Friday June 30, 2006

Mixing Online and Face to Face Class works

The Sun Global Resolution Troubleshooting class traditionally is a 4 day classroom training / workshop. Typically with 12+ students and 2 Program Leaders.

With the emerging trend to Work From Home and geographically dispersed teams, it's a challenge to get people together in the classroom, as well as a considerable expense to get many people to travel and take the class. With a leaner organisation, there is often a management need to try and minimise the time people spend away from supporting the customer.

With some guidance from Kepner-Tregoe, we utilised a Blended approach to the problem of remote teams.

i.e They spend some time learning the concepts online, and then a few weeks later we get together and work through the practical elements. Thereby ensuring that the students are able to demonstrate in a practical way they have understood what it is they have learned and ensuring we continue to train engineers in rational troubleshooting with the same high quality expectations.

It also gives the Program Leader, the opportunity to coach as required.

I spent the start of this week in Leeds, working with the Tarantella engineers who had been our willing volunteers ;-)

So what was the result, well, at the end of the 2 days we spent together, I would say the students are as well prepared as those who completed the regular 4 day class. Their hard work during the online portion and time practicing during the classroom section means they are ready to troubleshoot our customers issues in the SGRT way.

Our Blended programme will continue to roll out globally, more news as it happens. Also, as our new financial year starts tomorrow, one of our priorities for FY07, is to work with our Partners to enable them to troubleshoot the same. I'll post the results from that trip towards the end of July.

It leaves me to say, 'Happy 4th of July' to my American friends and colleagues, and as I was once asked, 'No we don't celebrate it here in the UK' :-)

(2006-06-30 02:18:09.0) Permalink