During this online course you will learn what your role and responsibilities as a minute taker are and new ways of taking accurate notes in online meetings and
During this online course you will learn what your role and responsibilities as a minute taker are and new ways of taking accurate notes in online meetings and Board meetings. You’ll also pick-up lots of top tips and tricks to help you produce easy to read minutes.
What’s the big deal with minutes anyway? Minutes are a record of what takes place at a meeting and ensures nothing is lost or forgotten – you will learn how to take, prepare and present minutes.
No need to write like the wind and capture every word – minutes don’t have to be verbatim but they have to record certain facts. You will explore what must be recorded: participants, decisions, actions…
Time is precious, so make every second count – think like a Scout and be prepared! The trainer will discuss the meeting cycle and what to prepare before your meeting takes place.
Minutes don’t have to be long, complicated or in fancy language but they need to record clearly and simply… You will examine the most difficult aspects of taking minutes and how best to address them.
Anyone can scribble a rough outline of a meeting, right? Yes, but to take good notes and create minutes that provide an accurate reflection requires a particular set of skills – the trainer will show you!
The good, the bad and the ugly – you’ll examine good and bad minutes, which will help you follow best practice and avoid common mistakes.
This online course is for anyone who has to take notes or minutes in face-to-face or online meetings and produce minutes, whether they are experienced and wish to refresh their existing skills and knowledge or are new to the role and require a basic understanding of minute taking.
There are no formal entry requirements.
Course structure: 6-hour course with suitable breaks, which gives participants the opportunity to practice note taking and set out minutes, with plenty of opportunities for questions, discussion and exercises.
Attendance: You must attend both parts of this online course in order to complete it and receive your Certificate of achievement.
£130 (discounted from £200). You receive a £70 discount as you belong to an SCVO member organisation. Email SCVO to find out more about SCVO membership.
“John made it quite interactive and engaged well with the variety of types and levels of experience within the group.”
“The training provided was practical and relevant not only dealing with the writing/typing side, also addressed the unspoken power dynamics in the meeting and how to navigate them.”
“John was helpful and friendly.”
Online
Volunteer Centre East Lothian
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to
