Distance Education Course – San Diego Zoo Continuing Education for Volunteers

Distance Education Course – San Diego Zoo Continuing Education for Volunteers

We are in the process of creating an effective volunteer program and are hitting the challenge of keeping our volunteers up to date, after going through an initial face-to-face course. Right now we have been creating curriculum for courses as the need comes up but have not developed a system to introduce new information to already “trained” volunteers.

I am proposing the development of an online resource, which provides continuing education courses for those volunteers who have gone through the initial training and need updated information about the exhibits and information relevant to their stations at the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park.

Audience: Currently active volunteers for the San Diego Zoo, who have gone through initial interpretive training.

Analysis: My analysis consisted of a simply survey sent to volunteers and administration staff who have direct contact to volunteers and their interpretive function within the society.

Survey Questions:
1. Do you feel the initial interpretive training a volunteer goes through for a specific area is sufficient for him/her to conduct a well-educated conversation with zoo and park guests?
2. Is there a need for volunteers to be further trained in areas once they have gone through initial interpretive training? Why?
3. Do you think courses provided online for volunteers to complete after their initial interpretive training would enhance our guest experience? How?
4. Do you think volunteers would be responsive to these added resources?
5. Please, add any other comments or thoughts about the current system of educating our volunteers and future possibilities for continuing education.

Number of Surveys Conducted: 12 (6 volunteers, 6 administration staff)

Results: All 12 people surveyed stated yes, our current training is sufficient for volunteers to conduct a well-educated conversation with zoo and park guests? And all 12 agreed that there is a need for our volunteers to be further trained past the initial interpretive training, which would enhance the guest experience. All 12 felt that the volunteers would be responsive to these added resources, but there was a difference of opinion when it came to the implementation.

4 of the 12 surveyed said that online training opportunities might be a problem with our current volunteers. Results included:
- Not all volunteers have access to a computer
- There is a lack of staff available to create these online training sessions and monitor their use
- How will we separate those who have gone through the classes and those who haven’t? Will there be consequences for not completing the courses?
- How will we test those who have gone through these classes for content retention?

8 of the 12 surveyed said that online training is a great idea. Results included:
- This will help with lack of staff available for face-to-face training and the time required for each class.
- This will make it easy to reach the large amount of volunteers without having to schedule and book rooms, and provide training materials.
- Very green! Goes with the societies mission. No materials to print and hand out.
- Should make it easy to update volunteers. This is a problem right now, trying to keep up with changes to the exhibits and animal moves.
- This will help keep the information current and correct. If we supply updated information on a consistent basis, we will not have volunteers feel the need to do their own research, which results in the use of un-approved information.

I can use these results to develop a template for the quick creation of a suite of online classes that fit the content need and the time frame that is most effective for volunteer continuing education. It is apparent that continuing education is appropriate and called on for continued good guest experiences. The development and implementation is where further analysis needs to be done.