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Teaching for Impact: Designing Effective & Open Training: Training Manual & Workbook

Project team

Talarify

Anelda van der Walt

Talarify is a South African consulting and training organisation specialising in capacity and community development in Open Science and Digital and Computational Research.

Prelude

Sheena O'Connell

Prelude is a South African consulting and training organisation specialising in professional skills development in Python, Teamwork and Education. Prelude also builds edTech products.

About this Workbook

This workbook was developed as a reference for a course offered to grantees of the Failure Modes of Engineering (FeME) Seed Funding instrument: Data for Change Training Fund in 2026.

This workbook is both a training manual and a practical working document to support the design and improvement of training.

It is intended for practitioners designing and delivering training in complex, resource-constrained, and context-specific environments.

Course Structure

The course consist of the following elements:

Module 1: Workshop

  • Aim: to introduce participants to the theory around evidence-based teaching and OER development.

  • Time estimate and themes: (total 8 hours teaching time)

  • Lesson 1: Evidence-Informed Teaching in Practice - 4 hours

  • Lesson 2: Developing accessible OERs - 4 hours

  • This module is delivered online and recorded for participants to reference later.

  • The training alternates between teaching, Q\&A, and tailored activities to help participants relate what they’ve learned to their own training proposal activities.

Module 2: Discussion Sessions

  • Aim: To provide participants with opportunities to consider what they’ve learned in Module 1 in the context of their own plans for teaching and content development through peer-learning and discussion.

  • Time estimate and themes: (total 4.5 hours discussion time)

  • Discussion 1: Applying evidence-based teaching practices in my training - 1.5 hours

  • Discussion 2: Developing my content as an accessible OER - 1.5 hours

  • Discussion 3: Applying the skills I’ve learned to teach my own material - 1.5 hours

Module 3: One-on-One Mentoring

  • Aim: To facilitate individual conversations where participants practice their teaching, get feedback on content, and discuss and brainstorm unique ideas, challenges, and contexts with a mentor.

  • Time estimate: 1 hour per participant.

How to Use the Workbook

The contents of this workbook were designed to be used:

  1. as self-study material (in this case, we strongly recommend further reading using the reference materials);

  2. as a training manual and workbook complementing the interactive workshops run by facilitators with experience in evidence-based teaching and open science;

  3. as a practical working document, where you actively design, test, and refine your own training materials.

Tip

Use the activities throughout the workbook to develop your own materials as you progress.

Expected Learning Outcomes

After working through this book, learners will be able to:

  • design training aligned with real-world outcomes and constraints
  • analyse learners, context, and systems to inform design decisions
  • create participatory learning experiences that support application
  • integrate practice, feedback, and evaluation into training
  • decide when to reuse, adapt, or create materials
  • prepare and share training materials as reusable Open Educational Resources

Keeping the Information Current

The information in this document reflects and references, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the status quo, recommendations, and resources at publication.

Should you have any suggestions for updating or extending the content, please contact info@talarify.co.za. Contributors will be acknowledged appropriately in future releases. All versions will be hosted on Zenodo.

Re-using, Remixing, Reproducing

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Creative Commons with attribution

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.

Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Citation

If you use or adapt this workbook, please cite it as:

Van der Walt, A. & O'Connell, S. (2026). Teaching for Impact: Designing Effective & Open Training. Talarify & Prelude.tech Available at https://talarifyza.github.io/teaching-for-impact/. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

BibTeX:

@misc{vanderwaltoconnell2026teachingforimpact,
  title     = {Teaching for Impact: Designing Effective & Open Training},
  author    = {Van der Walt, Anelda and O'Connell, Sheena},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://talarifyza.github.io/teaching-for-impact/},
  note      = {Licensed under CC BY 4.0}
}

Funding

The training and development of this workbook and associated resources were funded through the Failure Modes of Engineering (FeME) project.

Acknowledgements

This workbook and training were inspired by the Instructor Training material developed by The Carpentries and the Creative Commons Certificate Course.

AI Usage

Generative AI tools were used extensively to support drafting, restructuring, and refining content throughout this workbook. The author defined the overall structure, pedagogical approach, and conceptual framing, and iteratively guided and edited all AI-generated content.