Customization: Consider Customized Small Group Training for BITB College or High School
At Soteria Solutions, customization is integral to our solutions. Research shows that customization increases the likelihood that sustainable change will be achieved. Customization of training materials increases the relatability of the subject matter. In Bringing in the Bystander® training, we encourage facilitators to adapt language and scenarios that will be relatable to the audience being trained.
Over the past year, we expanded our training offerings to include the option for a two-hour customized small group training on Bringing in the Bystander (BITB), for both our College and High School Program.
Overview of Customized Small Group Training
Our customized small group training is designed for active BITB license holders and is delivered live virtually during a two-hour session. This training is set up as a conversational forum, intended for up to five attendees who each have a background in prevention, experience and facilitation skills. In addition to a survey-based inventory, a brief pre-training is often useful to ascertain the goals for the training to ensure the small group option is the best training option. With that input, the training session is customized to the attendees and their college community.
Recently Caroline Leyva, co-author of the BITB College and High School curricula, facilitated a custom small group training for Macalester College. We are sharing this example with you as it may generate ideas of how your school could benefit from customized small group training; in addition to the train-the-trainer for two individuals that is included in both our BITB Partner and Bundle licenses.
The Situation
Macalester College, a liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota, is a new license holder of BITB College Program. While new to BITB, the Executive Director for Health and Wellness and the Director of Health Promotion and Sexual Respect each have an extensive background in prevention strategies and facilitation. Joining them in the customized group training was a colleague new to the team, the DOJ Grant Project Director.
Customization for Macalester College
Due to the Macalester College team having the background and expertise with facilitation using a trauma-informed approach, the group session was able to focus its time with Caroline Leyva on their specific goals and questions about BITB (rather than focusing on facilitation skills, etc.). The attendees also had experience with other prevention programs for college communities as well, so the two-hour session was driven by the attendees.
The two-hour session was chock full of in-depth questions, picking Caroline’s brain about the rationale behind the materials to gain a deeper understanding of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ details of applying a trauma-informed approach to bystander prevention training. In this regard, it was less training than it was discussion as Caroline shared the reasoning and pedagogy for the sequencing of aspects of the BITB curriculum that the group wanted to better understand.
Customization to adapt the BITB curriculum to Macalester was of particular importance as they sought Caroline’s insight into how best to accomplish this for their campus community to create a program that would take root on campus and effect lasting change.
In two hours, the small group was able to focus on their specific goals for Macalester College and able to leave with specific ways to customize BITB for their college community so that the adaptation would create a strong platform to achieve sustainable change on campus and to complement their current overall prevention strategy.
After the training, Jennifer Jacobsen, Executive Director – Laurie Hamre Center for Health & Wellness emailed Caroline the following:
“Thank you SO MUCH for the time yesterday. It exactly met my needs – I have read the published papers about BITB, have long been intrigued, and was excited to read the curriculum and to be able to ask questions – KNOWING that you would have very thoughtful answers that came from a research base.”
Conclusion
Successful implementation to effect sustainable change is the cornerstone of Soteria Solutions and our evidenced-based solutions. If you have recently purchased BITB College or High School, we encourage you to discuss your training needs with us so that your goals are achieved.
As you evaluate evidence-based solutions that effect lasting change on college campuses, be sure to learn more about Bringing in the Bystander College and our training options, click here.
Our next BITB College live/online train-the-trainer two-day workshop is scheduled for December 6th and 7th. Learn more here.
The key to successful implementation is customization. Let us customize small group training to set your BITB implementation up for success or host a full training where we can also customize the scenarios and key aspects of the training materials for your college community.