We have been in education for decades and along
the way have
seen trends come and go including video
training, electronic classrooms, and distance
learning.
For whatever reasons, face to face
classroom-like models have always seemed to work
the best for everyone involved. Well
developed classroom training has always provided
the best vehicle for knowledge and skill
transfer to individuals and groups.
However, we have changed our perspective some in
the last couple of years as a result of working
with a wide variety of EPM users in some unusual
contexts all around the world.
For some learning and skill transfer traditional
classroom training is still best if your only
constraint is quality. But at times traditional
classroom training is not practical for a
variety of reasons such as cost, availability of
space or dispersed project teams.
All of our courses can
now be presented via the web and for some of
these workshops, web-based training can actually
be equal or in some cases the preferred training
method.
Types
of Web-Based Training
All of
our web-based training is instructor led and typically
follows one of these three styles:
Classic Webinar.
For large audiences
over 15 participants our training is in this format.
We may still provide materials and spend time doing
exercises but in most of these sessions we do
not have a lot time for screen sharing and for
individual time.
Most
of these types of web-based training are conducted in
2 to 4 hours sessions.
These
sessions work especially well for Team Members or
experienced Project Managers that need to learn
specific new functionally.
Warm-up materials typically are electronic, along
with reality-check assessments, and cool-down
activities.
Demo.
Usually conducted with a small group of 5 to 10
people, and we typically present specific EPM
functionally or workflow.
Usually these sessions run 1 to 2 hours with a good
part of the time in Q&A.
Small Group Training.
Usually conducted with a small group of 2 to 7
people. In this scenario we are taking our standard
multi-day workshops, breaking the content up into 1
to 2 hour modules and covering the material over the
Internet.
The
time we spend in this type of training is 4 hours a
day. Each participant has their own EPM environment to work in,
and is given homework between sessions to complete.
These
sessions are extremely interactive and could
challenge classroom training for Project Server
business administrators.
Mentoring.
Web-based mentoring and
coaching is one of the most effective means of
developing skills and increasing knowledge over time
that we have ever seen.
Web-based mentoring is an elegant training method.
It is a cost effective, flexible, scalable but
highly underutilized as a training technique.
We are
confident that web-based mentoring/coaching is
going to become one of the best ways to develop the
people involved in your EPM deployment.
How we Do Web-Based Training
We use
gotomeeting.com run by
Citrix. Each
person in the class logs in and calls
a number in the US.
No speaker phones
are allowed and each student must have
two monitors. On one monitor they
display your system and on the other
monitor the GoToMeeting system
that will display our screen or the
screen of one of the other participants
in the workshop. We have found video
conferencing painful, problematic, and
unnecessary. With our approach
participants can be sitting at their
desk in any location.
We schedule the
workshops across multiple days. No more
than 4 hours are conducted in a day.
Usually 2, 2hr sessions are scheduled
back to back with a 15 minute break
between them. Configuration work is
given to do between sessions.
Contingency plans
are made for connection problems.
We have been in education for decades and along
the way have
seen trends come and go including video
training, electronic classrooms, and distance
learning.
For whatever reasons, face to face
classroom-like models have always seemed to work
the best for everyone involved. Well
developed classroom training has always provided
the best vehicle for knowledge and skill
transfer to individuals and groups.
