Re: Beginner's Course
Re: Beginner's Course
- Subject: Re: Beginner's Course
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 12:40:08 -0500
Hi Jackie:
I have had some experience in this area with our MUG, and think I have
learned some lessons...
First of all, be sure to find out exactly what your audience is looking
for and why. I started one program expecting to hold a once a month
session but found that several people were wanting to meet once per
week because there was an urgency to their need to get familiar with a
Mac. We tried to accommodate their needs by holding sessions every
week, except the week of our monthly regular meeting, and in the end we
created a great deal of work and stress for ourselves that took a lot
of the potential fun out of things.
Also, be sure people are not coming to your "beginner's" class when
what they really want and need is one-on-one counselling in their home
with a tutor. We started one beginner's program only to lose half of
the initial audience because people were not finding the sessions
hitting the nail on the head. When we followed up with those people, we
often found that what they needed was direct assistance in their home.
i started one program with the thinking that we would have a course
agenda with a different topic or topics each night and run from A to Z
to be completed, only to find that what the people really wanted was
for the general Question & Answer session that we had scheduled at the
end of each night's activity to be longer and longer. Finally, we threw
away the course agenda and just held Q & A sessions. We did encourage
people to tell us ahead of time what they wanted us to focus on. This
would probably be harder to do with a group of twenty or more people,
but worked for a small group of less than ten people.
Another issue I see on the horizon is that, pretty soon, we are going
to start seeing "new users" who are working in OS X. It is going to
getting more, not less, complicated to address all of the potential
needs of the overall Mac community, but I wish you the best of success.
Jim Foster
President / BBS Admin
Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 07:56 AM, Christopher Jackie L
wrote:
We have several members in our MUG that have requested a beginner's
class
for learning to use their Mac.
I'm also interested in feedback you received after you held these
sessions.
What worked well? What would you do differently?
Jackie
Jackie Christopher
President, Quad Cities Macintosh Users Group (QCMUG)
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