Chris Williams
The Mountaineers depends on a steady stream of new volunteers to bring fresh energy, ideas, and innovation to what we do. Therefore it's critical we remember to help these new volunteers be successful and feel rewarded by their roles.
One of the things that stood out in our recent Volunteer Survey, was that fewer than half of those who volunteered to be course instructors reported feeling "adequately prepared" to do their jobs. To better prepare our future leadership, we strongly support housing course information for instructors in a central location - ideally on a well-designed committee page and/or on a course template (under the "Course Materials" tab). From personal experience, I can tell you that it can be difficult to have multiple "google drive" accounts where different committees house course curriculum information. Recently I became involved in an extensive argument with google as I tried to convince the robot that I did indeed intend to log into a different account than I normally do to access the sea kayaking curriculum I was preparing to present. I struggled to organize the multiple platforms on which my virtual existence resides (work email, personal email, committee email - all with different google drive accounts).
Making course materials more easily available will make people more willing to try instructing AND ensure that all course volunteers are providing students with the same learning experience. I know that many committees have effectively housed information off-site through things like google docs and other ways of sharing resources. However, we have seen NEW volunteers inadvertently get "left out of the loop" if someone forgets to invite them to share resources like that. Things work pretty well so far...but can't they always get just a little better?
