Last week our CLO in Asia Pacific, Jae Bogadi, sent out an article by George Crump, a storage analyst with Storage Switzerland. Crump has highlighted an issue with how storage training is designed and delivered.

“For suppliers to really help the channel get their product installed and running, they need to change the way they train. First, an installation class should cover -- get this -- installation. And besides installation, it needs to cover all the prep work for the product -- for example, site preparation, server preparation and network requirements. And a supplier might need a separate training class for presales system engineers. So many projects seem to go bad at the point of installation, when in reality they go bad at the point of design.

“Storage training should also spend a lot of time explaining what to do when something goes wrong. Something always does; the training needs to cover the steps to get the product running if they're not painfully obvious. And the "when things go wrong" section should cover more than just the product itself, but also what can go wrong in the environment that will make the product fail or how the product can make the environment look like it failed.”

Setting some context: If a company wants to be an authorized reseller, most equipment manufacturers require a certain number of the reseller's employees to achieve certification on the vendor's products and services. Crump's complaint includes that the training is not aimed at tasks the employee will perform, since courses tend to be built to serve multiple purposes. As he describes, it's frustrating to sit in a course that targets the system administrator when you're a service technician who installs hardware.

Of course it seems obvious that vendors would provide training targeted at the trainee's role. But it turns out that's easier said than done. When a new product is in development, it's usually a race to the finish to get all the accompanying training materials and documentation ready before it's released. Usually changes are happening right up to the end, so if multiple courses are developed it's a configuration management nightmare at a critical point in the process. Developing role-specific courses can be complex and expensive so it's rarely done.

But if we put the learner at the center of the universe, then we as course designers owe them learning targeted to their needs. We've been laying the foundation for easily configuring this customized learning without breaking the bank. Over the past two years we've banned monolithic, one-size-fits-all courses in favor of classes comprised of short modules that can be reassembled to fit an individual's needs. We've recently shortened that to what our Design & Development team calls "Task-Based Learning Objects," which will even allow the learner herself to configure at the course level when our dream is fully realized.

This is a new framework for addressing our learners' needs in which we fully evaluate the customers who buy learning from Sun Learning Services so we understand what their intentions are when they come to us. Whether they want to learn about a specific product, get a career-enhancing certification, build out their qualifications for their job role or find solutions to problems, we want to provide a learning solution to fit their needs.

Internally, we call this intention-based curriculum redesign “Project Virgil,” since Virgil was Dante's guide through Hades. Sorting through all these dimensions is complex for us because we have to understand our learners thoroughly and all the ways in which they might use Sun technologies in their environment.

Metaphorically, we are on a journey through Hades to figure out how to build and configure this framework all around the globe in a scalable, affordable fashion that essentially delivers mass learning customization. But we believe learners deserve simplicity. Even if we have to go through Hades to get it for them.