What's wrong with IT training?
Well for me just about everything.
Over the years I have been on courses by Microsoft, Cisco, Altiris, VMware and Palo Alto and they all pretty much follow the same formula.
The instructor has a PowerPoint presentation or 3 which are printed out and given to you as a manual, the instructor reads from this, repeating what is written and then depending on how good they are adds in some real world stuff and bits to assist you learn, at the end of a module there is some practical work for you to do that is often a step by step guide on how to to do something.
So what is wrong with all this?
Well lets flip this to a different topic of learning. Swimming. If you wanted to teach someone to swim would you sit them in at the poolside, show them some photos of someone swimming with a brief explanation of what they were doing? Then put them on a plank in the water so they didn't sink and let them read a bunch of words on how to move their arms like the person in the picture?
For me this would have a low success rate and yet this is they way we learn about complex IT environments.
First off I would ditch the PowerPoint (I have yet to see anyone right click a PPS file and go show rather than double click and then find the run show button, quite amazing for IT geeks really) and the printed manualls, replacing it with a glossary and terms of reference, admin manuals (as poor as they often are) and other useful documentation such as scripts for common tasks (I keep all mine in a OneNote) all on USB stick.
The learning would be in the form of practical demonstrations by the instructor where they would explain what they are doing as they went along and any interesting bits as they cropped up leading you through the features of the part under discussion and where to find them, admittedly some flow diagrams may help here but these would be one off slides. The students would then run through a lab that covered the same topic but detail configurations.
The benefit of this approach is that you have a work flows and visual representation of layout in context up on screen that can be then replicated to reinforce learning, the instructors would be working harder but would be more engaged than they are sometimes when just regurgitating a script for the 100th time and lessons would be more interactive for the students, I find it difficult to stay awake at times as my brain is not engaged by PowerPoint presentations. It does rely on good instructors who have a good working knowledge of the subject but that is no bad thing.
With courses costing 2-2500GBP for a 5 day course plus accommodation and all the other bits it is not to my mind value for money when you get a course like the ones currently touted by the big vendors.
These vendor designed courses need a rethink, they're poor, often the documentation and the course is out of sync with the most recent versions of the software available, the documentation can contain factually incorrect material due to poor proof reading, additional material is not readily to hand, students often struggle, they don't engage and overall they don't work as well as they should.
Over the years I have been on courses by Microsoft, Cisco, Altiris, VMware and Palo Alto and they all pretty much follow the same formula.
The instructor has a PowerPoint presentation or 3 which are printed out and given to you as a manual, the instructor reads from this, repeating what is written and then depending on how good they are adds in some real world stuff and bits to assist you learn, at the end of a module there is some practical work for you to do that is often a step by step guide on how to to do something.
So what is wrong with all this?
Well lets flip this to a different topic of learning. Swimming. If you wanted to teach someone to swim would you sit them in at the poolside, show them some photos of someone swimming with a brief explanation of what they were doing? Then put them on a plank in the water so they didn't sink and let them read a bunch of words on how to move their arms like the person in the picture?
For me this would have a low success rate and yet this is they way we learn about complex IT environments.
First off I would ditch the PowerPoint (I have yet to see anyone right click a PPS file and go show rather than double click and then find the run show button, quite amazing for IT geeks really) and the printed manualls, replacing it with a glossary and terms of reference, admin manuals (as poor as they often are) and other useful documentation such as scripts for common tasks (I keep all mine in a OneNote) all on USB stick.
The learning would be in the form of practical demonstrations by the instructor where they would explain what they are doing as they went along and any interesting bits as they cropped up leading you through the features of the part under discussion and where to find them, admittedly some flow diagrams may help here but these would be one off slides. The students would then run through a lab that covered the same topic but detail configurations.
The benefit of this approach is that you have a work flows and visual representation of layout in context up on screen that can be then replicated to reinforce learning, the instructors would be working harder but would be more engaged than they are sometimes when just regurgitating a script for the 100th time and lessons would be more interactive for the students, I find it difficult to stay awake at times as my brain is not engaged by PowerPoint presentations. It does rely on good instructors who have a good working knowledge of the subject but that is no bad thing.
With courses costing 2-2500GBP for a 5 day course plus accommodation and all the other bits it is not to my mind value for money when you get a course like the ones currently touted by the big vendors.
These vendor designed courses need a rethink, they're poor, often the documentation and the course is out of sync with the most recent versions of the software available, the documentation can contain factually incorrect material due to poor proof reading, additional material is not readily to hand, students often struggle, they don't engage and overall they don't work as well as they should.
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