News

Center Delivers Train-the-Trainer Course to Denver RTD and Mile High Youth Corps

Posted April 2017

On March 20-24, Center assoc iate Yvonne Syphax delivered the Center-developed Train-the-Trainer  course to current and future maintenance trainers from Denver RTD and a n instructor from Denver’s Mile High Youth Corps (MHYC). These trainers will pilot a six-module version of the Transit Core Competencies Curriculum (TC3) , to be delivered to a group of MHYC corps members attending their public charter high school in a six-week April-May course. As part of Denver-based collaboration, the program was held at the Community College of Denver (CCD).

TC3 is an orientation and outreach program aimed at diverse audiences of young people and adults from the communities transit serves who are interested in a career in public transportation, providing knowledge and skills that will help them be successful in the job application process and initial training and apprenticeship programs. The adapted Train-the-Trainer, as well as TC3, was developed and piloted as part of the FTA-funded project, “Integrating Career Pathways in Public Transportation-Railcar Maintenance and Beyond.” In addition to the MHYC’s lead instructor, the seven RTD trainees came from a range of maintenance areas, with different sets of expertise. While the training content focused on TC3, the training skills-including work with Center courseware and interactive training methods -will be applicable to all sorts of training settings and course content.

Matt Younce, RTD’s Manager for Maintenance Training coordinated with the Center, MHYC and CCD and helped facilitate the training itself. As Matt noted, “We tend to go straight to the PowerPoint and lecture for many of our current classes, then wonder why our maintainers struggle to apply the material we just taught. This Train-the-Trainer has really opened my eyes to the importance of student involvement, recall, knowledge checks, and changing our teaching styles and techniques to reinforce learning. This class has given our training department some great instructional skills, and we’ve all gained some great insight into how adult learners learn.”

For more information:

  On the Train-the-Trainer course, contact Program Manager of Instructional Design Julie Deibel
  On the Transit Core Competencies Curriculum (TC3), contact Project Manager Pat Greenfield or visit Transit Training Network.