Training

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Parent Category: Leadership
Category: Training

Audience/Consumption-oriented training design. 

Too much "training" is actually "process documentation" that doesn't take audiences, learning goals, implementation schedule and corporate work practices into account.  Examples:

  • New users generally do not start with software administration.  Their training shouldn't either.
  • They generally start with a narrow scope contributing to a greater team whose experienced members have tended to the overhead and the digital project management.
  • Audiences vary, and the biggest audiences are the consumers of the data; data/value creators are important, but they are comparatively few.
  • Some tasks are more specialized than others.
  • Learners do not need to learn the shiny objects first.  They need clarity first.

I cannot count the number of classes where a majority of learners needed only 40% of the content.  For example, a very large DOT (like many government agencies) require all engineer/designers to take a full Fundamentals OpenRoads training course (in this case a four-day course).  Almost all of them needed to learn how to open up files, see contours, create reports, etc.  Very few would be designing superelevation, only a few of them any time soon.  Reports, because they are often part of a contract deliverable were taught on Day 4, after they learned how to design superelevation.  We held the content they need hostage over three days of content they didn't need. Reports are important to learn for all users.  They help new users confirm that the software is doing what they expect.  Reviewers and Managers - who may never need to design anything within the software - should learn a few hours worth of evaluation tools.  This needs to be Day 1 content. 

If you understand who your multiple audiences are and what their varying needs are, you can design training that serves them all very well (instead of one audience perfectly and everyone else poorly).

 

Twenty years ago I wrote:

  1. Exploring InRoads - core evaluation skills for everyone in the InRoads ecosystem
    1. Building InRoads – follow-on for roadway designers
    2. Mastering Storm&Sanitary – follow-on for utility drafters (Part 1) and hydraulic designers (Part 2)

 

Most Recently:

Prior to me creating Bentley’s Navigating the Interface,  the only guidance on how to start OpenRoads training was “Start with Building OpenRoads Geometry.  Learners are assumed to have competence in MicroStation.”  Note that there was no guidance on which MicroStation courses to take.   The most appropriate “learning path” – if you found it - contained over ten courses, most of which were superceded by or in direct contrast to OpenRoads tools and best practices.

Navigating the Interface is a 90-minute hands-on walkthrough covering the CAD prerequisites that allow new learners to start learning OpenRoads immediately.  This class turned onboarding into OpenRoads training from a hard search and multiple days of training into a maximum of two hours.  (Tip: as an OpenRoads modeler, skip learning MicroStation until after you learn the appropriate scope of OpenRoads).

This class is the core skills that all specializations radiate out from

Details
Parent Category: Leadership
Category: Training

"If you want to go fast, go alone."

"if you want to go far, go together."

"If you want to ORD, get together."

Do NOT go alone.

 

Use the resources you have available, all of them.

(For a video read-through of this page:  The #1 Best Practice for OpenRoads Success )

(As far as I know) If you have a license for any Bentley Civil software package, you have access to Bentley's LEARNserver (Learn.Bentley.com) and to Communities.Bentley.com.  Learn them, use them.

This should be your first goal when learning to use OpenRoads: ensure that your staff can use the immediate permanent resources available to them:

  1. Learn how Learn.Bentley.com works.  Take one or two short OnDemand Bentley LEARN classes; they are all available to you at all times.  They are typically, a PDF, a dataset and videos walking through the course.
  2. Find and poke around the OpenRoads | OpenSite Community.  Wiki is their curated content, Forums is the Question & Answer.  Search for some topics, get a feel for it.
    1. If you already have questions, see if you can find some answers.
      1. If you don't find an answer ask a question there.  Expect a couple days for questions to be answered.
  3. Google a question.  Include OpenRoads in the Search (that helps).  Arguably, Google finds content in the Communities better than the Search in Communities does.
  4. YouTube.  YouTube has a lot of content and its Search rather effective.  Bentley has some content channels there.
  5. Service Tickets.  Service Tickets - if your service agreement includes this - require Bentley to respond.  If you're paying for it, use it.  Connect.Bentley.com
  6. Talk to people who have been there.

Oh, yeah: Help!  I forget that Help is actually helpful nowadays. It used to be rather unreliable as being valuable.  It's better now. Try help.

If you pay someone to train you and they don't ensure that you know how what your available training and support options are, they are not fully looking out for your best interest.  We all want repeat business, but teaching users to help themselves should be Priority #1 for you and your partners and vendors.

 

 

 

 

Details
Parent Category: Leadership
Category: Training

One of the first things I do when I start an on-site class is ask:

"Why Am I Here?"

  • What value do I add by being here?
  • Why did your company pay me money to teach you something that is available for free?
    • Videos of these lectures and exercise are availble online.  In fact, in many of them, I'm the narrator (unlikely now, but common at the time).
  • Why Am I Here?

 

  1. It forces staff to spend the time 24, 32 or 40 hours taking the training.
  2. I can answer "detail" questions and provide context.
  3. I diagnose, triage, and curate.  There is a LOT of content available, some of it is critical to you, much is not.  Some has a negative consequence.  The first hour I spend focused on learning your needs, picking appropriate foundational material to work through for the first day.  Over the course of the day (and the next), I refine my understanding of what you need and then find the best material available.  Generally if there is a day 4, I've got some new custom exercise that fill the biggest gap in the material that fits your needs.
  4. I can translate the generic workflow to how you do things or how you should be doing things for your projects' unique or quirky needs.

    Read more: Why am I Here? (in front of class)