New ATC Instructor

[BrianHailey]

Well,

After being a civil engineer for the last eight years, I've made the switch and I am now an instructor for an Authorized Training Center. For those of you who have taken classes from an ATC, do you have any suggestions? You know, things like, "I had an instructor that did this and it was great!" or, "I had an instructor that did this and it was horrible!" or even, "if my instructor did this, it would have been so much better!"

Thanks for any suggestions!

Brian

[nzeeben]

Brian,

Not sure if you are headed to AU this year or not. But if you are look for
a course from Matt Murhpy on teaching classes. I took it last year and it
was excellent.
Nick
wrote in message news:5337541@discussion.autodesk.com...
Well,

After being a civil engineer for the last eight years, I've made the switch
and I am now an instructor for an Authorized Training Center. For those of
you who have taken classes from an ATC, do you have any suggestions? You
know, things like, "I had an instructor that did this and it was great!" or,
"I had an instructor that did this and it was horrible!" or even, "if my
instructor did this, it would have been so much better!"

Thanks for any suggestions!

Brian

[Anonymous]

Brian, The biggest complaint I have had with most classes is that they go
too slow with too many and too long of breaks. My time is important to me,
even if I have nothing to back at the office. I don't need to waste it
surfing the web or reading the paper during class breaks. When I come to a
class I am ready to learn, not goof off. As I pointed out in my response to
your reply to my post earlier today... (got that?) I would rather have a
training video to review when there is nothing to do.

Brad

wrote in message news:5337569@discussion.autodesk.com...
Brian,

Not sure if you are headed to AU this year or not. But if you are look for
a course from Matt Murhpy on teaching classes. I took it last year and it
was excellent.
Nick
wrote in message news:5337541@discussion.autodesk.com...
Well,

After being a civil engineer for the last eight years, I've made the switch
and I am now an instructor for an Authorized Training Center. For those of
you who have taken classes from an ATC, do you have any suggestions? You
know, things like, "I had an instructor that did this and it was great!" or,
"I had an instructor that did this and it was horrible!" or even, "if my
instructor did this, it would have been so much better!"

Thanks for any suggestions!

Brian

[Anonymous]

>>Brian, The biggest complaint I have had with most classes is that they go
too slow with too many and too long of breaks. My time is important to me,
even if I have nothing to back at the office. I don't need to waste it <<
Pardon me.
When you teach it's no longer about you.
It's about your students.
If you have trouble getting over "me" you better get into another end of the business.
It's just not about the quality of your instruction, it's about how much your students learn.
That's why company's pay money for you to teach.

Just my opinion.

John P.

[Anonymous]

I apologize for that one.
thought that was your post not brad's.

[BrianHailey]

You had me a little puzzled there. Your reply makes a little more sense now.

[Civil3DReminders_com]

Be able to go over explain things outside the book you are using. Several of my coworkers went to a class last week and the instructor didn't want to cover anything that wasn't in the course book. They wanted the instructor to go more in depth on how to create styles and he basically refused. I even provided a list of items that they should go over and was told when they came back the instructor didn't even cover a single item on the list.

[Anonymous]

Just make sure the donuts are fresh.

Welcome to the instructor side. Like you I just became an instructor, or as
they say an Applications Engineer, for a reseller. The one thing I have
under my belt is 10 years as an instructor for a local tech college, and the
main thing I'll pass on to you is don't forget where you came from and how
you felt when someone with a little more experience looked down on you for
something you did not know or did wrong. You are there to teach the student
the software not teach them their job.

--

Murph
The world is not FLAT so why is your GIS data?
http://mappingitout.blogspot.com/
wrote in message news:5337541@discussion.autodesk.com...
Well,

After being a civil engineer for the last eight years, I've made the switch
and I am now an instructor for an Authorized Training Center. For those of
you who have taken classes from an ATC, do you have any suggestions? You
know, things like, "I had an instructor that did this and it was great!" or,
"I had an instructor that did this and it was horrible!" or even, "if my
instructor did this, it would have been so much better!"

Thanks for any suggestions!

Brian

[Anonymous]

I take this to be a defacto part of me role as an instructor. If an author
were to try to put everything into a book (all the tricks, tips, pitfalls,
should dos, don't dos, etc), 1. he would never finish or it would be so
outdated as to be worthless and 2. it would simply be to big to carry!

It is never all there! It is my job as a classroom instructor to verbalize
the steps for those that are struggling: they just missed that ONE critical
step, the author overlooked that one setting, etc. If it were all in the
book and the students didn't need me, I would not have a job!

That instructor should not be one! IMHO.

--
Larry Bettes
ADT, C3D & LDT/CD
(all 2007 with all SPs installed)
P4 - Dual Core 3.0 GHz, 3.00 GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 6800 GS AGP - 256 MB
Windows XP Pro, SP 2


wrote in message news:5339107@discussion.autodesk.com...
Be able to go over explain things outside the book you are using. Several of
my coworkers went to a class last week and the instructor didn't want to
cover anything that wasn't in the course book. They wanted the instructor to
go more in depth on how to create styles and he basically refused. I even
provided a list of items that they should go over and was told when they
came back the instructor didn't even cover a single item on the list.

