to support the Yorkshire and Humber workforce. The Active Partnerships involved, North Yorkshire Sport, Active Humber and Yorkshire Sport Foundation wanted to make training and development more accessible, less time consuming and able to reach every postcode.
SInce it launched in April,1300 accounts have been created, 3000 enrolments have been made and nearly 600 learners have engaged with the flagship module for Yorkshire & Humber Learning Community ‘Engaging Women & Girls in Sport and Physical Activity’. The module was designed to meet the insight gathered and demand from clubs and settings to attract more female participants to their sessions and retain them.
For the Active Partnerships involved the real impact is finding out what learners will take away and change as a result of completing the training. Many will look at adding female only sessions with others saying that they will make sure they will keep in touch with participants in between sessions and ensure consistency in time, venue and instructors. Many said that they would make sure that they share the knowledge with staff in their school and club. School staff said that they would look at offering girls only after school clubs and look at their PE lessons to get more engagement. It has also inspired learners to take up activity that they always felt they weren’t ‘right’ for.
StreetGames supported the creation of the module using research and experience from their ‘Us Girls’ programme, with Yorkshire & Humber Workforce Lead Kate Roberts also tutoring the module. She told us that;
“It’s brilliant to be able to share the knowledge and insight we have gained from nearly 10 years of our national Us Girls programme. We’re delighted that so many people have taken up this opportunity to learn new top tips of how to engage women and girls in physical activity and also hear from local projects who bring to life the learning from their female projects too”.
Jane Ratcliffe, project lead said;
“it’s fantastic to know that the module has reached so many of the workforce, including volunteers, coaches and professional staff which includes youth workers, school teachers and PE leads in just two months of us launching it. Knowing what the learners will implement as a result of the learning, those simple elements to attracting and retaining women and girls to their activity, is great.”
The site currently hosts eleven modules which are aimed at clubs, community settings and schools. Yorkshire & Humber Learning Community aims to provide bitesize, informal online training making learning and development more accessible and flexible as well as being tutor led with a sense of community. The modules aim to inspire learners to make realistic changes to their sessions or organisations with the content delivered by an expert in their field. Importantly for the Yorkshire & Humber area, local examples and case studies are used so that contexts and workforce can hear from someone like them. The modules also set out to be interactive and reflective through questions, quizzes and tasks and key resources and links are provided.
The latest module to launch is ‘Strengthening your Club through Volunteers’, which looks at attracting, retaining and developing volunteers.
The Engaging Women and Girls in Sport and Physical Activity module can be found here: www.yhlearning.co.uk/courses/women-and-girls
For more information about the site, contact jane@northyorkshiresport.co.uk.