Training Students at ICDC

Training Students at ICDC

My qualifications for giving you these tips are multilevel, and not necessarily the only way to do it. You have to take my suggestions, modify them for your comfort level and your knowledge base. These students are different, and they will help you where you feel uncomfortable. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” I became a much better trainer, and a better advisor after the first time I judged at internationals. I had avoided judging because I have an English degree, and I taught Computer Applications and Law. The opportunity to see a variety of students and methods of presenting gave me a lot of insights into how to better prepare my students for presentation. I saw some really bad presentations, had to search for the Performance indicators, and I clearly saw one student who stood above the rest. I saw students who introduced themselves to me, their store manager as if they had never met me before.

When you are assigned to a group for training it is essential that you are prepared to help them walk across the stage. Yes, they are the best of Ontario, but you need to make them better. There are some tricks and tips that we have come up with over the years that will make it much easier for you to achieve that goal. While we are there, yes the students are competing against each other, but not until after the Preliminary competition. Sectioning happens in the first competition. No 2 Ontario students will be in the same judge section. Each judge sends 1-2 students across the stage, and 1 from each judge ( the top 10) will move on to Final competition. The best thing is when all seven or eight Ontario students/teams make the top 10 and all of our students go to Final Competition. The very best is when the top three trophies go to Ontario, Ontario, Ontario!

These students are at ICDC because they have natural skills, or a great advisor, or both. You are training these students, and hopefully they will take this training back to their schools, and help their chapter for future years! Remember that some students are from new schools with inexperienced advisors who don’t necessarily know a lot of the tricks to presenting for DECA.

If you are training orals, skip to the next slide. If you are a writtens trainer, in the next week or so you will be given access (a login and password) to the Turnitin for those students. They will submit a new copy of their paper to that file. I am also setting up a file for them to submit their presentation script. You can send an email to them initially to tell them your name(s) and your own email addresses. You cannot continue to email them from Turnitin, because the emails will go to a deca.ca email that you don’t have access to. Please look at the DECA guide for your event, and READ their papers. You can make comments etc from Turnitin. I will send you all the instructions on how to do this along with your login and password. Please read the rest of this package, as it will give you insights into training. Some writtens categories do a test, and you need to bring some for the students.

As a trainer for individual or team orals you have a different job. You need to put together a training package for your students. A training package should include: Study materials Tests Cases What I have found works best is to give the students their training package at Pre-ICDC. It is their job to carry all the paper, not yours. I used to give them a binder, but now I use a bulldog clip. Send them an email a few days in advance of leaving for ICDC to remind them to pack their training package.

Study Materials: Print a copy for each student to bring Olga will provide you with the Performance Indicators for your Core group. Some are larger than others but they are as complete with explanations for all the Performance Indicators used by that core group for the last 10 years. We update them every year after regionals and provincials. You are getting the most up to date version. Some trainers also email current articles, to the students, or bring them to add to the mix.

Tests and Answer Keys Olga gives the students access to all of the tests. You should bring some anyway. I usually bring 10 – 12 tests with answer keys from the last few years. I number them, and let my training students share and trade them. You can give each student 2 tests to bring so they have something to do on the plane! But they have to share those tests while at ICDC, so they have to bring them! I also bring blank answer sheets for them to do their answers on. These will be available to you as well through Olga.

I do not use training time at ICDC doing tests. The students should have the tests, should have been practicing the tests, and should continue practicing the tests while there, but on their own time. However, if students have questions about the answers for test questions they got wrong in practice, this is valuable, and value added for the other students in the group. Some of the students in your group may be able to answer the questions that you don’t know. Remember that teaching a topic reinforces their own knowledge of the topic. The key here is that when they go in to their test at ICDC, they will find that many questions are repeated from year to year. If they have done the test, marked their test, looked at the answers for the questions they got wrong, and gotten it right on the second time they see that question, they are better prepared to excel at the ICDC test. They will see about 80% of the questions in their practice tests.

Cases for training So you have lots of these cases available to you. Choose the last 21-28 cases or so. Sometimes I bring more, but never less. This year you have 7 or 8 students / teams, so bring a multiple of 7. I always overestimate. When I give the cases to the students I give them the first 2 – 3 pages. Just the case that they would have gotten in the competition. I have decided for this year to give them the judge rubric as well for each case. I will explain that later. I bring the whole case for myself, but another trainer I know of brings only the judges version of the case for their reference. Totally your choice. I put all the cases together, and number them 1 – 21 or however many you are bringing, top right on the top of theirs and on my copy as well.

The student portion of the case is 2 – 3 pages The first page tells you the instructional area. In this case Economics. It also gives the 5 – 7 Performance indicators. The second page is the case itself. What is the students role? What is the role of the judge? The student needs to go into the presentation in the role, like an actor. Your choice is whether to give the students the judge rubric as well as the case for training purposes.

The judges pages are explanation of the judges role, another copy of the case, and the questions they are to ask. Then they have judging instructions, and finally the rubric.

Please note that the judges evaluation sheet has the performance indicators in the order that the Performance Indicators were given on the first page of the students case. Train your students to present the indicators in order so the judge doesn’t have to search. The last in every case is Overall Impression.

If I have 7 students in my training group I have a set plan for how I am going to do my training. As I said before I do not use training time for doing tests. They have had the training package for 3 – 4 weeks, I am assuming that they have read all the cases, and prepped them in advance. The first thing I do is assign each student/team a case. They are going to present it to the whole group in the next hour. They have 10 to 15 minutes to prep. Then in random order, they present. The group will give feedback on topic and knowledge, playing the role, mannerisms (excessive hand motion, eye contact etc). Now here is your decision If the students all have the rubric for the case they can give feedback with a mark. And, again, as I said, I learned more about presenting and training, by judging. The students will learn by being a judge. In my judgement I am very honest. Not brutal, that does not help, but I say “I don’t like . . ,) And always end with, “I liked. . .”

Once we have finished the first round of cases I give the students some extra time to prep the next (second round) round of cases I give them. What I find is that they look at the case differently, they look at their role differently, they look at their own mannerisms differently after they have had feedback from 7 other people face to face. The face to face is important. Repeat. Three rounds of 7 cases will take the better part of your training time. So be prepared for another round? Bring other cases with extra judge packages for the students?

If you need help or want advice, contact me at [email protected]