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Learning is light, or how to organize a master class in 2 days





Training new users and developers is one of the main tools for promoting their product or technology. A few months ago, our company began to open the “veil” over its technology and attract new developers to the platform on which we develop original 3D analytics applications. Naturally, we are faced with the need to train beginners.



In this article I will describe the experience of our company in organizing training for a new development team or, in other words, how to assemble an educational program from the materials at hand.

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How can an article be useful to you?



If you are faced with the task of preparing a training program in a few days, you can use this article as step-by-step instructions. It also describes a list of artifacts that should be prepared for the successful organization of "knowledge transfer". If your technology or product is not yet ready to be “rejected from the heart of promateri”, but you have plans to attract new followers in the future, then you will find several ideas about what documents you should start preparing and what to describe.



Our training program consists of 2 stages: a master class and online training.

In this article we will consider conducting a master class. I will write about remote online training in the next article. Therefore, please leave your comments under the article, and I will definitely consider them when writing the second part.



A bit of background



Without false modesty - we really make an original product on our own technology. Interest in our platform exists fairly steadily, but is limited by our ability to expand the team and transfer technology to the outside — to new development teams.



One of our strategic goals is to attract new external development teams on our platform. We conducted preparatory work to reject the technology from our team, documented the main things (more on this later), “tinted lips” to our UI, and came to a partner company with an offer to undergo a short training course on our technology. Partner company became interested.



The goal - no less - after passing the training, newcomers should be ready to join the full-fledged project on our platform with real deadlines, the customer and all that follows.



The goal is quite ambitious, but we believed in its attainability, in fact, this is where the real story begins.



Baseline Assessment



The platform has been developing for several years already and during this time the team has conducted a number of workshops for both domestic and foreign partners, respectively, in Russian and in English. Each of them gave a certain food for development and left a number of presentation artifacts.



Therefore, despite the fact that our project is a start-up in the long run, we have already had some learning experience that needed to be scaled up a bit and moved from a separate workshop to a comprehensive training program.



Attached to a specific situation, this meant the following: the partner is interested in learning and the training date is set, to which it is necessary :



  1. Form a training program
  2. Identify the trainer
  3. Prepare training materials
  4. Prepare a training room
  5. Allocate time leading developers to prepare for the master class, which coincided with the deadline for the project.


Of the benefits:



  1. Developer Initiative
  2. The ability and desire of the technical team to communicate with customers
  3. Thorough knowledge of technology by leading developers
  4. The ability to make and implement key decisions "on the go" without a long coordination with all authorities
  5. Willingness to take on new and non-standard tasks
  6. The ability to quickly create working prototypes


As you can see, the advantages, of course, overlap the shortcomings - the team is ready to get down to business, there are enough competencies. In order for the flame to ignite, you need a spark or in other words - see how "everything should be."



Plan formation



“When you don’t know what to do, copy the best practices.” I do not affirm the absolute truth of this thesis, but in our case it helped. Over the past couple of years I have been fortunate enough to complete about 10 online courses, choosing the best teaching methods from this experience and multiplying them with my own teaching experience at the university, I got a certain concept: “How it should be”:



  1. Training should begin with a personal acquaintance and overview presentation. The personal factor in this matter cannot be overestimated.
  2. At the presentation, participants should touch the platform, and as a result, each participant on the computer must have his own application.
  3. Training must take place remotely through the network. This immediately gives several bonuses: scalability, since we have big plans to attract third-party development teams to our technology; training takes place in the territory of students; the involvement of our employees will be as efficient as possible.
  4. Training must have a final course deadline. It focuses.
  5. Training should take place in a free for training mode at a convenient time for them. Since the students work at the main place of work and are trained in the background.
  6. Training should consist of both theory and practical assignments. The need for a combination of theory and practice should not even be discussed.
  7. On our side, there must be a coach who encourages, sets the atmosphere and pace, encourages students to go through the entire training cycle. The human factor is very important (below is a little more detail about this).
  8. The result of the successful completion of training should be issued a certificate with the assignment of a level. It motivates.


