Online vs. In-Person training

I have had several ocassions of online training with Linda.com and also have used the help of STS with DoIT on campus. Sometime, in-person trainings have been with invited instructors and designed or customized for a small group of participants to get a hands on experience with some technology tool. I found both of the options: autonomic online courses and in class group training, useful and convenient, depending on the initial trainee needs and time constraints.

The most valuable in in-person training is the immediate interaction in the classroom and responsiveness of instructors to students’ questions or confusions. It has occurred on my experience many times that particular feature had been a big struggle to understand by only watching a detailed video recorded instruction. Skilled and experienced training staff, on the other hand, could explain technology tool once again or with a different examples set, until it became clear and made sense for a student with different experience background. Slower path during class instructions may be very successful and productive as long as participants are in the agreement about, and comfortable with, this group’s ‘technological frame’.(Khoo and Hall, 2013)

Besides an obvious convenience of video recorded instructions, when only a student has to decide when, for how long, with what type of divided sessions to watch it and do exercises or explore the technology, the recorded video may be very useful for immediate questions about particular technology feature during 24/7 time regime and at a time limited by deadlines.  

Khoo, Michael, and Catherine Hall. "Managing metadata: Networks of practice, technological frames, and metadata work in a digital library." Information and Organization 23.2 (2013): 81-106.