Trainer is a huge job with a dozen responsibility. The huge job is to educate and share you’re best knowledge to the participant in short time with several constraints such as lack of hardware,, lack of participant commitment, and lack of training budget. As a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Microsoft Certified Educator, I will share you several tips to deliver your training by following tips.
Tips 1 – Understanding the types of training
Training or some of them called it as a workshop is a short time learning to understand one or more topics. On Microsoft itself, there are three types of training namely, Clinic, Camp, and Course (Simple said as 3C). The different is how you deliver them. Table 1 shows you the characteristics for each training.
| Character | Clinic | Camp | Course |
| Duration length | a day length | one – three days length | one week or more |
| Purposes | Problem Solving and awareness | Fundamental knowledge and enrichment | Building skills and competence |
| Deliverable | Hands on OR Seminar | Hands On AND Lecture | Lecturing, DIscussion, and Hands On |
| Good for | Technology Campaign | Preparation Certification | College Credits / Professional Development |
Tips 2 – Choosing the proper Material
As a MCT, we have a lot of choice of material. Therefore, we should choose the proper material based on the training types. In order to do that we should know, what kind of material that we have
- E-learning. This kind of material is great as a suplement for Cliinic and Camp for students. Microsoft Virtual Academy is the best free e-learning that available for Microsoft technological course, for people want to find further e-learning they can subscribe the Pluralsight, Lynda, WintellectNow, and many more. You can create your own material using the e-learning above to fit the timeline and audience.
- E-Reference. Microsoft has a good library subscription called Microsoft E-Reference. It collaborates with Safari Books to provide +800 books for your preparation with just 250$. This can be great for a course model. Furthermore, you can subscribe the more premium one 399$/year on Safari Books Online,. You can use e-reference to help you create custom materials for a course, camp.
- Courseware. Delivering a camp or a course, you can use the MOC and Digital Courseware. You can access both services use the MCT member portal. This courseware will give you a complete solution to deliver a course. For academic, they also have MOAC that combine both technological and pedagogy aspect.
Tips 3 – Preparing The Material
The course material should understand the iron triangle of learning which are audience level, course duration, and available infratsructure. Creating a good material start from considering the “iron triangle of learning”. For example, it is imposible for participants to use VM from MOC when the hardware not allowed to use VM. The ideas is you should consider to er-adjust the material. Here are the tips.
- Start looking the compatible course material on Tips 2. Find the closest relation with your course. For MOC, MOAC you can skip this step.
- Asking the client or your organization to fullfill the hardware and software need. For example, on MOC you will understand why hardware level is really important during a course for customer satisfication. if is not possible to fullfill the requirements, it is time to consider to create custom learning material
- Understanding the timeline and the audience. When create a material, please consider to give extra time or even extra material if the course is faster or slower than the plan.
Tips 4 – Never Forget the Documentation
Yes, you should prepare at least three things before the course is started which are:
- A place to store your learning material. it can be as shared folder on a LAN, Cloud Storage, or on yours e-learning website
- A place to put the documentation such as photos and attendees list
- A place to submit the course feedback like MTM (Metric that Metters) or might be a feedback form from online or offline form.
Tips 5 – Budget yourself to do a course and a certification
Each year please invest a time to join online course, read a book that you need for delivering a course such as public speaking, teachning methods, or even teaching with technology, and pass the related certification. This kind of habits will make you a stronger trainer.