The format I’m using is:
Rate on a scale from 0 - 5
0: I learned nothing
3: I learned about as much as I expected.
5. I learned more than I expected. The class was excellent.
0 1 2 3 4 5
What went well?
What went badly?
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As a student, it’s very unlikely I’d answer a question put like that even if I had constructive criticism to offer.
I think another way that could be put, something more like:
“What’s an opportunity for improvement?”
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All of the 5 people who turned in the form responded to that question. 3 of the 5 were technical things (Xcode not being able to installed due to not having enough free space, for example), and 2 were things I could personally improve on. I think it’s all about the environment you create. My intention is to have people feel comfortable telling truths that need to be told and heard. Part of that is using no-nonsense language. When I passed the forms out, I specifically asked them to write down what went badly and what could go better.
As a new member (joined Sept 17) to DMS, I have to disagree with you. While I have been hesitant to say anything before, it is extremely frustrating being a new member. There are tools, which are the specific reason my wife and I joined, and we can’t use them because the classes fill up before we can register for them. In the almost 3 membership payments we’ve made, the value proposition of being a DMS member hasn’t been there because of the gate keeping to tools. If you’re going to put gate keeping in place, then you need to make meeting the requirement to get through those gates as painless as possible. Right now, lack of adequate classes is a problem. It wasn’t until October 29th that my wife and I were able to actually make anything at DMS. That’s not good. Until that moment, I was seriously salty about being a member of DMS and considering canceling my membership. I’m still not convinced it is worth it yet, because I still don’t think there has been enough value provided to justify the $225 we will have paid in 10 days to be a member for 3 months, but I sincerely want it to be. the Dynatorch gets 1 class a month that holds 4 students. I understand the logistics and limitations, but it is in demand and fills up immediately, and we can never get in. Ideally, based on that fact alone, there would be more classes to meet demand.
Coming from an education background (I used to teach digital forensics through the Department of States Anti Terrorism Assistance program as well as mobile device forensics as a Cellebrite instructor), I don’t understand the issues at play here that make classes such a hurdle, but regardless of the reasons it is extremely frustrating for those of us who are new. Why are more classes not done in an online video format with knowledge checking after the fact? Why are the hurdles keeping people from using the tools not being made navigable?
I’m never one to highlight problems without offering to help, but I fear the politics of this situation may be beyond me. Regardless, I offer to help in any way I can to fix the problem.
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I think that’s an excellent idea.
I’m not sure what we disagree on. I think the main issue is not enough student hours being taught. And I think DMS needs to make sure classes that are required to use equipment are accessible, which means having more of them.
Agreed. I’ve taken two instructor led classes at DMS. Both provided value because I had to take them to access a tool I am interested in. Neither was amazing. I value the instructors time and that they were willing to get me where I needed to be, but one class was erratic and took longer than it should have because it wasn’t logically laid out or presented. But at the end of the classes, I felt I had enough information to run the tool, and that’s all I really cared about.
Also, regarding feedback, it’s not in most people’s nature to provide positive feedback honestly. Look at yelp and other review sites: people tend to only provide feedback when they are unhappy. Additionally, when I was an instructor, my audience was mostly law enforcement and military. Many of my students did not want to be doing what they were doing. They would rather be busting bad guys on the street, not analyzing computers or mobile devices. And often that frustration got taken out on me. One time I had three officers from a police department in Kentucky that were taking my class. They were clearly not qualified to be there. But I came in early every day, stayed during lunches, and stayed late to help get them up to speed. On the last day, one of the officers filled out every white space on the front and back of the feedback form about what a terrible instructor I was. Thankfully I had one of our senior instructors evaluating me during that class, and the only negative marks he gave me was for spending too much time focusing on the needs of those three officers and letting it take away from the rest of the class. He also threw away the angry guy’s review, citing that there’s at least one in every class.
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The new member services coordinator wants to meet with all of the new chairs at some point to determine how many of our tools require training, etc. From there we can work with the education team to start creating online content. It isnt a fast or easy process but it is something we are working toward.
If anyone is interested in helping create online/video content please reach out to @dougemes or myself.
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If you haven’t already you might ping @AlexRhodes and @John_Marlow about their tool classification and training efforts. It’s good stuff.
