The story goes that when money gets tight in higher education, professional development is often one of the first things cut for IT professionals. One would hope that no organization would cut their professional development budget completely, but there are probably some that do. In this sort of environment where we have shrinking budgets for training opportunities but a large population that has a penchant for learning, it becomes possible to get creative in offering professional development. A do-it-yourself model becomes an appealing way in which a community can come together to help each other, and you need three ingredients to make the process enjoyable for instructors and participants alike.

Ingredient 1: Expertise and willingness to share  

The first ingredient you need to do cost-effective DIY training and development is a community that has expertise and a willingness to do the work to share that expertise with others. Training is a lot less risky than actual project work because of a lower time commitment. A project requires significant time to do the actual work and will often span a significant portion of the calendar. For a member of the community to facilitate or teach a session about something they know, they have to spend time preparing and time in the training, but that commitment is much more finite than technical project work.

There are many reasons to be a facilitator or instructor, but I would like to specifically mention a couple here. One is that teaching reinforces what you know, helps you know your material better. Two is that it makes you more valuable to the organization because you are no longer just sharing the fish you catch but also helping others catch their own fish. Every IT professional should consider these as important to their career growth.

Some people with expertise will likely need some encouragement and offers of help in order to step up to a facilitator or instructor role. As the low hanging fruit starting coming down, work needs to be done to identify and recruit additional facilitators and instructors. That's what the third ingredient can help do.

Ingredient 2: People willing to learn

It is irrelevant to have a teacher if you do not have students. This is where the legwork starts increasing. The "if you build it, they will come" concept only goes so far. Before the facilitator starts preparing material for the instruction, it is necessary to know whether you have a critical mass of participants that will be interested in attending the training. While the facilitator can be a good starting point by identifying people they think will be interested, it can significantly increase the work of the facilitator if it becomes their responsibility alone to find all the people interested in participating.

Network effects can play a significant role here with questions like, "Can you identify three people that you think would be interested in participating in this opportunity?" If you ask that of each person, you can quickly build a list of interested participants that can put you in a position to make a go/no go decision.

Ingredient 3: Help with logistics

In a higher education environment, we have a lot of resources "freely" available that are needed for instruction. We have things like classrooms and conference rooms for space, systems for marketing events and taking registrations, and computer labs for more technical sessions. Organizing all those resources is a pretty significant task though, and putting that work on facilitators makes being a facilitator unappealing to many.

Making someone responsible for doing the logistics of your DIY professional development will take a significant burden off the people you are calling upon to spend their time as facilitators and instructors. That someone can also add more to the equation than basic instructional space and registration logistical management though. They can also offer a broader coordination to the activities in terms of scheduling, recruiting facilitators and gathering interested participants. The coordination also makes a single point of contact that can go out for funding if any additional money is needed. It is possible to do DIY training without this higher level coordination, but the value of these opportunities goes up significantly with some coordination and planning.

If you look around your higher ed IT environment, you will probably see people already doing some of these things. With a little help and some coordination, you can turn an informal network of activities into a extremely valuable set of opportunities of which your institution can be proud.