🚀 go-pugleaf

------------------ Message forwarded by NETTRAIN moderator ------------------

Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1993 21:36:00 -0800 (PST)
From: Genny Engel <gen@magnum.ucop.edu>

On the other hand, the really great all-encompassing Internet training
workshops I've seen covered at least a day, and even then they left some
people short on the specific information they wanted.  I have seen a very
successful 2-hour overview.  Given an audience that isn't just there for
the day (e.g. students who will be around all semester or all year) I think
one overview plus any number of in-depth specific topical sessions might be
the best approach.  One thing that's really frustrating about day-long
sessions is that there's only so much time for people's individual questions.
In a 3-hour session on a topic, you can set aside a lot of time for Q&A.

Genny Engel
gen@magnum.ucop.edu


------------------ Message forwarded by NETTRAIN moderator ------------------

Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 08:12:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Carol Brand <cbrand@nwnet.net>

> First, 3 hrs. for each part?!  Lee, can you really get enough people to come
> to make it worth your while?  Are others of you successful at that?  If
> yes, hats off to you!  The only people I know who come to several sessions
> like that over time are students enrolled in a class for which they get a
> grade, or library staff who are required by their supervisors to attend.
>  They, of course, are getting the sort of instruction that will ensure their
> comfortable use of the gamut of services.  But such a program probably
> cuts out the majority we're trying to reach, who can't spend that kind of
> time learning something that isn't central to their lives.

I teach my Internet classes in four parts: e-mail, FTP & Telnet, and two
Internet Resource classes that cover things like Gopher, WAIS, Usenet,
Archie etc.  The classes are all three hours long and are taught on
consecutive Saturdays (or Tuesdays...).  The class roster always fills very
quickly and this last time we turned away as many people as we admitted.
The current participants are K12 educators, university staff, and university
graduate students.

>
> 2nd, I know the problem Lee raises of people being bored while you're
> covering something they're not interested in (e.g., people really there for
> FTP having to twiddle their thumbs while you go through Mail, which they
> already know.  One way to handle that--and it seems to work quite well--is to
> give them a choice of exercises that address different levels of skill
> (beginner and advanced).  I don't know of anyone who can't learn more about
> any service they already know.  (I don't think I've ever given a training
> session of any kind, no matter how many times I've repeated it, that I
> myself don't learn someting.)

I encourage people to attend all four sessions.  I agree that everyone can
always learn more about the Internet.  For example, even if people use
e-mail on a regular basis, chances are that they are not familiar with
LISTSERVs; or that if they know LISTSERVs, that they have not used LISTDB.

I prefer to have everyone in the class, regardless of experience level,
work on the same exercises.  Participants tend to glance over at each
others screens and new users panic if their screens look different from
the person sitting next to them :^).

>
> Which brings me to the real benefit of teaching multiple pieces about the
> Internet in one sitting: you as trainer have the opportunity to stretch
> participants to learn more than they expected to learn, more than they knew
> there was to learn.  That's harder to do in topic-specific sessions.

Many of the participants in my classes have previously taken survey
courses that cover all of the Internet tools in one class.  Most of these
people feel that they suffered from information over-load.  I have found
that adults are generally more comfortable with learning a single skill
and then having a chance to practice it before going on to a new topic.

-Carol
                0o__________________o0o___________________o0
                |                                          |
                |  Carol Brand         (206)562-3000       |
                |  NorthWestNet         cbrand@nwnet.net   |
                0o__________________o0o___________________o0