Today was the third day in a professional seminar, “Instructional Techniques for New Instructors”, put on by Langevin Learning Services and held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Houston’s Medical Center area.

In the span of two days we learned some interesting concepts that sound good, but they have scary ramifications when they are applied toward our software training. For example, they recommend that 1/3 of training be lecture or demonstration and 2/3 be participant-directed practice with just the instructor learning on. We currently on average have a 3-day lecture. This means we’d have to have a 9-day training class. In 9 days they may actually learn the software fully, but I don’t know of any supervisor that will let their employees off for that long.

As part of our “final” I taught a 15-minute short course on basketball foul signals. I did apply some of the recommendations given, and scored mostly fives and sixes out of a possible six in over 50 areas of evaluation. The class was enjoyable for me as well as the students. One person really appreciated it because her brother has the NBA League Pass on satellite, and now she understood what was going on. They videotaped each of us as well, but I won’t be able to review the tape until I get home next Friday. I expected to do well; I’ve only been doing the training thing for 6 years now.

I normally don’t get a lot out of professional seminars, but this one was particularly good. Given that we paid a good deal of money for the course, I was surprised that lunch wasn’t provided, that they gave us a discount rather than a complete validation of our parking, and that we couldn’t check our mail with the wireless Internet unless we shelled out $10 a day. No thanks.

After training, I put 54 minutes (max allowed) in on the elliptical at the Hilton. 810 calories, over 8000 strides; not bad. I earned some of the calories back over at Knuckleheads where I took first in two Countdown rounds, but I tanked on sports trivia. There is just too much history to put in my head. Give me the rule book. :)