Masterclass speaker development programme resources

Overview

The page contains the supporting documents given to participants at the Masterclass speaker training events. This will be updated as the programme evolves.

Presentation Skills

This workshop focused on presentation, communication and classroom management skills. Participants took part in activities to help develop their skills in these areas, shared their top tips and heard advice from the Masterclass team.

Masterclass workshop development

This session focused on the creation of a Masterclass workshop. Participants heard guidance on developing their own favourite topic into a Masterclass before reflecting on their inital ideas and discussing their plans with their peers.

The detailed notes give guidance on putting together a Masterclass workshop while the other files are useful tools in the planning process

Equality, diversity and inclusion

This workshop focused on recognising our own unconscious biases and considering how we could design our Masterclass activities to be more inclusive to different learners. When designing a Masterclass, we recommend that speakers consider the following:

• How their Masterclass will be accessed by those with different accessibility needs, backgrounds and experiences
• What they can do to make the session more accessible for everyone
• What they can do to ensure that there is variety within the session and to ensure that there is a range of ways in which the students can engage with the information and activities

To help achieve these aims:

• Use the Masterclass Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Checklist to help address some of the key ways a Masterclass workshop could be designed to be more inclusive
• Use existing advice on accessibility, such as the World Blind Union's advice on presentations
• Use existing advice on being inclusive in workshop settings (see below for documents and links)
• The QCA framework on personal, learning and thinking skills is a useful tool for thinking about the different ways in which students might prefer to access activities (though be aware that no students will fit neatly into any one category).

These documents from EqualiTeach and the Institute of Physics (IOP) downloadable below are useful tools when considering how inclusive your Masterclass is. Please take a look for useful advice and things to think about when developing and delivering your workshop.

• 10 Inclusive Teaching Tips for Teachers – IOP
• Inclusive Language – EqualiTeach
• Boy Girl Myths Handout – EqualiTeach
• Equality and Diversity Checklist – EqualiTeach
• Inclusive Facilitation – EqualiTeach
• Equality Act for Schools – EqualiTeach

You may also wish to explore the following links:

• Institute of Physics Gender Balance project
• Education Scotland and IOP Improving Gender Balance
• Institute for Humane Education Resources for Teaching about Unconcious Bias

Those who are interested in exploring these topics in more detail can contact us for a reading list. They may also wish to explore their own unconscious biases through the Harvard Implicit Associations test.

Masterclass development guides

These documents give some specific guidance on developing a session within each of the Masterclass subject strands. 

We recommend that you read over the document relevant to the session you are developing. The others may useful depending on the topic that you are working on (e.g. if you are developing a Secondary Mathematics Masterclass including a large project activity, the engineering document might be useful).

Please ensure that you keep in touch with the Masterclass team to discuss your ideas.

Useful documents

Useful documents to take into consideration when in the later stages of developing a Masterclass:

• Masterclass technical rider – to share specific requirements for a Masterclass (depending on the complexity of your set-up/equipment needs, you may not need to use this)
• Masterclass general risk assessment example – the majority of Masterclass activity will be covered by this general risk assessment, but if a session includes activities beyond this then a specific risk assessment will need to be created in consultation with the series organisers

Ri policies

Before delivering your Masterclass you will need to read the Ri's Masterclass volunteer leaflet for speakers and the Ri's safeguarding policy for children.