Technical training: on-site vs open enrollment?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Bob Hooker is looking for <<... any cost/benefit information comparing
on-site technical training vs. conducting the same training via regularly
scheduled (open enrollment) classes at the home office.>>

I wouldn't waste my time looking for information that may not apply at all
to your specific situation when you can instead create a good, hard numeric
estimate yourself. The payback (the "benefit") part of the equation will
probably be identical in either case, assuming the trainers are equally good
and there is no "fatigue" or "homesickness" effect due to travel for either
the trainer or the student.

That being the case, it's trivially easy to come up with a good
***estimate*** of the costs. (A true costing analysis requires a fair bit of
expertise, but anyone can come up with defensible ballpark numbers that let
you decide whether to pursue the analysis in more depth.) For example, start
this way: Either one trainer must travel (at $/day for his salary, plus
airfare, plus accomodation, plus per diem) or X students must travel (same
cost types but different numbers). Clearly, making the trainer travel will
be less expensive than bringing all the students to the trainer for any
reasonable number of students (say, 10).

Unless the setup costs for training facilities are horrendous, this will be
almost universally true--which is why large training groups such as
CareerTracks send trainers all over the world rather than bringing students
to them. However, if the setup costs are truly horrendous, you need to
figure out why and what you can do about it. For example:

<<The problem is that we currently conduct training on-site. Being a complex
client-server application, this means using not only the client's training
facilities, whatever they may be, but their network, security setup,
technical personnel, etc.>>

I'll bet you you could solve the problem simply by bringing the server to
the students and hooking their workstations into the server at the training
facilities--or bringing a network hub with you and having everyone connect
their laptop to that hub. I've seen this done for a variety of training
situations--GIS software, CAD software, etc. If you're running a Windows or
Unix server application, you can undoubtedly find a high-end laptop that
will run the software, then network that to the student computers.

Even if you're running mainframe stuff, you could probably set up a VPN
(virtual private network) connection from a laptop to the mainframe at your
central facility--less efficient, perhaps, but still workable. I've even
seen mainframe emulators used to fake the presence of the mainframe and
still let students interact with the server as if it really existed. Of
course, all this adds costs, to the point that sending students to a central
training facility may make more sense. That's where you need to do serious
number crunching to see whether the benefits repay the development costs.
However, one other factor may be even more compelling:

<<Between numerous technical glitches, trainees leaving class for hours at a
time to attend to their regular duties, and myriad other factors, training
results have been, to put it politely, less than optimal.>>

If you can't get the hosts to give the trainees a day off for training, the
training won't be effective. Nobody can learn effectively if their mind is
on something else and if they're constantly being taken away from the
lecture before they have a chance to absorbe what they've learned. In this
kind of environment, you probably do need to take the students out of their
workplace. Sometimes you can get their managers to pretend the people are
away from the workplace, and that's all you need to do: agree on this, and
proceed. Sometimes you can't.

<<I know that we can to a much better job by training customer in our
offices where we have control of the training environment but clients are
reluctant to pay to send 10 people to training in our office when they can
pay for one instructor to go to their site. I strongly suspect that both my
company and our clients are paying more in the long run for on-site training
but it's mostly in hidden costs so I cannot prove it in dollars and cents.>>

It occurs to me that the solution you're actually seeking involves some form
of e-learning. That combines the benefits of both approaches: Your
instructor stays at home, with an optimal server setup ready to run, and the
students stay at home. The two then meet online--whether in the form of
self-paced instruction modules with e-mail or instant messaging support from
instructors, with modules completed one at a time as time permits, or via
interactive Web seminars held at specific times scheduled well in advance.
You'll want to design such instruction based on an understanding of client
needs; for example, if the students can only spare an hour at a time away
from their regular duties, design the course in 1-hour chunks.

I don't have any direct experience with implementing e-learning, but Saul
Carliner recently came out with a new book on the subject that sounds
excellent. Have a look at http://saulcarliner.home.att.net/ for information
on the book, a list of resources, and other good stuff. I've known Saul's
work for more than 10 years, and have been consistently impressed with its
quality. Also, if you've got the August 2003 issue of Technical
Communication (or know someone who is willing to part with their copy),
there are two reviews of other books on this subject that sound promising.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 

“Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the
earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do
so. The first is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly
paid.”--Bertrand Russell

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