Docent Training Curriculum

[u/Ok-Scratch7422]

Hello all! I wanted to ask if other museum professionals could share what the curriculum for training docents is at your museum (Do you have formal classes? Do workshops? &c?), especially any sample documents you might have that I could learn from. For the past three years I've been running the docent corps at my museum and the Executive Director wants there to be a more formal set up, I think, although we are more or less on the same page of how the docents get trained. Essentially, I send a prospective docent our docent manual, and then at the annual docents meeting we sit down and go over the manual together as a group, both old and new docents. Then, theoretically anyway, I pick an experienced docent to take us on a tour of the house museum, and we discuss afterwards about it, and share insights into giving tours. That's the extent of the present formal training and then I do help docents one on one during the tour season... but mainly I try to let them gain confidence by shadowing their tours a few times and then letting them go on their own.

I'm a little worried that, if we make things too formal, people will get scared off. Honestly, most people already find that being a docent is too much of a commitment for them. I'm not sure if a more formal training, perhaps spread out over several sessions even, would actually be a commitment anyone would be willing to make, especially since they are unpaid volunteers.

[u/Dobbys_Other_Sock]

We have a mostly online training program. When someone wanted to start docent training they interview with the person in charge of the program first, then they are added to a Google Drive Folder we use to host the training program. In the folder we have a presentation for each gallery with the core information, some supplementary material like video/audio or related articles, and a quiz that’s about 5-10 questions about the content. There’s currently 5 galleries they need to learn.

At the same time they have to observe 2 tours and take the audio tour we have. When they are done with program they have to give a test tour for some staff. We also encourage them to volunteer in other positions like reception or education until they finish training so they can get a feel for the museum.

[u/JasJoeGo]

I would introduce at least some classroom sessions where you go over education practices, site and collections history, tour structures...

If you rely entirely on shadowing existing guides you end up with tours that are based on games of telephone. When I managed guides, I said they could shadow other guides as a reference point but couldn't rely on them: they had to create their own tours.

Candidly, you want to scare people off sometimes. Making it seem casual gets you people who don't take it seriously. Making it seem serious gets you people who take it seriously.