One of the things we've been discussing is the need for a training
server with known data so that it is easier to do exercises in which
the students must accomplish something rather than just "play
around." That way we could share our exercises and you could trust
that they would work (cuz the right data is there.)
Does that have appeal to others?
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 15, 2010, at 7:17 PM, Tara Robertson <information.detect...@gmail.com
> wrote:
Dan said:
To add one more voice to the mix; during the months leading up to our
go-live date, our cataloguers had weekly training / exercise sessions
where each week we went over the previous week's tasks and then
introduced some new tasks with practice exercises. When we went live,
they were in a relatively happy state. Kudos to Ron Slater, who put
together the training schedule, and the cataloguers for tackling it
with
good spirits and humour.
When I did training with SITKA, we learned from the first few sites
that giving library staff access to a training server and telling
them to "play around" didn't result in staff spending time
practising using the system. We then developed worksheets where
staff would have to do various tasks like: register a patron, check
out 3 books, mark one lost, observe the change in bills, etc. We
found that structured exercises worked better for most library staff
than just telling them to "play". (I'm not sure what, if anything,
this says about the kind of folks who work in libraries, or how
people in libraries learn how to use software, but...) Perhaps if
the SITKA folks are still using these types of exercises they might
be willing to share them?
I've also found this to be a useful way to teach other types of
software, like Zotero, and Excel.
Cheers,
Tara
