Making professional learning days easy to plan and fund for early childhood educators

How can ECE leaders in NL better access and use existing supports for paid professional learning days?

Client:
AECENL
Sector:
Non-profit
Project Type:
Consulting
Services:
Service Design
Collaborators:
N/A
The Challenge

The Association of Early Childhood Educators in Newfoundland and Labrador (AECENL) is a non-profit organisation responsible for supporting early childhood education (ECE). Amongst several initiatives, they are responsible for coordinating professional learning opportunities for childcare centres.

While various types of funding and support exist, many childcare center administrators were unaware or simply too busy to plan and run these days. 

AECENL saw a need to increase awareness and uptake of funding for paid professional learning days in the province.

Our Response

Building on previous work with the ECE Lab to prototype and test a Professional Learning Toolkit and support process, Made Manifest worked with AECENL to design and build an easy-to-use, comprehensive resource for administrators. 

The designed toolkit acted as the first pilot implemented at a wide-scale, and is currently in ongoing use in the province. It has helped to raise awareness of professional learning support as well as being used to run several PL days!

Client:
AECENL
Sector:
Non-profit
Project Type:
Consulting
Services:
Service Design
Collaborators:
N/A
Client:
AECENL
Client Sector:
Non-profit
Project Type:
Consulting
Services:
Service Design
Collaborators:
N/A
The Challenge

The Association of Early Childhood Educators in Newfoundland and Labrador (AECENL) is a non-profit organisation responsible for supporting early childhood education (ECE). Amongst several initiatives, they are responsible for coordinating professional learning opportunities for childcare centres.

While various types of funding and support exist, many childcare center administrators were unaware or simply too busy to plan and run these days. 

AECENL saw a need to increase awareness and uptake of funding for paid professional learning days in the province.

Our Response

Building on previous work with the ECE Lab to prototype and test a Professional Learning Toolkit and support process, Made Manifest worked with AECENL to design and build an easy-to-use, comprehensive resource for administrators. 

The designed toolkit acted as the first pilot implemented at a wide-scale, and is currently in ongoing use in the province. It has helped to raise awareness of professional learning support as well as being used to run several PL days!

I had a great experience introducing the toolkit for the first time at a professional learning event in Labrador. Multiple services in the room immediately started planning close-out days in front of me! From there we brought it in-person to the West, Central, and Eastern regions of the island, before finally launching it online across the province.
Sandy Gow, AECENL PL Coordinator
The Opportunity

The Association of Early Childhood Educators in Newfoundland and Labrador (AECENL) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to professionalism in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and to quality child care and education for young children. Along with developing certification and orientation courses, they are also responsible for coordinating professional learning (PL) opportunities for ECEs across the province.

Childcare centres can access resources and funding via AECENL, and are entitled to close for two PL days annually under the Operating Grant Fund (OGP) and Quality Enhancement Program (QEP). However, a lack of enabling structural support continues to contribute to low uptake and meaningful engagement with these PL resources.

Having identified this challenge, Made Manifest was engaged as an embedded design coach, supporting AECENL through rounds of design, implementation, and evaluation of a field prototype with the goal of increasing administrator uptake and pursuit of PL opportunities. The prototype test findings indicated that the PL Toolkit made it easier for the administrator to plan close out days.

Our Approach

Following the initial success of the PL Toolkit prototype, AECENL continued to work with Made Manifest to design and develop the first PL Toolkit, with the goal of making it user-friendly, engaging and easily accessible by operators and ECE centres.

Made Manifest collaborated closely with AECENL through the design and development stages, working through different design iterations to establish the project’s visual identity and take it from an initial prototype to a professional-looking tool. The design team identified opportunities to turn written, text-heavy information into engaging infographics and diagrams with the goal of making information accessible and easy-to-understand. 

Based on learnings from testing and prototyping, we designed with several use-cases in mind, ensuring that the toolkit could be both modular and cohesive, with the opportunity for certain sections to be accessed individually or in different formats (for example, a parent letter in an editable format as well as the PDF, or a Google form version of the post-PL survey) while prioritizing a well designed, printable PDF version of the full document.

My favourite aspect of the toolkit is its thoughtful approach to adult learning. It encourages administrators to consider the unique needs of their staff when designing professional learning experiences. The toolkit supports this by incorporating individual interests, strengths, and learning needs into the planning process.
Sandy Gow, AECENL PL Coordinator
Project Outcomes

Upon design completion, AECENL was able to immediately launch and implement the toolkit on a province-wide scale, meeting several of the anticipated use-cases. The PL toolkit helped to centralize support and funding opportunities for administrators while reducing workload related to planning a close-out day. It is currently in ongoing use in the province, helping to raise awareness of professional learning support as well as being used to run several PL days.

30+
Pages of resources in our toolkit for administrators and operators
2
learning days available per year
15+
facilitators available for training in our database
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