As you know, the success of a business is only 10% based on an excellent strategy and 90% consists of its skillful implementation. It is about the implementation read in the next paragraph.



We begin to implement the plan



Evaluating the vision from the previous paragraph, the development of history in 2 stages emerged, each of which can be considered as a separate completed project:



  1. Master class and its online broadcast
  2. Remote online training


Let me remind you that the purpose of training was to include a remote team in our project for full development, naturally, a 3-hour master class was not enough for new developers to master at least the basics of technology, therefore, in fact, there was a need for the second stage.



However, a preliminary agreement with a partner existed only for a master class, so we, guided by the wonderful proverb, saying that the elephant is eaten in parts - we decided that we need to organize and conduct the master class so brilliantly so that the decision on further training would be made by our partner as a matter of course.

And we really managed to interest colleagues who made decisions about taking distance learning right after the master class.



Master Class



At the master class, we agreed to show a case on which we visualize the xls files sent by our partner with Rosstat data by regions of the Russian Federation.



Surely many of you have been to various master classes: hand-made, how to make a Christmas tree decoration, how to draw a picture of Van Gogh, singing yodel, Zen-style yoga, etc., etc. The essence is always the same: a more experienced and skillful leader shares with the participants skills, the participants practice in mastering this skill and with good organization at the end of the master class you have something tangible in your hands plus a well-established skill: Christmas tree toy, a picture , the ability to sing in a special style or take a difficult yoga pose.



The concept of our master class absolutely duplicates this approach: our specialist shows how to implement a specific functionality on our technology (in this case, three-dimensional visualize data), then the participants reinforce this skill in practice by writing the application themselves with the sounded functionality.



Understanding is. It remains to settle the organizational issues.



At the beginning, we agreed on the number of participants and the date of the event. In our case, 6 master partners and a team leader were to attend the master class. Date - a week.



The head of the partner group expressed his wishes for the content of the master class - we took them into account and the following lineup was formed :



  1. Business presentation. For this purpose, we took a fresh presentation prepared for the recent conference.
  2. The lead developer creates an application in front of the listeners, commenting on his actions. Naturally, we invented the application and created it in advance, keeping the balance between the simplicity of implementation, a comprehensive demonstration of the platform's capabilities, the listeners' ability to repeat our actions and the intuitiveness of the resulting data visualization.
  3. Participants are provided with academic access to the platform, and they, under the supervision of the moderator, repeat the actions shown.


In our assets collected at previous workshops and conferences, there was already a certain number of presentations and demo applications, so it was something to form a training program.



At the same time, “every time as the first” and many things had to be edited just for the upcoming case.



The participants' request was to visualize data from Excel, and we already offered options for visualization. Here we went as far as possible using ready-made solutions.

We remembered what cases we had in our assets and chose those that might be applicable to the data we have. There were 2 of them: an application almost ready for delivery with a map of Russia and an application once shown for another workshop with a 3D histogram. These options are perfect for the goal to comprehensively show the possibilities and not to invest heavily in the creation of a training case.



As a result, three forms of data display were selected: a table, a map of the Russian Federation and a 3D histogram.





Figure 1. 3D histogram created at the master class





Figure 2 Map of the Russian Federation, created at the master class

Good advice number 1 . Use up-to-the-minute materials: presentations, demo cases, etc. We can assume that you are ready for effective training of new users at the moment when you can prepare a master class from already existing materials.
Preparation of the training case took us about 2 days of background work with data cleansing, setting up queries, decomposing code into several files, and setting up the application.



I note that during the entire preparation period, which lasted several days, we maintained close contact with the participants by e-mail and informed about the content of the master class. Thus, on the one hand, we fueled interest, on the other - we clarified their wishes, and on the third - we had to be sure that the master class would take place. After all, the decision to hold it could be changed by the participants at any moment, which we absolutely did not like.



The following informational topics are suitable as letters that support communication well:



  1. Discussion of cases to be demonstrated, preferably with screenshots
  2. Warning what additional software must be installed and configured before the master class
  3. Warning what equipment you need to have with you: a laptop, etc.
  4. Features of how to get and go through the reception.


