{"id":1071,"date":"2006-08-30T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-30T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/?p=1071"},"modified":"2006-08-30T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-08-30T12:00:00","slug":"the-devaluation-of-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/30\/the-devaluation-of-training\/","title":{"rendered":"The Devaluation of Training"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dizwell.com\/prod\/node\/1\">Howard Rogers<\/a> has an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dizwell.com\/prod\/node\/170\">interesting post<\/a> on his blog at the moment that is particularly timely from my perspective and that I agree with whole-heartedly. Companies seem increasingly loathe to commit adequate funds and, probably more significantly, staff <em>time<\/em> to training (although that could be my imagination).<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px\">Having said that, a couple of weeks ago my boss asked if I&#8217;d be prepared to create and deliver some Oracle 9i and 10g New Features training for our Application Support and Development teams. We wanted something which offers a quick overview but, bearing in mind that <a href=\"http:\/\/education.oracle.co.uk\/html\/oracle\/5\/71\/449\/D11994GC11.htm\">the equivalent Oracle University course<\/a> lasts for 3 days, you might be stunned that I&#8217;m going to attempt 9i and 10g in <strong>half a day<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px\">Normally I&#8217;m <em>extremely<\/em> resistant to this type of on-the-cheap, shallow training for all of the reasons Howard states in his blog but I&#8217;ve made an exception in this case because :-<\/p>\n<ul dir=\"ltr\">\n<li>\n<div style=\"margin-right: 0px\">There was no way that I was going to be able to ask for more than half a day&#8217;s absence for the attendees. There will be upwards of fifteen attendees, all coming from the same few teams.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"margin-right: 0px\">I&#8217;ve made it clear up front that the intention is to throw a bunch of features at them extremely quickly so that they can pick out the ones that might be useful to them and then they can research them themselves <em>properly<\/em> after the event.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"margin-right: 0px\">All of the attendees should have sufficient Oracle experience but might not have found the time to notice these new features are available.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"margin-right: 0px\">If the alternative was no training at all, so people remain unaware of the various new features, I&#8217;m convinced there&#8217;ll be some benefit. Not as much as a full course, but better than nothing in other words.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px\">I would definitely prefer to deliver two or three days worth of in-depth training (although that takes a lot of time and effort to put together) but, accepting that the event is compromised at the outset, it&#8217;s important to make the right compromises. Here&#8217;s the approach I&#8217;ve taken.<\/p>\n<ul dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px\">\n<li dir=\"ltr\">\n<div style=\"margin-right: 0px\">Drop everything but the &#8216;highlight&#8217; features. It&#8217;s pointless trying to do justice to the XML advancements, but external tables, the MERGE statement and so on can be delivered quickly.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\">\n<div style=\"margin-right: 0px\">No exercises and only the most basic of code examples. If I can explain how the thing works, the real heavy-weight examples will be &#8216;an exercise for the student&#8217; when they&#8217;re back on the job.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\">\n<div style=\"margin-right: 0px\">Better than average notes to go with the slides. If I&#8217;m going to have to skip a lot of the detailed explanations, I might be able to incorporate some of that for later reading.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li dir=\"ltr\">\n<div style=\"margin-right: 0px\">Remember that what I&#8217;ll be doing is informing the attendees that the new features exist and what they&#8217;re supposed to be used for, <em>not teaching them how to use them<\/em>.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px\">Make no mistake, I&#8217;ll be reminding the attendees up-front of this phrase from Howard&#8217;s blog<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Don&#8217;t expect a $2 bottle of wine to taste the same as a $15 bottle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"margin-right: 0px\">In fact, it will really be a seminar rather than a course, but there&#8217;s room for those too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Rogers has an interesting post on his blog at the moment that is particularly timely from my perspective and that I agree with whole-heartedly. Companies seem increasingly loathe to commit adequate funds and, probably more significantly, staff time to training (although that could be my imagination). Having said that, a couple of weeks ago&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/30\/the-devaluation-of-training\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Devaluation of Training<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1386,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/27\/optimiser-upgrading-from-9i-to-10g\/","url_meta":{"origin":1071,"position":0},"title":"Optimiser &#8211; Upgrading from 9i to 10g","date":"February 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"On the one hand, I regret the fact I seem to be posting a lot of links to other people's work at the moment but I couldn't let this one by, if only for those who don't use OraNA or the like and might miss it.The one consistent message I\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 15 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":972,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2005\/06\/12\/dba_registry\/","url_meta":{"origin":1071,"position":1},"title":"dba_registry","date":"June 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"It's true I learn something new all the time. 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