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Preparing for a Regional Association ZIMS Training ​

 

ZIMS training can be a great learning experience for both the instructors and the attendees if you are well prepared for it. Start planning as soon as you know the training date. Do not wait until the last minute!

 

Thank you for your dedication and critical support in training ZIMS in your region! This guide should help answer common questions that are faced when hosting a regional ZIMS training.


If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact training@species360.org .


Index of Topics

 

Know Your Audience
Instructor/Attendee Ratio

Attendee Pairings

Host Preparations

Application Preparation

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Provide a ZIMS Navigation Overview

Monographs

The Session Presentations

Avoid PowerPoint Fatigue

Choosing your Topics

Developing Exercises

The Regional Association’s Role in ZIMS Studbooks

 

 

Know Your Audience

Your audience may be one or more of the following:

It is easier to develop a ZIMS training session when your attendees are of the same experience/job type but that is not usually the case. It is possible to develop an effective training session for a mixed group of attendees and we have found that a diverse audience often results in a more successful session as they exchange ideas and experience. In addition to holding varied jobs your, audience may have varying degrees of computer skills and experience with ZIMS

 

One way is to get to know your audience before the session starts by sending out a questionnaire prior to the session. If your questions are selected carefully the results will help guide your presentations, attendee pairings (if needing to share computers) and will shape the exercises you provide. You should try to get the results back no later than two weeks before the session so that you can use the results to help you fine tune the instruction. The format of the survey could be a document emailed to attendees and returned, or a computer program such as Survey Monkey could be used.

 

Some questions to consider are:

  1. My Institution is __________________
  2. My title is _______________________
  3. I am:
    1. Responsible for the main records-keeping duties at my institution
      1. Husbandry
      2. Medical
      3. Studbooks
      4. Both
    2. Responsible for doing some data entry
      1. Husbandry
      2. Medical
      3. Both
    3. Not responsible for any record-keeping duties
    4. Responsible for managing my institution’s staff
  4. I have used ZIMS for ____________ years
  5. I need the following special seating arrangements (example front of room, on the aisle):
  6. What I hope to get out of this training session is:

Back to Index of Topics

 

Instructor/Attendee Ratio

It is recommended that an instructor/attendee ratio be 1 instructor to 10 attendees. The maximum recommended is 1 to 20. If the sessions are strictly presentations, then the attendee ratio can go much higher. If there will be walk-throughs (instructor showing on screen how to do something and attendees doing the same data entry) or exercises (attendees doing data entry without the direct guidance of an instructor), a ratio of 2+ instructors to 10 attendees is recommended. In walk-throughs, if anyone gets behind, the entire presentation must stop until they catch up. Having an additional instructors other than the presenter is needed to help keep everyone up to speed.

 

Attendee Pairings

You will need to decide if attendees will be working on their own or in pairings. Pairings have many advantages:

In 20 years of teaching the AZA Institutional Record Keeping course we have found that pairing people of varying backgrounds has worked very well. Pairing a keeper with a veterinarian or a curator with a Registrar allows for the ability to share experiences and varying approaches to record-keeping. And pairing an experienced person with an inexperienced one allows the experienced person to mentor the less experienced person and help them move along faster. In return, the inexperienced person provides new insight to someone who may be somewhat set in their ways but is open to new ideas.

Back to Index of Topics

 

Host Preparations

To get off to a good start and have a successful training session you should be well prepared before the start. For the room:

Computers can be sourced in three ways:

Regardless of how you source your computers, be VERY clear on the hardware requirements. Note that wireless/WiFi is required. Google Chrome should be installed as it is the recommended browser for ZIMS. ZIMS does not function as well on a tablet, so those are not recommended. If attendees are bringing a work-issued laptop, advise that they request administrator permissions to their laptop should last minute troubleshooting be required.  Following these recommendations will help ensure your session starts on time and minimizes the chance that your attendees may not be able to work at all!

 

For the computer set up:

Back to Index of Topics

 

Application Preparation

For most training sessions you will be using a ZIMS build that is dedicated to training. You will need to contact training@Species360.org at least one month before the training session so they can determine which database will work best for your training.

 

List of Training Environments:

 

Only in rare circumstances will the attendees be working in their actual live ZIMS database. Using our training environments ensures that while your attendees are learning no changes are being made in their true ZIMS data.
*Recommended that you do NOT use Live ZIMS for training*

 

You may need to have institutions created by Species360 for your training. You can then add Staff, create log ins and assign Roles. Some suggestions for making this easier are:

To add Staff, create logins and assign Roles follow these steps:

Keeping things simple as suggested above will help guard against possibly forgetting log in information that can slow the session down.

 

HINT: ALWAYS CHECK EACH INSTITUTION’S LOG IN PRIOR TO THE SESSION!!

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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

No matter how much you prepare things can always go wrong. Some of these you can prepare for and some you cannot. The following are some examples of things that have happened to us in the twenty years of teaching the AZA records-keeping course and other ZIMS on-site trainings:

Provide a ZIMS Navigation Overview

If you have any attendees with little or no experience in ZIMS it is a good idea to offer a short navigation session prior to the start of training. This will help them get an idea of how to move around the application, so they do not get behind in the walkthroughs or exercises because they do not know where to go to do what they need to do. Try to allow 30 – 45 minutes for this introduction. It is best to do this introduction using an institution that actually has data in it as the institutions you will be using are starting with a blank database. Contact training@Species360.org to obtain information on how to access such an institution. Topics to cover include:

Monographs

If you want to develop monographs you can, but Species360 has a library of documents and PowerPoints that can be reviewed before the training session.
Go to:

http://training.species360.org/HusbandryLibrary/
http://training.species360.org/AquaticsLibrary/
http://training.species360.org/StudbooksLibrary/

http://training.species360.org/MedicalLibrary/
…to view the lists of available content based on topics. Additionally, under the help menu in ZIMS you can search our exhaustive help library: http://training.species360.org/Help/ for any additional resources you may need.

