welcome to the toolkit for the book 'Teach Your Creative workshops in person & online'
Hello! My name is Patricia van den Akker, and I am the author of the book Teaching Your Creative Workshops In Person & Online.
A very big welcome to your Toolkit! Below you will find loads of additional downloadable resources to make the most of my book. I hope that you will find this Toolkit useful to make the most of the book and to further your uniqueness in your own teaching!
This Toolkit is organised by chapter. Scroll down to find all the downloads and some free video training as well. You can download and print off each of the downloads. Some are editable templates, such as the Training Plan and Lesson Plan, so that you can use them on a computer. Enjoy!
If you have any questions then do get in touch. You can post a comment at the bottom of this page, or get in touch via info@thedesigntrust or on our socials @TheDesignTrust
Please remember that the Toolkit is copyrighted, and that the downloads are for personal use only and not to be shared with others. Thank you.
Patricia van den Akker - The Design Trust
The online business school for designers, makers & other creative professionals www.thedesigntrust.co.uk
Chapter 3: Who do you want to teach?
Student surveys are one of the best marketing tools (see p. 38) to find out what your ideal students really want to learn, who they are, and to identify specific potential students.
The Teaching Plan is one of the key exercises in the book (see p. 43). You will come back to this exercise again and again throughout the book to refine your teaching ideas into more specific detail. And you will use the best idea in your Teaching Plan to create a Lesson Plan in chapter 4.
Chapter 4: How to teach
Do you want to make your teaching more diverse and accessible? Download this super handy 5-page checklist, with tips around how to attract a more diverse audience, and how to make your website more accessible (with additional useful resources). Are you and your space ready to accommodate diverse needs? How can you create a more inclusive culture? How can you keep developing your understanding? Diversity and accessibility, as well as accommodating diverse learning styles, will benefit all your students.
The Lesson Plan is a very useful tool to focus, organise and plan specific training and break it down into lessons with learning goals and time slots. Once you have selected your favourite teaching idea and created your Teaching Plan (chapter 3 p. 43) you can get more specific and turn your ideas into a Lesson Plan. Use the 3 steps in the exercise (see p. 74–79) to help you through this process. You can find a filled-in example of a Lesson Plan in the book on p. 75 for an in-person workshop, and go to p. 79 for a Lesson Plan for online training.
Being prepared to deliver your training will avoid a lot of potential problems later on! In this 4-page check list I share my tips to get ready to deliver in-person training, including a typical running order of a workshop day (and what to do and when), what to bring to your in-person workshop, what to do 2-5 days prior to your workshop, and what to do at the start of your training day.
NOTE: The Checklist Get Ready to Deliver our In-Person Training gets mentioned in both chapter 4 (p. 76) and chapter 5 (p. 92).
Chapter 5: Where to teach – in person, online, or both?
The Checklist To Find The Right Venue has got the key criteria to help you decide what the best venue is for your in-person training. On p. 88 in the book you can find the initial criteria, but this list delves deeper.
Designing a space to teach creative skills involves careful planning to ensure a productive, inspiring and safe learning environment. This Checklist Creating The Best Teaching Space gives you all the criteria to consider and builds on the list in the book on p. 90-91.
Do you want to delve deeper into the different formats of online teaching? What are the advantages and disadvantages, and the best teaching formats and methods to teach online, either live, recorded or combined into a hybrid format? This 3-page download explains in much more detail the variations of online teaching that are available to you. I hope you find it useful and use it to your advantage to get more creative and innovative with your own online teaching.
The Filming and Content Plan Template is for you if you want to create a promotional video, or if you want to develop online training, especially recorded training. This Template will help you to get more organised and focused, with more clarity on the content formats, priorities, and the length of each film, as well as any other content to create for your online course. Use your Lesson Plan (see above and p. 73–79 in the book) as the basis of your Filming and Content Plan.
Chapter 7: costing, pricing & getting paid
Planning ahead and creating a longer term, annual plan for your training will help you become more organised, will make your marketing easier, and will help with your financial forecasting too.
Creating an Annual Training Budget will help you to ensure that your training is truly profitable. One of the biggest challenges for many creative teachers! Use the Annual Training Plan with this budget exercise to plan ahead for the year, rather than for each training individually. Watch the short video training where I will explain how to use the Excel sheet for your own income and expenditure numbers.
Watch the 16min video training to help you create your Competitor Research, and get more expert tips from me about why this exercise is so useful, and what impact it can have to make your training more unique and stand out. Click the triangle to get started. When you click the four-arrow button you will get it full screen. Press the Esc button on your key board to get back to regular size again. You can click the CC button to get English subtitles.
You can download here below the Annual Training Budget template:
Chapter 8: marketing
The Competitor Research Matrix exercise will help you to stand out from the crowd, and to get to know your own uniqueness better too. I have created a short training video for you to explain the steps of this useful exercise.
Watch the 16min video training to help you create your Competitor Research, and get more expert tips from me about why this exercise is so useful, and what impact it can have to make your training more unique and stand out. Click the triangle to get started. When you click the four-arrow button you will get it full screen. Press the Esc button on your key board to get back to regular size again. You can click the CC button to get English subtitles.
You can download here below the Competitor Research Matrix:
SEO (Search Engine Optimatisation) and keywords are one of the most effective marketing tools to get your website and training found, especially by new clients, locals and also on online course market places. In this handy checklist I show you how to identify the right keywords for your training business. You can find in the book on pg. 204-205 where and how to use your keywords to get found online.
Chapter 9: launching, onboarding & evaluation
The Launch Plan Template is a very useful marketing tool to manage all the different marketing activities you want to do to launch and promote your training. It will help you to gather your launch ideas, but also to stay organised while executing those different marketing activities at a busy time!
Use the instructions on p. 223–224 in the book on how to create your Launch Plan, and on p. 224–225 in the book you can see an example of a Launch Plan.
Do you struggle with evaluationg your training properly? You are not the only creative teacher who often leaves evaluation until the very end. In this 4-page download I explore what to evaluate, what questions to ask, how to use the registration as a starting point, how to evaluate more informally throughout your training, and how to evaluate yourself too (in a kind way!). All very useful to continue to improve yourself and your training in many different ways.
Chapter 10: going beyond training - what's next for you?
Have you got big plans for your creative training business? The Growth Matrix is a useful tool to get clearer on the different growth opportunities and directions for you.
And that's it! For now anyway...
We will use this Toolkit to update some of the Resources in the book too. If you have any questions, suggestions or comments about The Toolkit then please post them below. (Remember that I am a real person, reading real feedback!)
Patricia van den Akker - The Design Trust
Author of Teaching Creative Workshops In Person & Online