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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?"
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!
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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.
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]
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
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
"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 don't think you're getting old, I think the real problem many developers haven't clued into yet is making electronic books act like real ones on the computer. I thought of going to rentacoder.com and have someone come up with a program to turn a PDF into a algorithmmically generated 3D model ebook that would behave as such, I think the real problem is not the screen but the usability of real books and ebooks are dissimilar, ebooks are cumbersome in manyways because the programmers of the software didn't take into account what makes books usable to begin with, how they are physically designed and how this can translate into easy-to-use virtual ebooks onscreen.
With 3D user interface in vista I hope programmers will take a clue from the real world and design digital "virtual objects" like their real world counterparts for a more "natural" usability factor.
Touché!
"Piter, too, is dead."