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With classes at DMS, if someone doesn’t want to be there, they won’t.
Love this. I think online content used as a supplement to in-person classes or used in conjunction with in-person tests is a great way to go for some classes.
I think the only thing we disagree on is your original premise of “We should support instructors based on how much value they deliver, not number of classes.” For tool gatekeeping classes, those two are one and the same from a member perspective. If I can’t access the tool until the classes are taken, being able to take the class is off immense value to me. At this point I’m willing to resort to instructor bribery for the classes my wife and I need. For non-gatekeeping skill/informational classes, I agree with you.
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It works very well for the 3D printer classes that I was able to take. And I’m not just throwing rocks here; I’m willing to help fix it.
What classes are these and yes I know it’s off topic.
@17Joseph76, a belated welcome to DMS to you and your wife!
In the past, there’s been an unwillingness to put tool classes online from a risk and litigation perspective. I can understand that concern. That said, a video training library with a mandatory in-person checkoff is being explored by @dougemes. Doug is a corporate education specialist, but almost more importantly he’s either a founding member of DMS or close enough that I expect he’ll get buy-in from the long-standing members.
I think your comments will help get the message across that we need to get people signed off as quickly as possible.
As a volunteer organization, most of the folks have full-time jobs that leave little time or energy to teach a class.
One dynamic I’ve seen to address the lack of classes is to open a thread on Talk asking for help. Usually, someone will volunteer to meet you to train you. Often, others see the thread and ask to attend, and before you know it, there’s a demand-based class ready to go that gets added to the calendar.
I think there needs to be a bigger push to get people who like to teach trained and cleared to teach as often as possible. This brings the politics of the Honorarium discussion in, unless you find someone teaching at DMS through Eventbrite.
Resin and some other committees now have office hours where you can get signed off to use the equipment. Perhaps @hon1nbo (Metal shop I think, not positive) and @shoottx (Woodshop) could see if something like office hours would be workable for those tools.
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Metal currently adds more classes as requested, and we always teach those who show up to our committee meetings as a fallback (in fact a lot of the items welded during meetings to make fixtures etc around the shop are often done as part of the impromptu welding classes). In general when someone asks we can get a class together.
Office hours are a bit problematic for much of metal since the equipment is very involved. It would work better for spot trains or maybe the occasional help running the dynatorch, but a welding class really isn’t appropriate in one.
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This was my exact experience for my first year as a member. I’m sad to think of the money I spent that went underutilized by myself. It wasn’t until I started to take a more active role in Talk requesting assistance or help with tools. That lead to getting to know some folks in person which lead to impromptu sign-offs. While it’s been nice to put faces to names, I wish it wasn’t this way.
I actually did cancel my membership at one point due to this and my own finances making it not feasible at the time, but the decision was an easy one to make given my mentality at the time.
I almost wish there was a per class interest-based waitlist system where you could sign up and get first right of refusal for a class slot. If you couldn’t make it, you could opt to have the next person take the spot. No response made within X number of hours/days to class start and it would auto default to decline and open the spot as well.
It could be a simple as a Google Form to fill out with a checkbox list of classes to choose from to add your name to the list; a check all that apply type of thing. That could put users’ names into an excel sheet that is administered by instructors with sign off admin rights (or however you call it). If you want to get really fancy, a script could be written to take current results from the excel sheet for each class section and output the user interest list as an email to the relevant instructor or committee group.
It’s quite similar to some of the producer type work I do at my game studio for when we need to organize large scale playtests across our other locations. The only bit I don’t know how to do is the scripting, but the rest should be simple enough to hook up. The Google Form or survey would need a dedicated landing page that is common knowledge and access to all users to be most effective. I could keep going, but there’s no sense in designing the rest of this in Talk until a decision is made.
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To the people who need tool sign-offs: I started this thread to help you get what you need:
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Is this resource also on the wiki? Unless we are seriously having the tour guides stress this, many folks won’t go to Talk as a first thought.
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Our new Membership Guru, @Kendra, is putting something more formal together. I mostly copied and pasted what the Committee Chairs said in other threads as a way to help people who are posting that they’re frustrated with not getting signed off on tools.
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