After holding the first ESN IT training the week before, I opened a second training for the entire network of the Erasmus Student Network of Romania.

The second training on the topic, held on the 21st of November 2024, managed to bring together 15 participants with the sole purpose to learn more about ESN and what the IT side of ESN means. Like the last training, I presented the way to connect to an administrator account on our Training Website, and the participants learnt in an interactive manner how to build articles of several types on the ESN website.

For this, I created a tool on my personal website that allowed each participant to grab a unique username and task available on the ESN training website, tasks ranging from creating a blog post about a fictional or real event, a guide for Erasmus students, or a contact page descriptive for the association. During the half-hour in which the participants were free to work and explore in-depth their task the possibilities they have on the website, I randomly picked some of them (based on their usernames, assigned randomly), to share their screen, describe what they were doing, and tell if they faced any difficulties. This method of verification proved to be efficient and appreciated by the participants. Later, the participants explored the methods to alter the main menu of the website, by being tasked with modifying the menu items in different manners.

He made sure that we all understood what we had to do, and he was constantly present and focused on what we were doing. The way he would ask us to share our screens from time to time was amazing because he did it in a very gentle manner, he didn't do it aggressively or condescending, he had a very nice attitude! He did not judge us for the lack of IT skills, and he explained everything for anyone to understand and comprehend. - participant, feedback form

Overall, the training lasted for two hours and received great feedback from over 90% of the participants, the only mentioned weakness of me as a trainer on this topic being that I sometimes moved on too quickly from one topic to another. From the feedback form, it seems that most of the participants want to learn JavaScript and HTML/CSS in the future, so the next training organised for ESNers will for sure be on that topic.

A screenshot of the participants at the training, just before closing.

Example of an article created by the participants to the training.