Just-for-me training: personalized options for training on demand

ABSTRACT

For many years, Wellesley College's User Services department has offered formal software training sessions in lecture and hands-on formats to faculty, staff, and students. As the range of technical ability in the user community steadily increases and the variety of applications we support grows, these one-size-fits-all classes have become inadequate to meet the campus's widely varying needs.Over the course of the past two years, we have focused our training efforts on devising new strategies and leveraging new technologies to bring users exactly the training they need, exactly when they need it. For students, we implemented a just-in-time peer-to-peer training network called Computing First Aid in the fall of 1999. Computing First Aid provides individualized drop-in software consulting to students in a format similar to that of academic tutoring; in the winter of 2000, Computing First Aid was expanded to include remote support via on-line chat. In the spring of 2000, we introduced the Deskside Coaching program, which provides faculty and staff members with one-on-one instruction on topics of their choice in their own offices.User response to Computing First Aid and Deskside Coaching has been overwhelmingly positive: Computing First Aid served over 10% of our student body in its first semester alone, and an average of 14 Deskside Coaching sessions are held each month. Due in large part to the success of both programs, we have been able to substantially reduce the number of traditional introductory-level classroom sessions we offer and focus our instructor-led classes on new technologies and advanced techniques.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.1 Project and People Management
          Subjects: Training

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Training, help, and documentation

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.1 Project and People Management
          Subjects: Staffing

General Terms:
Management, Performance, Theory

Keywords:
faculty, just-in-time, staff, students, training