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 āWe should support instructors based on how much value they deliver, not number of classes.ā For tool gatekeeping classes, those two are one and the same from a member perspective. If I canāt access the tool until the classes are taken, being able to take the class is off immense value to me. At this point Iām willing to resort to instructor bribery for the classes my wife and I need. For non-gatekeeping skill/informational classes, I agree with you.
2 Likes
It works very well for the 3D printer classes that I was able to take. And Iām not just throwing rocks here; Iām willing to help fix it.
What classes are these and yes I know itās off topic.
@17Joseph76, a belated welcome to DMS to you and your wife!
In the past, thereās 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 heās either a founding member of DMS or close enough that I expect heāll 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 Iāve 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, thereās 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.
1 Like
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 isnāt appropriate in one.
4 Likes
This was my exact experience for my first year as a member. Iām sad to think of the money I spent that went underutilized by myself. It wasnāt 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 itās been nice to put faces to names, I wish it wasnāt 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 couldnāt 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 usersā 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.
Itās 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 donāt 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 thereās no sense in designing the rest of this in Talk until a decision is made.
4 Likes
To the people who need tool sign-offs: I started this thread to help you get what you need:
2 Likes
Is this resource also on the wiki? Unless we are seriously having the tour guides stress this, many folks wonāt go to Talk as a first thought.
3 Likes
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 theyāre frustrated with not getting signed off on tools.
3 Likes