Last summer, my school district implemented a new online lesson planner, called OnCourse, which also has an integrated website that staff are required to also use. The implementation of this course took only roughly 5 months, and that was from start to finish. In August of last summer, they called in two teachers from each school, which totaled 18 teachers, and trained us in using OnCourse. In September and October, it was our job to turnkey the program to the other staff members in our schools. By December, it was mandatory that all staff members be using this program to submit their lesson plans. This brought on all kinds of problems for the other trainer and I in my school. The only time it was offered during school hours was at an in-service we had in October, which was only a one hour training. Although OnCourse is not extremely difficult to use, it is extremely tedious and time consuming, and you can't miss any steps. So, needless to say, the one hour training was not nearly enough for some staff members. However, they would have to get trained on their own time, which meant the same for the trainers. To combat this problem, we had other teachers who were well-versed with the program to help us reach all the teachers who still needed assistance. This process was extremely tiresome, and in my opinion, could have been avoided.

First, the development of the program was already in place well before our training began. I feel the trainers should have been given more time to be trained, and the first couple of in-services throughout the fall should have been completely dedicated to learning this program. Here we are in April, and we already have several teachers that are still having issues with the program. In my professional opinion, the district tried to save money by only training a few teachers, but in the long run it is way more than any of us bargained for.

If it was up to me, I would have had the trainers from OnCourse come to each school, and successfully train all the teachers. It would have eliminated the middle man, and all the extra time and energy put into training the last of the teachers. We could have still have go-to people for the staff to reach out to in the event that they had an issue, but it would have been much easier in the long run. The whole process took 5 months, but the teachers only really had 2 months to become familiar with and begin using OnCourse. If that was too expensive, then maybe the supervisors from each department could have been trained, and then they could have turn keyed it to their department, which usually only consists of about 20 people.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Am I overthinking the issue here?