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Going Beyond Paper Based Training Material?
ydrol asks: "Training Companies (and training departments) seem to take great delight in handing over a pile of folders full of paper based training materials at the end of a course. Presumably, they don't want students stealing electronic copies of their work and training others, as it is a lucrative source of revenue. The downside is that it is often impractical to refer to these training notes after the course is over. Does anyone have any ideas — both for students (short of using psexec to grab the electronic notes from the teachers laptop) and for training companies themselves on how we can improve the situation?"
I attent a lot of courses and thus get a lot of paper handouts. For one thing, I always ask if they could send me the electronic documents. Its a lot easier to search those files for a specific item, and much easier to archive in a good manner. The programming courses within the company I work for almost always have a cd with the presentation and all the example files. The paperwork disappears into the garbage bin easily.
My blog: http://www.redcode.nl
"Presumably, they don't want students stealing electronic copies of their work and training others, as it is a lucrative source of revenue. "
Well there's always that "analog hole" slashdot's always going on about.
hands on experience?
real reality tests?
you want the training manuals as an ebook? creators are scared you might copy it? looks like DRM is a solution here ...
The problem with paper based training materials is that frequently they are just copies of slides. Good paper based training materials stands on its own as a book that can act as a reference when the course is over. That means that the concepts that the instructor covered are explained in the book with examples, screen shots, and comes with the sample programs that the instructor was demonstrating.
The instructor gives value by being able to answer questions and adds his real-world experience to the concepts in the book. The instructor can ask questions, and makes sure that the students understand the concepts before moving on.
I work in a department that creates Financial IT-related training for our customers.
We always hand out a paper book at the START of the course. There are not only the slides but already a sizeable amount of notes under the slides, as reference material. The participants typically scribble extra notes here and there in the book. That is more useful than handing it out at the end. And it's a paperback which takes less space than a big binder. From our surveys, it seems that many customers from time to time refer back to this book.
Similar to your mention, we do not hand out electronic copies. Indeed it can be all too easily reused for training others, which is not only a financial loss but more importantly for us a risk of reputation as well as the people giving such copied training are not certified to do so. We actually had a few cases in the past when the powerpoint files had leaked out and independent consults gave payable training with it that was of bad quality. We knew because those customers complained to us.
In a few cases we mention a download link to the participants during a course where they can retrieve a pdf of a section of the book, these are typically checklists and so on.
There is an incredible shortage of user/programming manuals from the creators of the languages, which yields a deforesting effort by 3rd party writers. I wish you could get a book for (insert new language here), from the creators of it, that looked like the old programming/user manuals. You could know nothing about programming, or the bare minimum, and come out of it with the ability to fully operate and create solutions to any given problem within the parameters of that language -- all without Google!
stuff |
yeah, it is impossible to copy a paper-version.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I know its less usable, but its not difficult to create individually watermarked handouts (say). I don't mean just adding text into a pdf, thats far to easy to remove - I mean a multipage tiff with the watermark text is burned into the image, or the pdf equivalent. That way if someone passes on a copy, you know who did it. You can also include the eurion constellation in the watermark to make it harder for people to mess with the image in tools (or with printers/scanners)
I'm not sure its worth protecting slides much more than this - if your course is so chalk & talk that the slides capture everything, the bad reputation you'll gain will cost you more than piracy.
Get a scanner with a paper feed. I'd keep the image as a file but also ocr it. The advantage of ocr is that you can do a text search. The disadvantage of ocr is that, if you want 100% accuracy, you might save time by just typing the whole document in to the computer yourself. If you keep the image you get the accuracy you need.. shtml
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/atc/materials/dig/text
What you do depends on the materials. Some training materials I never refer to, I literally haven't looked at them in years. Some training materials don't relate that closely to the important information in the course. I remember one course where I should have taken better notes. All the good stuff came out of the instructor's mouth. Every time I go back to the materials for that course I'm disappointed.
A lot of training materials; you can get better stuff by googling. YMMV
I'm not sure if I really understand the topic, may be it's related solely to software development training where I can't say very much to, as I'm working in life science. But isn't the quality of most training and teaching heavily dependent on the trainer/teacher and the better he/she is the better the lesson/training is.
If you really believe that the people you train will take over your job, than what is it, that makes you a good trainer? Just the material you provided? Shoudn't you have methods to transmit your knowledge that goes beyond a powerpoint presentation and a flip chart? When I remember my university career, the lectures or practica that where given with enthusiasm and that tried to create an interest in the subject were the ones that sticked in your mind, so to say.
When I give a lecture and the people ask me for my presentation, what should I be afraid of? Did they worked in this field as long as I did? Do they want to become a trainer or teacher? Well, it takes an effort to be a good trainer and who cares about the bad ones?
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
I work at a company where if you take classes on campus you get a binder called a manual, which is primarily composed of printed out powerpoint slides. This makes for a useless 'manual' inclass, let alone outside. There's no index, no contents, usually just a few tabs to seperate sections.
