It is recognised that the Liberal Democrats offer their members the best and broadest range of conference training of all three main political parties. Training is delivered at Federal and Regional Conferences, through Winning Teams as well as at specific events organised by local parties across the country.
However, we know it is not always easy for Lib Dem busy members to attend training, and limited resources mean that trainers cannot always reach as many people as they would like within the party.
To extend the reach of our training offer, I have been working on sourcing, implementing and developing online training since my first day as Training Manager at Lib Dem HQ, in May this year.
At Conference, in September, I was pleased and proud to announce that the Online Skills and Resources (OSKAR) training website is now live! The site can be accessed for free by all party members at www.libdems.org.uk/skills with their membership account log-in details.
There are currently a few courses already available on OSKAR: Election Law, PagePlus Basics, PPERA Compliance and a number of factsheets that give an overview of different topics (Campaigning with young people; How to become a parliamentary candidate; Making best use of the Media and more).
Thanks to the cooperation of dedicated trainers who are working hard and fast, many more courses will be soon online: 13 video-based courses about Connect, the new party database for effective campaigning; more advanced election law modules; membership recruitment and retention; more PagePlus! Also look out for social media training and a video about canvassing early next year.
Access to online learning through OSKAR offers the freedom to run through a training course at any time and chosen pace as well as continuous access whenever anything is forgotten or needs refreshing. OSKAR is therefore an easy to use, reliable and flexible tool that will keep growing and changing to fit the training needs of party members across the country.
OSKAR is not here to replace face-to-face training at conference or other events but to support and complement it while reaching a broader audience.
So please introduce yourself to OSKAR and if you have comments or suggestions I would love to hear from you. You can contact me at [email protected].
5 Comments
A welcome devleopment for those of us for whatever reason can’t travel long distances to attend training sessions (expense of transport, caring commitments, family, work commitments etc)…
My constituency account manager (Cotswolds) has given me the user name to access Connect and my password has been accepted. But I cannot access the Oscar training using either this data or my membership number. As I am responsible for paying the monthly bill for Connect it is a bit rich that I, as a County Council candidate, cannot get access to the necessary advice.
Seelikn advice by phone I rang Central Office onlto find the switchboard closed at 5.10 on Monday when the message tells me its open until 5.30. Your comments please.
Desperate to try to get onto OSKAR, I tried the link on this Lib Dem voice page. Webpage not available. Signed up for a webinar- no information on what to log in to to get it. Managed to find it after the webinar started, but sound quality appalling; logged out again. I am elderly, and clearly stupid. I think the Lib Dems website and ancillary webstuff is the most obscure I have ever tried to use. Yes, before you all shout at me, I know it is me. But that isn’t helping me get what I need. Not encouraging at all. I manage to get what I need from everywhere else; just the Lib Dems website makes life so very difficult. I thought I was the only one till I saw Nigel’s comment above.
Is this site still active,I see the last comment was in 2015
Can some please tell me how to produce labels of postal voters from connect? I need to complete by Wednesday!