Back to Index of Topics

 

The Session Presentations

Variety will keep the sessions interesting and not everyone has the same presentation style, but we have found that following these steps in presenting a ZIMS topic has been very successful.

  1. Start with a Lecture/PowerPoint/Other
    1. Introduce the topic to be covered
    2. Include Best Practices for the topic
    3. Note what staff members may use the topic the most
    4. Define any new terms that may be encountered in the topic
    5. Handing out copies of the PowerPoints (four or six per page) allows attendees to take notes on each slide if desired
  2. Follow up with a Walkthrough
    1. Instructor walks through entering the topic into ZIMS
    2. Students follow along and enter the same data themselves
    3. This is where additional instructors can be a great help because if one attendee/pair gets behind the entire walkthrough must stop until they catch up. It also helps to have a “driver” entering the data so the presenter can be more aware of the attendees.
    4. Come up with an alternative to attendees holding their hands up if they have a question. In the AZA class we use small stuffed animals that are placed on top of the monitors. This gives the instructors immediate notification and allows the attendees to continue working until they get instructor assistance. This alternative could be as easy as a small piece of folded paper that says Help! to place on a corner of the monitor.
  3. End with Exercises
    1. Immediately after the lecture and walkthrough provide the time for topic exercises without the help of a guiding instructor
    2. This is another place where additional instructors help make the sessions go smoothly
  4. Provide feedback
    1. Instructors can review the exercise right from their computer if they are given access prior to the session. This eliminates the need for handing in and reviewing printed reports

Avoid PowerPoint Fatigue

Although PowerPoints are usually the easiest way to present an overview of a topic, they can get very tedious if used too much. Some ideas for other presentation styles are:

Choosing your Topics

The audience should drive the topic selection. Some topics need to be covered in a specific order as they either build on each other (Accessions should come before Births so you have Parents in the database), or local lists must first be made available to select from (Your Staff, Enclosures and Collections are fields in Accession screens).

Back to Index of Topics

 

The following is a topic flow that works. Those topics that have ZIMS data entry involved, and should have walkthroughs and exercises associated with them are noted with (ZIMS).

If your audience represents aquariums you may want to add the following topics:

Back to Index of Topics

 

Developing Exercises

If you are starting with a blank database  (LearnZIMS), no animals or enclosures have been entered. Design your exercises to build on each other.

You may want to create an Excel file that you can cross-reference to make sure that your exercises are logical. Some logical things to check for are:

As a final double check it is always a good idea to actually enter your exercises into ZIMS. This will help you catch a lot of problems that you did not see when creating the exercises. During the training sessions thinks tend to snowball as one error may affect other exercises down the line resulting in wasted time and confusion for the attendees.

 

As ZIMS functionality continues to increase you may need to review your Topics and update your exercises annually to make sure you are covering all the relevant ones.

Back to Index of Topics

 

The Regional Association’s Role in ZIMS Studbooks


If you are training Studbooks, there will be additional conversations with Species360 in advance of the event, a reminder that setting up and managing Studbooks access is the responsibility of a regional association.

 

As a Regional Association you would have access to all the Association’s studbooks. They also have three responsibilities:

  1. Manage Association’s Studbook Roles
  2. Assign Users and their Roles to Studbooks
  3. Create any new studbooks and assign Users (currently no new studbooks are being created)

To view an Association’s studbooks, you must first be assigned as a regional association manager (contact Training@species360.org with questions).

From Start > Institution > My Institution. There should be a “Studbook” tab next to the Details tab. If you do not see it contact Species360 to have a Global Administrator assign you the correct Role.

 

Selecting this tab will display a list of all of your Association’s Studbooks. Click on the species hyperlink to open the details about the Studbook.

 

Regional Associations are charged with creating their own Role access for their Studbooks. These Roles are across the board for all Studbooks being managed by your Association. To add a Role go to Studbook Roles > Actions > Add New Role. The Role Name must be unique to your Association. If you check the “Allow studbook user to assign this role” then the Studbook Keepers can assign people to this Role, saving the Association from having to keep it updated.

 

You then need to assign access to this Role. Select the Role > Actions > Manage Role Access. The module will default to Studbook. Roles are assigned for Search/View, Add, Edit and Remove data.

Check and uncheck the access you want the Role to have. For example you would not want to give a Nutrition Advisor access to assigning people to the Studbook but you would want to give that access to the Studbook Keeper and also possibly to the Species Coordinator.

 

To assign people to a Studbook go back to your Studbook list and highlight the appropriate Studbook > Actions > Assign Person to Studbook. Or, you can select the species hyperlink and open the Studbook Details > Studbook Assignments grid > Actions > Add New. The Association and Studbook Name will default. The person field will source from the staff members at the institution that you record. The Studbook Title is a list of various role types that can be associated with a Studbook such as TAG Chair and Nutrition Advisor. The Studbook Role that you assign is sourced from the Roles that you created earlier.

 

The actual Studbooks are found under Start > Studbook > Studbooks. A list of your Association’s studbooks will display. Double clicking on one will open the Studbook dashboard from where you can select to View List for Living Animals in Studbook or All Animals in Studbook. From the list the Studbook ID is a hyperlink into the actual Studbook record.

 

 

Back to Index of Topics

 

Revised 5 March 2025
 

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