Re: training as a means of advocacy? - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy
From | Andrew Sullivan |
---|---|
Subject | Re: training as a means of advocacy? |
Date | |
Msg-id | 20070824155638.GH19180@phlogiston.dyndns.org Whole thread Raw |
In response to | Re: training as a means of advocacy? (Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>) |
List | pgsql-advocacy |
On Thu, Aug 23, 2007 at 10:47:13PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: > > Howerver, Scott, you've hit on the failure of the whole training industry to > advance to the new economy. Training is still largely a boutique industry, > and has failed to advance meaningfully into cheaper, more accessable online > courses. The problem you identify is quite real, but it's more widespread > and harder to solve than you probably think it is. The latter point is important here. To begin with, training is expensive to do, and very hard to do well. Computer-based training is even harder to do well. Most people are not very good teachers (including many of the trainers who are out there); and even more people who are already out working are _awful_ students. Moreover, the success rates on self-administered training (which is what CBT has to be) are lower than classroom-based training. This is because the classroom has an advantage: the students have to go at the pace of the classroom. Since the "pass" mark at the end of most classroom-based courses is low enough, a test administered right at the end of an intensive week-long course will almost always show nearly everyone passing. (Universities also do something similar, of course, making sure that they get a nice brontosaurus-shaped curve at the end of their courses. Just ask people who have taught, for instance, symbolic logic or mathematics, where the curves are often U-shaped.) But self-paced learning is different: unless the course design is _very good_, it will almost certainly have higher failure rates, because students aren't that good at the discipline necessary to ensure they work all the problems needed, in the right order and at the right pace. For instance, a foundation skill needs to be followed immediately by practice in its application; but if the student takes two weeks between those units (because "something came up at work"), then the student quickly finds it can't remember the basic skills needed to continue with the work. The trainee becomes frustrated, and gives up. There are ways around this, of course, but they're more expensive than putting someone in a classroom for a week -- for the training company. The trainees, of course, have to pay travel and accommodation, too; but that's a cost that's often accounted as "travel" and not "training"; so the training budget doesn't have to pay that additional expense in the case of going to a course in a nearby city. The training budget _does_ have to pay for the additional expense in a remote-training, student-paced arrangement, though, which means (paradoxically) that self-guided training, if it is effective, is often more expensive per course than classroom training. Best, A -- Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca The plural of anecdote is not data. --Roger Brinner
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