Structuring a multi-day
technical training course

Jacinta RichardsonPerl Training Australia

Good afternoon. I'm Jacinta Richardson and I run Perl Training Australia.

Having fun?

Who here is really enjoying the conference?

Every session?

Who has been to a talk in every session so far?

up to 24

That could be 24 different sessions.

Brain filling?

Is your brain beginning to feel full?

Training is worse

At this conference, you get to pick your talks. Further, few talks rely on you attending ones that happened previously. Often there is no assessment.

Training requires concentrating on essentially the same topic for several days in a row.

So... training

6 - 6.5 hour days

First, be realistic. In any given day, you're going to get 6 hours of training in. If you really push things, then maybe 6.5. The rest will be taken up with lunch and tea breaks, getting started etc. Even if you squeeze your breaks as much as possible, students only seem to be receptive to learning for about 6 hours anywa.

Wide range of xp

When we first started our courses, we only got people who were both incredibly smart and sufficiently motivated to convince their workplaces to send them. Now days we get a huge range of experience, from people who think HTML is programming; to people who have already been maintaining most of the Perl at their company

Things I've learned

This is all based on things I've learned from running courses. Your milage may vary, but I imagine you'll find many of these things to be similar.

Pocketwatch dvs http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvs/32416309/

CC-by

So, first of all.... timing

90 minutes
=
break

Rule 1. Have a break after every 90 minutes of training. This allows students to relax a bit, perhaps grab a coffee, or relieve their nicotine urges; and it gives you a chance to sip some water and run to the toilet.

9:00 - 10:30
11:00 - 12:30
1:30 - 3:00
3:30 - 5:00

This tends to lead to blocks of time like this:

9-10:30

9:00 - 10:30
11:00 - 12:30
1:30 - 3:00
3:30 - 5:00

11- 12:30

9:00 - 10:30
11:00 - 12:30
1:30 - 3:00
3:30 - 5:00

1:30 -3

9:00 - 10:30
11:00 - 12:30
1:30 - 3:00
3:30 - 5:00

3:30 -5

6 hours

Which gives you 6 hours.

Squeeeeeze

Of course you probably don't need 30 minute tea breaks, so you can squeeze a little more out of your students by violating the 90 minute rule a little:

9:00 - 10:30
10:45 - 12:30
1:30 - 3:00
3:15 - 5:00

And you get this.

6.5 hours

Giving you an extra 30 minutes of training time per day.

Or go home early

Or the option to go home half an hour earlier

Lot to learn

Hopefully you don't have too much you expect to cover in a day.

Morning Vince Alongi http://www.flickr.com/photos/vincealongi/2233093267/

How do you make the most of your day?

Important info start of day

Start early. Pack the most interesting, and essential stuff in the morning.

Coffee + morning
=
better learning

Students should be refreshed from a good night's sleep, and those who need it should be buzzing from their morning coffee

Evening Sunset at Ulsoor - Swami Streamhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/araswami/2294314816/

Then, by the end of the day...

Easy info end of day

You ease off, and give them things that matter less, and especially are easier to understand.

Full brains

By now your attendees have full brains for the day and just want to go and do their usual evening events and let it settle.

Like full stomachs

Learning for those who've forgotten how is a little like eating. If given enough time between courses, you can fit more in.

This will have to do ingermaaike2http://www.flickr.com/photos/ingermaaike2/2524610442/

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Pick a really good starting point.

Essentials start of course

Move as much important information to the start of the course as you can. It might not be the order in which you naturally think of the subjects, but skills learned at the start will be learned better than those at the end.

Don't waste time

Don't waste the start of the course with over-long introductions. Start covering the meat of the course, before your first break.

90 minutes

These first 90 minutes are special.

Freshest they'll be!

It's the freshest your students will be for the whole time you deal with them.

Rainbow balls ingermaaike2http://www.flickr.com/photos/ingermaaike2/3787876483/

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Finish wisely.

Optional extras
end of course

Finish your course with useful tips and tricks, things attendees should probably know, but which they can survive without.

Least able to learn

After all, this is when they are least able to learn.