If I had to choose, I would prefer a higher quality doc than a digital one.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
My experience is that paper based training is relatively ineffective. My better to go outside and use rewards and praise. When I've used newspaper, the puppy either tore it up or just looked confused. What? Never mind ...
[Insert pithy quote here]
Personally, I provide all my teaching materials in electronic formats. Mostly PDF. The assumption has been that (if I'm any good) it isn't the materials which people are coming for, but my ability to teach them. So even if someone else was to offer teaching with the same materials, people would still rather go to me. Or so I hope. :)
The problem is that I have yet to convince the administrators that this is the case. Fortunately, they see printing as being a cost they would rather avoid, so moving to electronic formats works for them by reducing their overall costs. But I'm at a university, and perhaps things are different elsewhere.
Being aware of what paper can do goes a long way toward reducing the amount of information you actually print. While different subjects offer different opportunities, focusing on graphic means of communicating ideas and data and combining that with the resolution of paper can often mean that you can compress dozens of electronic slides into a single piece of paper.
Read some of Edward Tufte's work, it is a good place to start.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Because I actually -prefer- paper training guides/manuals/etc. You know, with those fancy "Table of Contents" things, and that nifty "Index" in the back.
...
I've been to a lot of technical training, and by far, the training books are what -really- tell you how something works. I much prefer to open the book, look up something in the index, while I have the product/etc. up on my screen. It's a lot easier to work that way for me.
I must be getting old
As the proud owner of a new Boston Terrier, here's hoping that his need to refer to his paper-based training materials will decrease over time...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Insist - before signing contracts for training - that
(at least) the client company receives the courseware
"to go" on disk(s)... or take your business elsewhere
BTW, we've been impressed by eCourses produced by:
Lynda.com
One place I recently interviewed at, Eedo Knowledgeware (http://www.eedo.com/), seems to make pretty awesome online computer-based training products, and they support multiple platforms.
;-)
I chose a different job for other reasons, not because of their products.
- chrish
Presumably, they don't want students stealing electronic copies of their work and training others, as it is a lucrative source of revenue. The downside is that it is often impractical to refer to these training notes after the course is over.
You are not buying a book. The fees paid to trainers are for their knowledge and skills at presentation. Handouts or binders are at best a bonus. Please don't confuse training with shopping at Amazon.com.
I admit to wondering how referring to printed handouts after the fact can be seen as "impractical." Do you have rare paper allergy? Are you illiterate or an individual with a visual impairment that makes reading text difficult?
Maybe try thinking of paper as the Linux of communication tools - universal, almost free (as in beer) and accessible to anyone, anywhere without the use of proprietary tools.
Three Squirrels
Let's make a distinction between training, schooling and education, so we can define training as skill transfer from one entity to another. The answer has been around since the late '50's and it's called "programmed instruction." IBM made good use of programmed instruction during the '60's, as did approximately 20,000 other companies and publishers. Some of the best programmed instruction was produced by Control Data and Texas Instruments. Programmed instruction courses were bulky, and not for the impatient, but the mark of good programmed instruction was 95%+ successful transfer of knowledge or skills to the student using it, and the student usually achieved this in approxiamately 1/6 the time of normal textbook acquisiton.
Why is it so scarce today? Well, the co-inventor of programmed instruction was B. F. Skinner, and it became politically incorrect to acknowledge his ideas of operant conditioning during the '70's. Another problem was that each step (sometimes referred to as a "frame" in PI) had to be tested for successful completion. (One of the presuppositions fo PI is that people learn from success, so frames had to be constructed so that 98% of the time people made the correct response.) This made the actual development slow, and this time was added to the extra time it took to analyze and break down the knowledge into small, discrete portions. Development time could be lengthy compared to just writing a book. So, what was once an effective tool used to teach math, English, Private Pilot licensing, computer programming, Logic, and thousands of other subjects, became watered down until computer-aided instruction was no more than a presentation given on the computer, instead of a method of almost guaranteed achievement.
There were limits to the effectiveness of PI. It was most effective in transmitting skills or concrete knowledge, where the objectives were clear or the knowledge was stable, and less effective for subjects requiring creativity or independent thought. For example, it could teach English grammar very well, did a fair job of teaching letter writing, but would be deficient at teaching the intermediate to advanced levels of story writing. It could teach color theory, but couldn't teach painting very well. My first skills in programming the IBM 1401 (AUTOCODER) were taught through programmed instruction courses. (So were my first FORTRAN, COBOL and BAL courses.) I've seen children taught to type at age 6 using PI on a Texas Instruments system, and I took a number of programs using CDC's Plato system, including a cool chemistry course that included lab simulations.
For theory, I'd recommend the book, "The Analysis of Behavior" by Skinner and Holland, and for practical use I'd suggest the books of Robert Mager including, "Practical Programming" by Mager and Pipe. Much of the theory of programmed instruction was done by Norman Crowder, who used a "branching" program. (In short, if a frame was answered correctly, the student was "branched" to a new subtopic or skill instead of having to work every frame in the program.)
IMO, most of the so-called "training" offered as CBT, CAI and from product vendors isn't worth diddly these days.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"