Design, Develop and Deliver Training

Developing Talks, Training & Workshops

So you’ve got an idea for a training? This page will help you put it into practice. Use the linked section titles to take you to the relevant section of our Full Handbook on Developing Training.

Step 1: Capture your vision

The most important thing you can do to start off is to be clear about who you want to train and what you want them to be able to do.

You need to decide- At the end of the training (who)..... should be able to (do what)...

Think about how you will deliver it, how long it should last and who you will work with. Then stop and think and make sure that all your decisions embed XR's Principles and Values and XR’s Principles of Inclusivity

Find more detailed instructions on this step in the full guide.

Step 2: Realise your vision

Structure your training in blocks building progressively towards your overall aim (which you decided above). Your final content block should allow rebels to practice this.

training process.PNG

Find more detailed instructions on this step in the full guide.

Step 3: Share your vision

How are you going to advertise to let people know about your wonderful new training?

To post your events to the XRUK website Events, Talks & Training Facebook Events, XRUK Facebook Events, Movement Broadcast on Telegram and Mattermost and the Regions & Nations Facebook Events, follow these steps:

XR UK aims to bring two million people into active support. That’s too many for you to train alone! Once you know your training is successful, think about how you can [train other trainers](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ih9iA9mYLd9yx29HDk_4fmjiL5uqGuqpN-EJfm- PeY8/edit#heading=h.1ksv4uv) to deliver it as well.

Find more detailed instructions on this step in the full guide.

Step 4: Refine your vision

No training is perfect. Ask yourself these questions:

Better still, ask the rebels who’ve participated in the training. Offer them a specific time within the training to fill in an evaluation form. Don’t pay too much attention to individual comments (there’ll always be someone with a bee in their bonnet), but look for patterns and themes. Strengthen areas that rebels have appreciated and make changes which they’ve found less useful. Don’t be proud - make things better.

Find more detailed instructions on this step in the full guide.

General Guidance for Presenters

General Guidance for Presenters

Aims

This guidance aims to give you the tools you need to maximise your impact and reach when delivering talks. Please note: The guidance refers throughout to ‘Sessions’. This includes talks, training and workshops. The guidance has been written for the benefit of anyone delivering sessions.

If you would like the Rebel Curriculum team to support you with optimising the content, structure and delivery of your sessions, please complete this form and we'll be in touch.

To Print

You can either export the chapter General Guidance for Presenters or individual pages of the guidance to a PDF, which is the best format to print in.

The guidance has been divided into sections. Feel free to study it all or dip in for a refresh on any aspect.

If you have questions, comments or feedback, please email pathways+rc@extinctionrebellion.uk

General Guidance for Presenters

Preparation and Presentation

XR sessions are such a powerful and important tool, whether they are public-facing or for internal training. This might sound obvious, but it’s good to keep reminding ourselves. When delivering a session, it is important to give it your best shot! You are XR’s front line: making a good impression as well as an emotional impact could bring in new rebels, other supporters, and have ripple effects (both good or bad!) that you might not have considered.

Preparation

For anyone speaking in public, even for a short talk, it is important to be prepared. A key aspect of preparation is warming up your voice and body.

Of course, you should experiment to find what works best for you - there’s no one right way to do this, but it IS essential you do some kind of warm-up.

Voice Warm-Up Exercises [5-10 mins] Follow the steps below or watch and follow this video.

  1. Breathe deeply, relaxing your belly, so belly, ribs, and back expand with your breath. 
  2. Stretch out your neck, jaw, face and sides. 
  3. Activate your breath support muscles with a hiss exercise.
  4. Begin vocalizing on something easy to start stretching out the vocal cords e.g.: lip roll, “HM” (hum), or “NN”.
  5. Sing on an easy, relaxed OO vowel to work on good, consistent resonance throughout your range.
  6. Open up to an “AH”, “YAH”, “UH”, or “YUH” to relax the jaw down and lift the soft palate up. 
  7. Get into mix voice with an “NG, “NYAH”, “NAY”, “MUM”, or “BUH”.  
  8. Warm down: If you spent quite a bit of time working out, warm down with a gentle hum or lip trill.

