Training: Boosting our raw capacity to provide Drupal training
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As fresh Drupal talent and more Drupal development shops enter the picture it is important to foster and raise supportive training operations as well. Speakers will share experiences on student knowledge assessments, curricula building, training theory, and evaluation techniques all based on familiar training scenarios. You'll walk away with a direction for implementing your own in-house training programs.
Sean Effel
Allie Micka
Lee Hunter
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
Agenda
To read followup blog entries from the presenters, look here:
Speakers
- Sean Effel talked about Drupaltherapy's beginner training.
- Barry Madore spoke about Advantage Labs' local/live training models.
- Lee Hunter spoke about developing documentation for training purposes.
- Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg spoke about training new development team members.
An alternate title:
"Training for Drupal: Helping you help others help themselves"
Training for Drupal usually gets at least one session, and this is it. We'll speak to a couple of very common training scenarios for Drupal developers: You've got to train your client's admin staff in how to maintain and manage their new Drupal site; You've got a new employee joining your development team that you have to bring up to speed; You've got to produce any amount of documentation to deliver with your development work.
- An overview of challenges in the Drupal training arena
- Assessing the training needs of your clients and...
- Quantifying your client's knowledge of Drupal
- Scaling curriculum for different tiers of Drupal experience.
- Training in the streets for beginning Drupal users and...
- Training in the suites for corporate clients
- Questions and (some) answers
Goals
This workshop will speak largely to these ultimate goals:
- This session aims to increase your capacity to provide Drupal training.
- Attendees with a stake in training at any level will find a direction to develop their own training materials and programs.
- Attendees will learn through osmosis some trusted techniques and well marked pitfalls in delivering on Drupal training requirements.
- Attendees will learn what resources are in place already to help deliver better and more effective training based on the target audience.
- We'll all have a good, old fashioned love-in for everyone afflicted by that universal glue of education.
Resources
There are a number of folks in the training arena already and their experience in developing curriculum and teaching on the floor is a gold mine. We will tap into these resources and help attendees learn from them. Just to name a few of the training operations out there:
- Advantage Labs Basic Training Courses: (example)
- Drupaltherapy's entry level user trainings: (example)
- Lullabot's professional training operation: (example)
- Acquia's forthcoming Yellow Jersey certification program: (example)
This workshop will also contribute more to the thread started at Drupalcon Szeged on developing an official certification program for Drupal.
10 Comments
And mine too
Thanks to the three (and more) of you who contributed to the session. My followup notes have been added upstairs.
Summary of my talk
Thanks to Sean for organizing and framing this important discussion. Thanks to Alex and Lee for their lucid and important perspectives on the training dynamic. Thanks to all who attended, especially those who have spoken with me afterward.
I've posted a blog entry that summarizes and expands upon the training models we employ: http://www.advantagelabs.com/node/947. Hope it's helpful. Now I'll catch up on the thread here and participate in the discussion.
Barry Madore
Advantage Labs
notes from this session
Notes from an audience member:
http://interdependentweb.com/DrupalCon/2009/ProvidingDrupalTraining
comments welcome
Lee's Speaker Notes
I've added my speaker notes as the very first post to my blog:
http://streamoflight.com/content/training-and-documentation
Linked
Linked it upstairs to your bio. Thanks for this Lee.
Let's continue the conversation
Unfortunately a meeting made me late for this session - still very enjoyable. Looking forward to speaking with you folks more at length about training opportunities during the week. I'm "alaken" on twitter, "iloveparis" on AIM - please hit me up!
Hell yeah!
As an aspiring Drupal trainer, I was hoping for a session like this. Will definitely be there!
DrupalCon Needs Sean
Having been a student of Sean's, I can say that his teaching style and methodologies are fantastic. As an educator, business owner and Drupalist, all that I can say is that one of Drupal's biggest challenges in becoming the powerhouse we all know that it is, is a concerted T&D effort - like it or not it's tough to learn. Being an educator at the K-12 levela and adjunct prof of education I can say Sean is one of the few that could help lessening the learning curve. Anybody lucky enough to be trained by him walks away with a knowledge, understanding and an appreciation (not to mention a great resource) of Drupal. He needs to be in DC.
Sean, I'm glad you're taking
Sean, I'm glad you're taking the training torch in this Drupalcon. Training is crucial for Drupal's growth, and it's important to have a session on it, until it will be well established around the globe.
We've discussed it in Szeged, but not much has evolved since then, in the community level.
Unfortunately, unless I take some unexpected decisions, I won't make it to DC, but you have my +1 for this session. As stated above - we should maintain this subject "in the headlines", until we, as a community, reach the goal of a well structured, easy to reproduce, Drupal training program.
Sounds like a great session
And Sean is the right person to lead it. +1 from me!