Course Development Times
The time required to develop a new course depends on:
- the complexity of the course;
- how much material has to be produced;
- the standard of materials;
- what is already available.
The following are some guidelines for course development times
(a ratio of 10:1 means ten hours development for every one hour
of course time):
| Computer-based |
100:1 |
| Complex/technical |
40:1 |
| Extensive revision |
17:1 |
| Moderate revision |
11:1 |
| Using existing modules |
6:1 |
Courses that intend to teach a specific skill, or set of skills, range from half a day to two days. Although the length of a course depends on the skill and knowledge complexity, the following guidelines will give you some idea of what can be done in a fixed time.
| Course length |
What can be done |
| ½ day |
You can teach some basic concepts, models and terminology. There will be little or no time for practice. Unless the students practise the skills very soon after the course, there is little chance that the learning will be transferred. However, half a day of theory in the classroom combined with coached practice in the workplace is a powerful combination. |
| 1 day |
A full day's course allows time for some practice but not enough time for a significant amount of learning to take place. As there is only enough time for one practice session, the students end the course on a low note. The practice will give them feedback on what they cannot do. They will not have the confidence they can perform the skills correctly. |
| 1½ days |
An extra half day sees significant skill improvement so the chances of effective learning transfer are greatly enhanced. The intervening evening also helps because the students can reflect on what happened during the day. Learning still goes on even after the practice has stopped. |
| 2 days |
Two days of training also allow the students to start a post course project or to rehearse an application. |
Easter
Easter is one of the trickiest holidays when it comes to planning training. It can fall on any Sunday between 22 March and 25 April and can catch out even the most wary. The table below gives the expected dates for Easter Sunday well up to 2016.
| 2007 | 08 April
|
| 2008 | 23 March
|
| 2009 | 12 April
|
| 2010 | 04 April
|
| 2011 | 24 April
|
| 2012 | 08 April
|
| 2013 | 31 March
|
| 2014 | 20 April
|
| 2015 | 05 April
|
| 2016 | 27 March
|
Read our article on the ‘Elusive Easter’ if you want to find out more about how the date for Easter was decided, how it is calculated, and the dates for Easter until 2010. There are also details of how you can obtain a copy of a program that calculates Easter, other moveable holidays, fixed holidays, and the day of the week for any date.
Guidelines for Producing Overhead Transparencies
- Don't make the lettering too small
Rule of thumb: 18 point (approximately equivalent to 6
mm for capital letters) is about as small as you want to go. 44
point (15 mm) is good for titles and 28 point (10 mm) is good
for the main text.
- Don't put too much on one OHP
Rule of thumb: Six words per line and six lines per slide
is a good guideline.
- Restrict the number of fonts that you use
Rule of thumb: Restricting yourself to two, proportionately-spaced
fonts plus careful use of bold and italics will cover most of
your needs. Underlining is rarely necessary and the OHPs usually
look better without it. A good combination is a sans-serif font
(e.g. Arial, Univers) for the titles and a serif font (e.g. Times
New Roman, Century Schoolbook) for the text.
- Restrict the number of colours that you use
Rule of thumb: Two colours will cover most of your needs.
Guidelines for Setting Pre-work
- Always make sure that the pre-work is essential to the running of the course
- Give an accurate estimate of how long the pre-work will take
- Prioritise the pre-work tasks
- Let the delegates know why the prework is necessary
- Let them know how the pre-work is to be used
- Let them know when the pre-work will be used
Size and Shape of Training Rooms
- At least 80cm of desk space per person
- Width-to-depth ratio of room should be at least 3:4
- Flip chart to furthest student should be less than 8m
Face-to-Face Ratio (Time Spent Training)
The amount of time a trainer can spend in front of a class depends on many factors such as the difficulty of the course and the number of different courses that the trainer has to train.
I suppose it would be possible for trainers to spend 100 per cent of their time in the classroom if they have full administrative support and the courses always fill a complete week (it is difficult to schedule courses without any gaps between them).
Eventually fatigue, with a corresponding decline in standards, will set in. If you have to support a massive training effort, and your trainers are committed to the programme, it is possible to sustain a face-to-face ratio of 80 per cent.
More realistically you would expect trainers to spend some of their time on preparation, administration, revision of existing materials and development of new materials. The proportion of the times spent on these activities will vary depending where the trainers are on their career development.
Rule of thumb: You would normally expect trainers to have a face-to-face ratio of 50 per cent.
This is supported by data from several benchmarking exercises I carried out with a number of companies.
Using Consultants
Whether you use full-time trainers or external consultants depend on the criteria you use (such as cost and flexibility) for making your decision.
Rule of thumb: If the decision is to be made on the basis of cost, consultants start to become more expensive than full-time employees when you employ the same consultants for more than 50 per cent of their time.
Sample Size
One of the problems that face you when you are doing an evaluation exercise using questionnaires is: 'How big a sample do you need for the results to be statistically significant?'
The statistics to do this are quite complicated and you need to know quite a bit about the population already, but if the population is very large and the responses to the questions are fairly well balanced then you can use the following rule of thumb:
Rule of thumb: Sample size = 2500/(percentage error)2
So, if you can accept an error rate of 5 per cent then you will need a sample size of 100 (2500/25).