Body Warm Up Exercises [5 mins]

Always remember to keep hydrated: have some water within reach.
This will help:

It's okay to say ‘Excuse me for one second’ and take a drink. A tip from the theatre world is to put some lip salve on your teeth to stop your lips from sticking to them!

Presentation

The way we speak and look when presenting information can have a big impact on how it is understood. This helps to make a quick and strong emotional connection with your audience. It is always useful to refresh our awareness of the broad range of presentation techniques and practical tips that help both presenters and participants to maximise the value of any session:

Dealing with Nerves

Even the most experienced speakers can get nervous - it's natural - but developing your confidence will help you to be clear and to minimise those speech fillers such as “er” "um" or “like”. These can become habits we don’t even notice, but listeners can find them very distracting: this dampens the impact of your talk. Try recording one of your sessions and watching it to spot fillers.

Here are some tips and tricks to help with nerves and improve the quality of your presentation:

Presenter’s Environment

On Zoom, before you begin your session:

General Guidance for Presenters

Housekeeping [Access & Inclusion]

XR meetings are run rather differently, due to our culture, and ideally all sessions ought to begin with Housekeeping - an explanation of meetings culture. If this is not possible, e.g. for reasons of timing, the points should be clearly displayed on a slide, or posted in chat, for everyone to read. Having said that, the key access/inclusivity points ought to be dealt with by the presenter.

Renaming

Invite participants to change their Zoom name to reflect their given name / preferred pronouns / location.
Check they know how.

Access

Safe space

Hand Signals

Explain the basic hand signals to use during your session or show this slide. You may not need them all, depending e.g. on the subject of your session or the experience of the attendees. 

See this diagram for examples: Hand Signals.jpg

If participants don’t have a camera.

Explain using the Reactions button for hand signals - one hand for general help/Q and thumbs up for Yay!/OK!

Electronic Handsignals.png

Chat - How to use it

General Guidance for Presenters

Check-ins, Check-outs & Regenerative Cultures Statements

Check-Ins and Check-Outs

These are an important aspect of the care which threads through our Principles and Values. They are not compulsory for training sessions but, ideally, presenters should try to do check-ins as a way for everyone to connect with each other and ground themselves in the moment.

If you want to do them, always give participants the option not to check-in or out if they don’t want to, and perhaps suggest they use the chat instead.

For verbal check-ins with more than 5 participants, use breakout rooms but always explain that participants can return to the main room if they wish - unless using them is going to be essential for the purposes of the session.

A general check-in could include given name, preferred pronouns, why the person is here, and handing over to someone else in the group by saying their name. They help attendees to:

Various other options can be used; choose which suits your presentation and timings. As an example, ask all participants to post in chat. Suggest using something to describe how they are feeling - an animal, a colour, or a few words.

Check-outs are also not compusory but they can be used to glean a brief insight from participants about the session. As an example, ask them to post in chat something that they found

If you wish to use a Regenerative Statement to open the session and/or a Vision Reminder to close it - find them here.

General Guidance for Presenters

Structure | Content | Aids

Structure of Training

It’s helpful to break the session into sections, allowing for Q&A after each section. Make sure the sections flow well into each other. If the sections must jump from one topic to another, clearly state that one section has ended and the next one is called XXX. This helps listeners to refocus their attention. Also clearly announce when it is the end of the session.

If there is a Q&A session after the presentation, avoid running over into this time.

Breakout Rooms

During a session, breakout rooms allow attendees to discuss an issue in depth. If breakout rooms are being used, always explain why and how long they’ll last.

Let attendees know in advance if someone should take notes and report back in the main room.

Unless using breakout rooms is an essential part of the training, always reassure attendees that they do not have to stay in a breakout room. If they prefer, they can stay in the main room. Be sure you know how to do this.