This graph represents students' ability to learn new information as time goes on. On the first day, they're really fresh, and eager to learn. As the day wears on they get much less able to retain the information received. Each new day refreshes them a little, but some students won't be able to learn anything at all by the end.

But... it's important?

But what if you have more information than you can fit in the course, while staying within these rules? What if it's all important?

Might need a new course

You might need to split your course into two, extend your course by a day, or just add a new course to cover those things.

time is running out - __april

http://www.flickr.com/photos/appyyy/4077997473/

So what fits within these 90 minute blocks?

10:10

I suggest sticking to a rule of 10 minutes teaching, 10 minutes exercises. You say, you show, they do.

10:20

For some exercises, you may need to give them more time.

10:30...

I don't recommend stretching to 30 minutes for exercises very often, perhaps once every two days. Exercises this long can often leave students feeling frustrated or bored.

Learn
Practice
Understand

Remember the goal is that first the student learns the idea

Learn
Practice
Understand

Then they practice that idea

Learn
Practice
Understand

Then (well, hopefully) they understand.

Threes a Crowd aussiegallhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/3683810773/

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And in your instructing...

1-3 concepts per chunk

Limit yourself to just a few new key concepts in your 10 minute chunks.

At least 10 minutes

Make sure you take at least 10 minutes on these ideas.

Exercise fatigue

Strange as it sounds, it's possible for your students to be doing too many exercises.

Spare time
=
More examples

If you can't fill the 10 minutes, add more examples, or another concept.

90 = 3 x 10:20
4.5 x 10:10

Assuming you stick to these rules, you'll cover between 3 and 4.5 sets of concepts between breaks. That's up to 54 concepts per day. Should be easy!

Perfect Shot TheMarquehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/themarque/1333632314/

Now, what do we aim for on the other side?

Target exercises at each key point

Exercises should be structured. Provide a number of exercises for the students to attempt, all directly relevant to what you've just covered.

1 point
=
1 exercise

Make sure that you have at least one exercise per key point. Preferably you'd have one key point per initial exercise too.

Later exercises can combine

Only combine skills after the student has had a chance to practice them individually.

On the Slide - PCA 86 - Donald Macleodhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/donaldmacleod/4125100041/

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Catering for different skill levels.

Easy Advanced exercises

Start each set with some easy exercises, and then work up to advanced.

Challenge different skill levels

Those who are struggling with the course or this specific topic should still be able to try the key concepts, within the easy exercises, while everyone else should be still be challenged.

Won't finish
all the exercises
all the time

Remind students that you don't expect all the students to finish all the exercises all of the time.

Squiggle Slide krossbowhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/krossbow/339106135/

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What about the really bright students?

Additional exercises

Create a set of additional exercises for the fastest students.

3 - 4

You'll need 3 to 4 of them, or about 1 per day.

Span 80% course

The exercises should be designed to be worked on in pieces throughout the course, and should touch on about 80% of the course material when completely finished.

Challenging

These can be designed to be very challenging; as only the fastest students are likely to attempt them.

No answer files

We don't provide worked answers for our practical exercises, to remove the temptation to... cheat.

Gold coated wall details rticotropicalhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/sensechange/523157637/

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Next we'll talk about content structuring

Minimise x-chapter reliance

Much as there is a great temptation to make each chapter build upon the previous chapter; try to resist it!

Cross-chapter reliance should be minimised.

Sometimes necessary

Of course, sometimes it is necessary. More advanced material will assume a fair bit of understanding of the basics you covered earlier.

Problem plagued

However, writing a multi-day course where every chapter relies on every chapter before it is plagued with problems

Fatigued...

This places a much higher cognitive load on your students; which means they'll get tired faster and generally struggle more.

Struggled...

If you have students who are beginning to struggle you risk losing them for the remainder of the course.

Missed...

Likewise if a student missed some or all of an earlier chapter, for whatever reason, then heavy reliance on that chapter will disadvantage them

New topic
=
Clean slate

Chapter boundaries should be points where struggling students have a chance to get involved again

Encyclopdia Britannica, Eleventh Edition (1911) Stewarthttp://www.flickr.com/photos/stewart/461099066/

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Your course notes are another aid to your students

Good, thorough course notes

Any multi-day course must come with good, thorough course notes.

