Lessons Learned about the Subject Specific Classes offered by Learning Without Scars

Give me a quick thumbnail on how our internet subject-specific classes are structured. And I think every one of them is structured in the same manner, correct?

What we've done, in effect, is in the early 1990s, the industry was going through some economic troubles. And most of the manufacturers stopped doing management training. And coincidentally, the associations stopped doing management training. We had been operating as consultants for about 12 years at that time. And as part of consulting, obviously, you have to train or retrain people in processes and methods. And from my early days teaching people how to teach in athletics at McGill, I was... always very comfortable in teaching people. I love seeing people get it, see the lights go on in their eyes. So one summer, I think it was 92, I sat down in front of a computer. We didn't do a lot of consulting in the summer. We tried to live as a family when you weren't in school, which was kind of fun. But I sat in front of the computer using voice recognition software from IBM in those days called ViaVoice. I don't think it's even available anymore.

And I would talk to the computer for 30,40 minutes, and then I could leave for about an hour while it converted everything into a Word document. And over the course of the summer, I created three 200-page books, one for parts managers, one for service managers. one for parts and service marketing in those days. And then we prototyped those classes in front of, invited executives and managers from companies for whom I had done consulting work. And they were kind enough to come to the desert and sit through three days in those, at that time, roughly 24 hours of classroom type training. And we used, films. We used modeling on flip charts. We used slides, which in the early days were foils on a projector, not even a PowerPoint type of circumstance, and took their input, modified things. And one of the things that came out of it is that they thought two days, three days was too long, and we adjusted everything to be two days.

Now, this is a long process to get to where your structure is, but what that two-day structure did for us,15 hours, is we had two subjects in each four-hour block, and we basically had four four-hour blocks. So we had eight subject-specific sectors, segments. That morphed into what we have today in subject-specific classes. And as time passed, We added a three-year program for parts, meaning 24 classes, three years for service,24 classes. We had two for marketing,16 classes. And then we threw in two classes for product support salesmen. So another two classes. And out of that, we end up with the 36 subject-specific classes we have today. And it's interesting because they've gotten longer. even though it's on the internet now. And I think it's in part because I'm a little bit stubborn and wanting to make sure that everybody gets the content. So we've been more particular in details as we've gone through the learning process.

So now when you're breaking it up into six or seven blocks, that's a further evolution, isn't it, of the three-hour subject-specific class? Down to maybe 30 minute segments.

What was also interesting is while that was going on, the education community was finding that the 50-minute university class wasn't cutting it. And they went down to 10 minute blocks at the end of which there was a quiz or a question or something as a break. And what they found was the first couple of classes that the students went through with this, they did terribly on the first two or three 10 minute questions because they weren't expecting they were supposed to have to pay attention. And, you know, it's the old story. We'd go through, we'd sit through the lecture. Somebody would take notes, share the notes, and then, you know, everything's good. Well, by going to a 10-minute quiz, you couldn't do that anymore. We found that, didn't we, with the people needing 80% to get a pass. We have a guy who's been on the job for 20,30 years. His boss signs him up for the class. He says, I know this stuff. I'll go right to the test.

And surprise, surprise, he didn't get 80%. Then he had to go back and do it. And I used to say this is what we call it in the family. He skimmed and scanned. He just I know this. I'll just see what the heck I missed. And they did it again and they missed it again. And how many times can they take the test before they have to talk to us again?

Well, you know, it's Volvo for one manufacturer has an international competition to name the best technician in the world. And they have regional contests. And then, you know, in America, they probably have four or five different sections leading to an American champion. And once a year they have, and it's a big deal. It'd be kind of fun to be able to do the same thing. Everybody who's taken the class in parts comes in and we have a, a Kahoot contest once a year. See who's king of the hill.

You're supposed to know this, dude.

So coming back then to the structure, we start with a reading list. That's optional. We haven't made that compulsory, have we?

So don't get carried away with that. So we have a reading list. Then we have a pre-test. And then you create, let me call it six videos, each video consisting of slides with wording, audio tracks explaining the wording, embedded film clips. And at the end of each of these videos is a quiz or a question or an essay.

and you have about six of those in each of the subject-specific classes, that turns into then a final assessment, which is a 20-question multiple choice, then a survey, then an evaluation form that they perform or provide to us about what they liked, didn't like about the class. Then they can print their certificate and off they go.

It seems to me that we... The fastest people have gone through in the original format is going to become a little longer, but it sounds like it's going to be between two and four hours per class. Is that kind of the way it is scoping out for you?

Okay. Okay. So these subject-specific classes, one subject, for instance, inspections in the service department, for instance, warehousing in the parts department, for instance, territory management as a salesman, for instance, basic marketing for marketing, each of them is a building block towards enhancing the skills and knowledge of the people working in parts and service.

Okay. Did we miss anything in explaining how the classes are structured and how they work?

That's a good way to wrap this up, Caroline. Thank you for participating in another Lessons Learned. And thanks to the audience and everybody listening. We hope you understand better now what we do and how we do it with the classes and look forward to you being present at another Lessons Learned in the near future. Mahalo.