So, the date is set, passes and access to the internal wi-fi are ordered, the negotiation is booked, the instruction with links, passwords and some tips are written and sent to the participants beforehand.



On our side, the master class was led by two people: the leading developer of technology and I, as the acting account manager of our partner and part-time coach, or whatever it is called, because there is no definite name for this role.



Responsibilities were divided very transparently: planning an event, organizing, communicating, preparing presentation materials, presenting them, answering common questions and supporting high motivation of partners from me, and preparing a demo case, presenting it, answering technical questions and technical support - by the lead developer.



Preparation for the master class is described in sufficient detail and if you have any questions or comments, now is the time to write about them under the article, if possible I will try to answer each of them.



I see no point in describing the master class itself, firstly, the preparation took several days, and the masterclass itself took several hours, and secondly, with good preparation and a positive atmosphere during the training, the event is a breeze, as it happened and in our case.



Online streaming



Our team was well prepared for the master class, we were confident of its success, so we wanted to broadcast it on the air, and we organized the WebEx broadcast, sharing a link both within our company and with all interested (you know that every company has lack of communication, so internal mailing is very useful). During the WebEx conference, the main screen was broadcast, where the presentation was shown and then the application was developed, as well as the sound of comments.

Good advice number 2. Invite the maximum possible number of listeners to the online and make the most extensive newsletter (all internal employees, Facebook friends and the CRM database with pre-filtering those “who are not interested at all”) announcing both the beginning of the broadcast and notifying them in advance about the upcoming broadcast.
It should be noted that the online broadcast of many interested and significantly expanded the circle of students of the master class. An interesting fact is that WebEx provides various broadcasting options, including you can hear the audio version by dialing a specific phone number - the CEO of our company used this method and listened to the broadcast through the phone while in traffic behind the wheel of your car.



In addition, using WebEx, we recorded the broadcast and now we plan to mount its trimmed version for distribution to other clients.





Good advice number 3. You just need a good human contact with the audience. Training is a rather complicated project and requires both strong managerial skills and pedagogical skills. But the most important thing in learning is simple human contact. Help the participants of the master class to relax and feel comfortable, show them where the toilet and the coffee machine with buns are, ask a trivial question “how did you get”. The perception of new information depends largely on how comfortable a person feels.

What could be improved



You can always improve something, so here are some tips on what could have been done more professionally when organizing:



  1. Wishes were expressed even more in advance to warn about the planned master class and broadcast. We really sent out a notification of the broadcast only on the day it was held, and it was worth making a few warning mailings.
  2. Have all the contacts and a clear idea of ​​how many people will come to the master class, try to meet them at the reception and start the master class when you are convinced that all participants have already arrived or received confirmation from the absent that they will not come. One of the participants was late and he had to go through the reception on his own and look for our negotiation.
  3. I advise you to book a conversation a little larger than the planned participants, firstly, it will be more comfortable, and secondly, at the last moment the number of people willing to listen to the master class may unexpectedly increase. Ours was fully occupied plus extra chairs.


Result and conclusions



In conclusion, summarize a few thoughts. Want to attract followers of your technology - be able to teach them . Well-known frameworks and services are becoming popular not only due to the perfection of implementation, but also due to the huge number of quality tutorials in all forms: videos, texts, presentations and live workshops.



Microsoft, Google, Facebook, giants and startups - regularly organize face-to-face congresses of their users. There is no need to talk about the number of online training materials and courses, no technology takes off without them.



Competently constructed system of knowledge transfer about technology is the key to its successful distribution to the masses. The growth of users is due to the ease of familiarity with the technology.

The objectives of the master classes can be different: collecting contacts, first meeting new customers, getting feedback and ideas from users, etc. For example, our goal was to interest the partner in our decision so that he wanted to learn how to work on the platform.



Plus nice buns: PR-effect of holding a master class, raising the status of the project among employees, approving response from the management, gaining experience in training and preparing materials for replicating this activity, etc.



In the next article I will write about the conduct of online training, which followed the master class: its curriculum, online testing, stages, tools and rakes.

Good mood, strong nerves and new ideas. And remember that continuous learning and self-development is the key to an interesting life.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/352498/

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