Content of the Training

The way we organise training sessions can have a big impact on how well they are understood and enjoyed. Remember that there are different learning styles, so present your information in a variety of formats which match these styles. When reading information aloud, speaking slowly will allow enough time for attendees to take in what they are hearing.

Try not to cram too much information into the session. Think about what could be put into the Rebel Toolkit for attendees to read afterwards.

Always avoid using acronyms. Give the full title, then how it’s shortened and post that information in chat. Otherwise try to use the full title all the time.

Keep sentences short and avoid using complex words.

Audio Visual Aids

If using slides, think about how much information is on the slide. Avoid too much info! Read out what is on the slide and/or describe the image for anyone sight impaired or dyslexic.

Don’t put text over images as this makes the text hard to read. Practise using the slide show with Closed Captions running and check there’s enough clear space at the bottom of the slide to view the CCs.

Video - choose share sound and optimise for video clip (see Zoom tips page).

General Guidance for Presenters

Post Training & Follow-up | Feedback

Post-Training and Follow-Up

Capture email addresses either via registration forms or using the chat box (check participants are happy to share with everyone or direct message you).

Send follow-up emails ASAP and include the option for participants to feedback either via a form or your email address.

Ideally, an email should have two links at the most. If you put your follow-up information on the Rebel Toolkit, you will have fewer links in your follow-up email. This also means you do not have to keep posting links in the chat during your session.

Feedback

The Talks & Training team welcomes feedback on the helpfulness of this guidance, so it can be continually developed and improved. You can do this by messaging into

General Guidance for Presenters

Book a Zoom Session and Publicise Your Event

How To Book A Session On Zoom

If you don’t have access to a paid Zoom account, please contact XRUK Talks & Training [T&T] via our Talks & Training Reception on Mattermost or email eventsxr@gmail.com and we'll give you our log in.

Once in the T&T Zoom, please check the schedule to make sure you don't make a booking at the same time as someone else. Go to Meetings in the menu on the left hand side in Zoom and check the list for other sessions already booked in. Please leave a minimum of 15 minutes between meetings to allow time for prep.

If asked for a One Time Passcode (OTP) when logging into the T&T Zoom, please go to Protonmail, and use the same log in details as the T&T Zoom account, pick up the code and then add it to the relevant Zoom field. That will get you into the T&T Zoom account - you have 10 mins to pick up the code. However you can always generate another if you run out of time.

Scheduling and customising a meeting with registration

Find instructions here.

How To Publicise Your Session

Complete the UK M&M Comms Requests form to get your event onto:

If you have a Mattermost account you can ask for your event to be publicised on the Movement Broadcast channels on Telegram and Mattermost. Do this in the UK M&M Comms Requests channel.

Update other publicity channels: local group Facebook page, broadcast channel for region, or wherever you publicise events.

If you are using Action Network to promote your event, paste in the full link then use the Action Network link shortener found in the formatting options within the body text. If you use a pre-link shortener, then your emails may go into peoples’ spam.

If you need guidance on using Action Network, visit the Rebel Toolkit pages here and request training here.

General Guidance for Presenters

Guidance for using Zoom in Talks, Training and Workshops

How to log on to Zoom and select your booked session

Access details are the same as those used for booking the session. REMEMBER to check whether you are already logged into another Zoom account. If so, you need to log out of that one to log into the Zoom account where the session is booked. Go to the avatar at the top right - sign out and then sign into the correct account.

switch account.PNG

How to enable closed captions BEFORE THE SESSION BEGINS

captions button.PNG

How to admit participants from Waiting Room / How to unlock it

How to split screen to see the Zoom meeting and other information (eg. your script) side by side

How to screen share

You may use this function to show slides etc but you will not be able to see your script

Watch Zoom support video on screen sharing

How to create breakout rooms for check-ins

Watch Zoom support video on use of breakout rooms

General Guidance for Presenters

View Reflection Form

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Welcome to XR for Speakers

Resources For Local, Regional or National Group Talks Scripts; Slide Sets; Support Video for Local Group delivery

Welcome to XR for Speakers

Welcome to XR - National Talk

Script used for the national W2XR talk


Welcome to XR for Speakers

Welcome to XR for Local Groups

Welcome to XR for Speakers

Full Slide Set

Welcome to XR slides

The full slide set for a Welcome to XR talk, some of which contain clickable links.

