Volume XIX Number 9

November 2006

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.