Not slides!
Write a book!

These cannot just be copies of the slides you are presenting from. They should be a manual or a book.

In-course reference

Decent course notes allow the students to return to previous material and relearn necessary skills; as well as providing a chance for those who missed material to catch up

Share around at work

The value of the course notes continues after the course has ended, as attendees are likely to take them to work as a reference and to share with their colleagues.

Good advertising

Excellent advertising

Snowflake Muffethttp://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/3134840025/

Now to talk about environmental conditions, which is not so much about course structure as some helpful advice.

Keep it cold,
keep it fresh

Your training room is probably too hot. Warm students are sleepy students, and that will impair their ability to concentrate on your material

19 - 20 degrees C

We've found 19-20 degrees to be a good temperature for keeping students awake but not too uncomfortable

Cold
=
More alert

It'll help keep you awake and alert too.

Bell Curve hardeep.singhhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/hname/3570152750/

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So what can I tell you about what your students are like?

Bell-curve
applies

Their range of abilities will usually follow a bell curve.

9 students

A stock-standard, average class of 9 students...

1 very slow
2 slow
3 average
2 fast
1 very fast

Will have this distribution.We see this sort of distribution in our classes all the time.

Not intelligence

This has very little to do with the student's intelligence, but rather has a lot to do with their recent background.

Never programmed
No recent programming
No recent learning

Students who've never programmed before, or not for a very long time; or who have forgotten how to learn tend to progress more slowly,

Lots of languages
Lots of programming
Lots of learning

while students who have learned many languages, or who tend to spend most of their days programming, or who are straight out of university tend to race ahead.

Target average

Target your course at the slowest average student. This will net you most of the class. Make sure you have challenging exercises for the faster students to keep them occupied

Extra help

Then give all the extra help you can to the slower and slowest students. Offer to help them in lunch and tea breaks and encourage them to stay back at the end of the day to ask extra questions.

Don't slow down
(too much)

Just don't slow down to try to keep everyone up to speed. If you go at the pace of the slowest student, you will bore the average and faster students; who make up most of the class.

You'll also find yourself pressed for time at the end.

In summary
(key rules again)

90 minutes
=
break

Rule 1. Have a break after every 90 minutes of training. This allows students to relax a bit, perhaps grab a coffee, or relieve their nicotine urges; and it gives you a chance to sip some water and run to the toilet.

Important info start of day

Start early. Pack the most interesting, and essential stuff in the morning.

Easy info end of day

You ease off, and give them things that matter less, and especially are easier to understand.

Essentials start of course

Move as much important information to the start of the course as you can. It might not be the order in which you naturally think of the subjects, but skills learned at the start will be learned better than those at the end.

Optional extras
end of course

Finish your course with useful tips and tricks, things attendees should probably know, but which they can survive without.

10:10

I suggest sticking to a rule of 10 minutes teaching, 10 minutes exercises. You say, you show, they do.

1-3 concepts per chunk

Limit yourself to just a few new key concepts in your 10 minute chunks.

Target exercises at each key point

Exercises should be structured. Provide a number of exercises for the students to attempt, all directly relevant to what you've just covered.

Easy Advanced exercises

Start each set with some easy exercises, and then work up to advanced.

Additional exercises

Create a set of additional exercises for the fastest students.

Minimise x-chapter reliance

Much as there is a great temptation to make each chapter build upon the previous chapter; try to resist it!

Cross-chapter reliance should be minimised.

Good, thorough course notes

Any multi-day course must come with good, thorough course notes.

Keep it cold,
keep it fresh

Your training room is probably too hot. Warm students are sleepy students, and that will impair their ability to concentrate on your material

Bell-curve
applies

Their range of abilities will usually follow a bell curve.

Good Luck!

Finally, good luck!

Slides released
CC-By 2010

Photos may have different licenses, check notes on appropriate slides.

Just don't slow down to try to keep everyone up to speed. If you go at the pace of the slowest student, you will bore the average and faster students; who make up most of the class.

You'll also find yourself pressed for time at the end.

perltraining.com.au

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