Let’s keep this punchy. What do I believe after 20 in Higher Education and 10 years in Business Management?

1. Teaching and learning is a partnership: we both need to work at it together. I can’t learn for you and you can’t easily teach yourself the things you need.
2. Relationship is important to learning: we will need to meet up before making commitments to ensure that we feel that we can work productively together.
3. No-one knows everything – not even teachers in their own subject area: particularly in the professional setting the learner will know more about the context than the trainer. For me that gives welcome ‘balance’ in the teaching/learning relationship. The job of the trainer is to help the learner apply and focus such knowledge to achieve the particular objective.
4. You will not be ‘imprisoned’ in a ‘language lab’ environment, neither will you be ‘condemned’ to following a ‘standard business language text‘: such approaches may suit other learners at a more elementary level, and the latter could possibly act as an supplementary aid, but this is not the core of the way Tonyversity will work with you.
5. We will work together on your critical projects, with your own materials, improving both them and you in the process. This might involve report-writing, presentations (oral / powerpoint etc), preparing strategies for negotiations, helping you develop effective cvs and covering letters etc. We will immerse ourselves in your world because that is where you need the help, are most comfortable and have the greatest need for support.
6. With the right relationship, working on the right materials together, learning can continue, effectively unabated, between classes, helped, at times, by phone, email and web.
7. Tonyversity can act as coach and mentor to junior and mid-line managers looking to develop their potential and skills and capabilities by providing management expertise and a sounding board for concepts, ideas, strategy and tactics. It is often difficult to escape the ‘inside the box’ thinking endemic within the company ‘walls’. Discussions with and disclosures to Tonyversity, of course, remain private and confidential.

Before I go on, you may wish at this point to look at the post-learning programme comments on the Tonyversity experience made by a recent client: here.

You may find my teaching and learning a bit different! I really want you to think about and really understand what we are discussing not merely listen to what I may be saying. This makes it a partnership: I can teach…. but ONLY you can learn. So you HAVE to play your part. For my part I will try my level best to help you to learn. I will help you, prompt you and metaphorically ‘kick’ you a little to encourage you to get involved because I truly believe that one learns and comes to ‘own’ something not by learning the lines, but by playing them (if you will forgive the ‘stage’ metaphor).

I also happen to believe that you already KNOW a lot more than you think you do about life and business…. for example, even if you are young and not yet employed, you have been a consumer since you were old enough to walk into a shop: and that gives you a lot to draw upon…. I really do want you to understand that your ideas, thoughts and experiences are welcome and a valuable contribution to learning together.

Links:

An illustration of a Tonyversity Learning programme

Learner feedback upon the Tonyversity experience after programme completion.