How Sessions And Outcomes Work

Opportunities are what the platform categorises events as. These can be once-off, monthly, weekly or daily. Sessions refer to the number of days your opportunity occurs and requires reporting.

For example:

If a children’s home needs its children to play more sport, you might create an opportunity called Sports Coaching. If the coaching happens twice a week, feedback on each day of coaching is required, and you are committed to organising sports coaching for 1 year, your opportunity will have:

2 (number of times the coaching takes place in a week and reporting is required) x 52 (weeks in the year) = 104 sessions

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If feedback is only required at the end of every week, your opportunity will have:

1 (the number of times reporting is required per week) x 52 (weeks in the year) = 52 sessions

 

Reporting on Sessions

Every session uploaded onto the platform needs to be reported on, which is why it is important to select the correct frequency. This is done when you are creating an opportunity.

Select “Once-off” if the activity/event/session only needs to be reported on once. If it is more regular, rather select “Weekly”/”Monthly” to complete reports at the end of the week/month. Even if an opportunity happens everyday (such as a Litter Pick-up Week) you may only need to provide one report at the end of the event.

How to manage a week’s attendance data

There isn’t just one way to manage your attendance data. It depends on how you’d like to, or need to, report on it. More data collection = more work, but the more data you collect, the better insights you get. If you want the most information about your daily performance and attendance, we recommend filing a report for each day.

If you are currently managing a week’s attendance on one printed out attendance sheet, that’s great too. You will then need to create a once-off event and report on it at the end of the week once you’ve gathered your week’s attendance.

If this is the case, think about how you will deliver your programme  to the attendees. Are there themes or modules you can deliver each day (think of schools that teach a piece of a subject everyday)? These then contribute to the outcomes you want your attendees to learn or gain by the end of the opportunity.

Outcomes

Outcomes are those attributes that can be reflected on an individual’s social profile. Read more about Social Employability Profiles here. Session outcomes are the same as ‘Session Module Outcomes’, assessment criteria or skills that your attendees will walk away with.

For example:

Continuing with the soccer coaching example – if you are running a training that will last one month, with sessions everyday, here is what you can do:

1. On the platform: Create a once-off session match each day’s objectives/modules/outcomes with an outcome for the opportunity. Your once-off opportunity will then have many outcomes (to represent all the skills you will be teaching during the coaching period).
2. – OR – Create daily opportunities for the week with their own individual outcomes. For example: on Day 1 you might be teaching Basic Rules of Soccer and on Day 2 Communication on the Field. These individual sessions will have their own outcomes, such as “kit”, “team positions”, “fair play” (for Day 1) and “codes of communication”, “hand signals” and “teamwork” (Day 2).

For opportunities that deliver a programme or module over different days, module objectives = outcomes. These outcomes are listed when creating your opportunity, so that when you’re completing your report, your criteria/rubrics are already there for you to tick off.

Creating the opportunity is therefore a step towards creating your own report template.