PULSE 5 is coming to an end

The fifth year of PULSE- Stronger Together is moving towards an end. There are only 3 weeks left of the exchange period. During this last year, the PULSE team in South Africa has visited almost all of the different bands in Field Band Foundation (FBF) together with Field Band Education (FBE) with the model Educational Band Visit. There are now only 4 bands left to visit during this round of EBV, these visits are scheduled and will happen with FBE, the Peer Educators and the new PULSE team (PULSE6).

Doing activities with the team in Sterkstroom

The model “Educational Band Visit” was created as a way to keep up-skilling the staff with the FBE and PULSE curriculum after the Field Band Academy was closed. The question is; is it really helping the staff, and will there be evidence of improvement of the skills and knowledge in the tutor teams? PULSE and FBE developed and distributed a knowledge and skills assessment that all tutors, BCs, POs and SOs did before the second round of Educational Band Visit started. The results from this assessment were helpful when deciding the set up and content for the band visits. The plan is to distribute the same knowledge and skills assessment after all bands have been visited. The results will be analysed as pre- and post-assessments and the results from the two will be compared. This will show if the model of Educational Band Visit is the way forward. The result will also help analysing the needs for a new round of band visits.

The last weeks of PULSE 5 are spent with finalising the scheduled tasks and goals, and make plans on how to transfer the knowledge to the next PULSE participants. It is important that the knowledge will be passed on in a comprehensible manner.

Here are some pictures of all the teams PULSE 5 has visited during the round 2 of Educational Band Visit. Change Agent Action Plan is something all teams make at the end of the Educational Band Visit. Every tutor write down one topic from the curriculum they have been taught throughout the week that they will focus extra on.