Welcome to XR - Slides

Welcome to XR for Speakers

Video Links

Heading for Extinction for Speakers

This page contains useful resources on how to publicise an XR Talk and speaker tips. Only trained HfE speakers can deliver the Heading for Extinction (and what to do about it) script and slides. If you want to deliver the Street Science talk (based on the HfE talk), please download the script below.

Resources to support HfE speakers

The resources below are for supporting HfE Speaker

Only trained XR Speakers should deliver the HfE talk. Once trained you'll be given access to the HfE Index which has links to the latest versions of the slides and script

If you'd like to request training in how to deliver this talk, please either email eventsxr@gmail.com or message into the HfE Talk Team Reception in that channel on Mattermost.

Anyone can deliver the street Science talk, please download the scripts below and also visit the Street Speakers pages on the Rebel Toolkit for support and advice.

Speaker Tips for Online Delivery

How to Publicise an XR Talk

Delivering Actions Support Trainings

Actions Support covers a wide range of specialities, including Stewarding, Action Wellbeing, First Aid, De-escalation, and much more.

If you would like to train others in these specialities please contact the specific teams via the Actions Support Pages.

Stewarding

Resources to train Stewards can be found here.

Create a Rebellion Academy Training

First, please watch the Video Guide.

Title of lesson/section

Please remember that each lesson should stand alone from other lessons and be a learning goal in its own right.

Introductory video or text

Please provide us with one of these, to put the topic in context and explain why it is important:

Learning outcomes (optional)

OPTIONAL: please provide us with the learning outcomes for your training – what will rebels be able to do at the end of the training that they could not do at the start? If you leave this blank we will work them out for you based on the learning material.

Learning materials

This is the main block of information for your lesson – the core information, activities, perspectives that you want rebels to take away. Please include any videos, text, infographics, links or images that you would like us to include. If you want to divide this up into multiple parts that’s fine – you can structure this however you want.

Case studies

This is what the principles, perspectives etc. look like in practice. It’s a story of someone applying them. Please include one of the following:

Your turn

Please think about an interactive activity that could be offered. The purpose of the activity is to give rebels some practice in applying the principles, perspectives etc. We can help you with this section if needed – it can be very hard to design and some lessons can be even harder than others. However, the more input you can give us for this, the quicker your training can go live on Rebellion Academy.

Some options that we have available are:

Review and Reflect (optional)

OPTIONAL: provide us with some questions that you want the rebels to reflect on based around the learning objectives.

Additional resources / further reading

If possible, please provide one or more additional links/attachments/videos etc. that rebels can refer to if they want to find out more.

Quiz questions

If possible, please suggest some questions that rebels can use to assess whether they have understood the key points correctly. These can be

The questions should focus on the elements of what has been covered in the lesson. So that, if a rebel gets the wrong answer, they might go back to the relevant part of the lesson to check their understanding, and then have another go.

Contact Us

For more help contact the Rebellion Academy team.

Script Template for new trainings

Use this script template for online delivery. Add timings, the speaker(s) name(s), script and tech instructions.

The template is in two formats:

OnlyOffice on the XRUK Cloud

Google Docs

How to Guides

Create Recurring Registration Zoom Links | Send Reminder Emails | Publicise Your Events
Video Guide [11mins] showing how to:

Written guide with screenshots: How to Send Reminder Emails to Zoom Registrations - on the Cloud, slow to load.

More zoom advice can be found in the Tech Section of the Toolkit.

Publicise your events:

Movement Calendar on the TeamUp app - see what’s happening across XRUK and beyond!

📆 View the Calendar

Got an action, event or announcement to bring to the calendar?
✍️ Fill in the M&M Comms Requests form

Publicise your own events across XRUK and XRGlobal - Video Coming Soon!