[Anonymous]

there is a fine balance that is difficult to maintain as an instructor

it is hard (extremely hard) to stay both completely up to date on the
features of software and also be well versed in how to apply those tools in
daily design and drafting tasks.

The most savvy CAD user becomes and instructor and for the first year they
are unstoppable because they are so close to industry.

After a year, they become a little more distant. The new features come out,
the instructor learns them and sees their value but because they are not
applying them day in and day out they arent in touch with the little kickers
that make a tool useable/useable.

One dumb example from my life:
Sheet Sets and a KIP plotter- the KIP wants a project number for each
drawing that it opens. So much for batch plotting. The work around is to
make a dwf then plot. But who knew?

The cure for this disease? The ground zero to 30,000 feet shift that
happens faster than we want it to?

Take on production work, and spend as much time coaching hands-on in your
client's offices.

That makes for a hard life.

The life of a reseller AE (a good reseller AE) is hard as heck. It makes
things happen like writing DG posts at 3:15AM while you are troubleshooting
an LDT 06 install.





--
Dana Breig Probert, E.I.T.
Engineered Efficiency, Inc.
www.civil3d.com
www.eng-eff.com
----------------------------------
Civil 3D 2007 SP2
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 2.01 GHz
2GB RAM, 256 MB ATI FireGL V5200
-------------------------------------------
wrote in message news:5339107@discussion.autodesk.com...
Be able to go over explain things outside the book you are using. Several of
my coworkers went to a class last week and the instructor didn't want to
cover anything that wasn't in the course book. They wanted the instructor to
go more in depth on how to create styles and he basically refused. I even
provided a list of items that they should go over and was told when they
came back the instructor didn't even cover a single item on the list.

[Anonymous]

Welcome to my world; I feel a blog post...
http://tinyurl.com/hr3dj

--

sm

Scott McEachron
DC CADD, Dallas - Fort Worth
http://c3dpavingtheway.blogspot.com/


"Dana Breig Probert" wrote in message
news:5343547@discussion.autodesk.com...
there is a fine balance that is difficult to maintain as an instructor

it is hard (extremely hard) to stay both completely up to date on the
features of software and also be well versed in how to apply those tools in
daily design and drafting tasks.

The most savvy CAD user becomes and instructor and for the first year they
are unstoppable because they are so close to industry.

After a year, they become a little more distant. The new features come out,
the instructor learns them and sees their value but because they are not
applying them day in and day out they arent in touch with the little kickers
that make a tool useable/useable.

One dumb example from my life:
Sheet Sets and a KIP plotter- the KIP wants a project number for each
drawing that it opens. So much for batch plotting. The work around is to
make a dwf then plot. But who knew?

The cure for this disease? The ground zero to 30,000 feet shift that
happens faster than we want it to?

Take on production work, and spend as much time coaching hands-on in your
client's offices.

That makes for a hard life.

The life of a reseller AE (a good reseller AE) is hard as heck. It makes
things happen like writing DG posts at 3:15AM while you are troubleshooting
an LDT 06 install.





--
Dana Breig Probert, E.I.T.
Engineered Efficiency, Inc.
www.civil3d.com
www.eng-eff.com
----------------------------------
Civil 3D 2007 SP2
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 2.01 GHz
2GB RAM, 256 MB ATI FireGL V5200
-------------------------------------------
wrote in message news:5339107@discussion.autodesk.com...
Be able to go over explain things outside the book you are using. Several of
my coworkers went to a class last week and the instructor didn't want to
cover anything that wasn't in the course book. They wanted the instructor to
go more in depth on how to create styles and he basically refused. I even
provided a list of items that they should go over and was told when they
came back the instructor didn't even cover a single item on the list.

[Anonymous]

Scott McEachron wrote:
> Welcome to my world; I feel a blog post...
> http://tinyurl.com/hr3dj
>

Quite often a thankless job. Other than the pats on the back
that we give each other, that is....

Good blog post, however. I like it.

--
Jason Hickey

Civil 3D 2007, SP2
Dell Precision M70
2 GIG RAM, 256 MB nVidia Quadro FX Go1400
Intel Centrino 2 gHz Processor

www.civil3d.com

[Peter Adams]

As an instructor it is impossible to satisfy everyone in a course. There is a limited amount of time to cover a large amount of content. Often you can only introduce topics and their basics to a class, especially a beginners class. I agree with James Murphy that you are there to teach the student
the software not teach them their job but it does help if you can guide the student in using the software in their job tasks. With more advanced classes you can get into job tasks or work flow but it is a fine line between teaching software and teaching them their job.

[lherter]

Are you still teaching?