Sacramento Chapter Offers Free Online Training

By Chuck Petch, President, Sacramento Chapter

In April, the Sacramento Chapter STC officers faced a problem other chapters may have experienced. A survey of our chapter members showed training was high on their list of priorities, but we had very limited resources. We wanted to offer them a valuable training opportunity, but with volunteerism at an all-time low, a minimal staff of officers, and a small budget, how could we do it?

After kicking the topic around at a council meeting, we decided to talk with a couple of local trainers about offering a class in FrameMaker. We found that we could train ten people for one day for approximately $1,000. That was certainly a reasonable rate for an expert trainer, and it was within our budget.

The difficulty lay in the details. We would need to rent a suitable classroom; provide a laptop and a copy of FrameMaker to each student; and cater a continental breakfast, a lunch, and an afternoon snack. These extras threatened to break the budget and weary an already over-worked council. Although we all felt live training would provide the best learning experience for our members, we decided to investigate alternatives.

An evening of online searching revealed a number of excellent online-training providers, including one that, in particular, offers decent training in many popular applications and technologies at a phenomenal price: www.vtc.com. Through VTC, we could have five online training accounts for an entire year for $1,000. By enrolling two members in each account for one month, we could theoretically train up to 120 members per year in virtually any application they wanted.

We agreed to take a few days to test the training by looking at the free sample lessons. We found the VTC training useful and more than adequate. Much as we might have preferred in-person training, the online deal from VTC was too good to pass up. We could train more people in more applications by using online training than we could ever hope to do with live training.

The council voted unanimously to offer one year of VTC online training to our chapter. Additionally, since the cost was so low, we chose to offer the training free as a way of giving value back to the members in return for their dues.

Implementing the training program was easy. We set up the five licenses in a few minutes on the phone. The VTC representative also confirmed that we could rotate students through the licenses in whatever way we chose. We believed we could assign two people at a time to a license without excessive contention, and we decided to allow each student one month of access. We created a waiting list and added people to the list on a first-come, first-served basis. Rather than constantly adding and deleting students, we decided to simplify administration by starting a group in training at the beginning of each month. If the waiting list was short enough at the start of a new month, students who wanted to continue from the previous month would be allowed to do so after new students had been accommodated.

To market our new training program, we announced it in our chapter newsletter and sent out several e-mail announcements and reminders to all members. We also touted the training at our monthly meeting. Responses came in slowly the first few days, but within a few weeks we had eleven students.

Now after six months, we’ve trained twenty members. That’s certainly fewer than we expected, but still a greater number than we could have trained at the same cost with a live instructor. Fortunately, the lower than expected response made it possible for everyone who wanted to continue training for more than one month to do so. We’ve found that most people cannot complete all the training they would like to in one month.

User feedback about the program has been entirely positive. We solicited comments from the first users as they completed their classes. Every respondent indicated the training was helpful. The most popular programs, in order from first to last, are FrameMaker, XML, DreamWeaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, and JavaScript.

As we approach the halfway point in the program, our chapter council has already learned a few lessons. The most significant one is that the long waiting list and expected rush to training never materialized. The moderate level of interest has produced less of an administrative burden than expected and has made it possible to start students in training whenever they request it rather than at the beginning of each month. This could be especially valuable to job seekers who need to upgrade their skills quickly in order to qualify for a particular job. We also found that the number of members interested in training declined after the first three months. Apparently we met most of the demand for training in those first few months, and perhaps we also need to put more of an effort into constantly marketing our program in order to capture and retain member awareness.

Creating a new training program has been one of the most exciting projects our chapter council has had the opportunity to work on. We believe we are offering chapter members an excellent value in return for their dues, and it is satisfying to help provide a real boost to their careers. With good online training readily available and so inexpensive, even small and midsize chapters like ours can afford to provide an effective training program to members.

Chuck Petch is president of the Sacramento chapter and has been a sometimes member of STC since about 1985. He began his technical writing career in 1980 and has worked as a writer, editor, and manager for several electronics hardware and software companies. He currently writes for WVS, The Technical Writing Company, in Nevada City, California, and lives in Grass Valley, California, with his wife Vicki and daughter Laura.

Through trial and error, the Carolina Chapter STC has developed a training and mentoring program that is relevant to judges with all levels of experience. The chapter most recently fine-tuned its series of events during the judging process last fall.

To begin the process, a member of the competitions committee organized a social for experienced judges at a Greek restaurant. Competitions committee manager Ann-Marie Grissino explained that the aim was to recognize the judges for their contributions and also solicit their tips for new judges; this advice was then used in the judges’ training session held the following month.

At the opening session of the training held in mid-October, judges learned basic information about each of the three competitions (online, technical publications, and art). The judges were then split into three groups, one for each competition. The experienced judges shared their tips and knowledge with the respective groups. The competition entries, which had been submitted by the end of September, were grouped into sets, and judges were asked which they would be interested in judging based on their interests and expertise.

After three or four judges were assigned to each set of entries (each entry must have three judges), Grissino asked the judges of each set to meet their team members and exchange contact information. A similar process had been used during judges’ training sessions in previous years, Grissino explained. “When making up the judging teams, we identify new versus experienced judges and try to get an experienced judge or two on each team. We spread out the experience. That way, we’re using the experienced judges as mentors to new judges.”

Once the teams of judges received the entries they were to evaluate, they were asked to complete their review by Thanksgiving. Each judge was responsible for looking at between three and five entries, depending on the entries’ complexity and depth. In years past, judging was performed before or after Thanksgiving, depending on when the October training session was held. The Carolina chapter judges then participated in a best-of-show judging session in early December.

During the judging process, the competition managers reviewed samples of the evaluations prepared by the judges to ensure quality and substance of content and to examine where the training was successful or in need of improvement.

After the competition, entrants received surveys allowing them to share their thoughts on the judges’ comments and process. Grissino said, “We received a great deal of good feedback from entrants who said that the judges’ comments are thoughtful and insightful.”

Grissino shared ideas that her chapter has used for training its judges. In past years, games and themes have been included as part of these training sessions, including the Star Trek theme it focused on two years ago. Using themes for training has resulted in varying levels of success.

The chapter also tried a one-day program that incorporated the judges’ training session followed by the judging itself. Grissino remembers it “was too long a day, too hard for us to get facilities with the right equipment, [and] too costly if we had to rent equipment and get it set up right.” She has also found that planning two training sessions to accommodate those who could not make it the first time did not yield much higher attendance and did not allow for the judging teams to meet each other.

Grissino has found that it consistently works to separate the attendees into three smaller groups as described above, rather than attempting to hold a discussion with one group of forty people. She also noted that a Saturday morning coffee and continental breakfast setup seems to work well for the training sessions.

The Carolina chapter typically trains between forty and sixty judges each year, Grissino said.