Tackling the challenges of PES with Technology-Enhanced Peer Coaching at ANSE Summer University 2015

EmployID member Barbara Gogala (ZRSZ) attended at ANSE Summer University in Zadar, Croatia from 17^th to 21^st August 2015. The summer universities topic was “Supervision - Guiding Lights for Development in Times of Crisis”.

Summer University was organized by Croatian Association for Supervision in cooperation with ANSE. Plenary lectures focused on the impact on crisis to professionals offering supervision mostly in social field. The workshops were more diverse, showing some creative methods, tackling diversity, evaluation process, secondary traumatization…  Attention was paid to the results and learning outcomes of International intervision processes that have been going on among ANSE members for more than 15 years now.

On 18^th August 2015 Barbara Gogala (ZRSZ) and Carmen Wolf (KIT) held a workshop together on “Tackling the challenges of employment counsellors with technology-enhanced Peer Coaching”. Barbara was there face-to-face as presenter and Carmen was connected via Skype. This technical challenges was an opportunity to try out another way of presenting material remote. The workshop was on the challenges the PES face and how EmployID is tackling these with Technology-Enhanced Peer Coaching/ Online Peer Coaching. Current works on concept, training and tools were presented and afterwards the advantages and disadvantages of doing peer coaching online were discussed. Advantages that were seen in Online Peer Coaching were: It might be better for some people to express themselves since they are able to take their time (“slow down – think first – write down”), social media is too unprofessional to use for the professional context, it is a part of nowadays society world (new media) and it should be seen as another tool for coaching instead of a concurrent method or approach. Disadvantages that were mentioned was the influence of sound (if with audio), missing contact and therefore the missing emotional connectivity. The question was raised, if persons using the peer coaching know each other before and blended-learning approaches were suggested so that people better understand each other and their concepts behind written language.

 We thank all participants for their valuable input (especially also in the evaluation sheets). 

Photo © Elisabeth Alder-Wuerrer.