Summation Training class

I don’t remember if I talked about the new plan for doing some Summation training, so I’ll give you the quick rundown.

Originally, I had tried to cram a whole “intro” to the program in a 90 minute class. I don’t think that worked very well. There was simply too much to cover in 90 minutes, so people who were new to the program got lost quickly, and people who were somewhat familiar with the program didn’t get enough new stuff. So, we broke it down into 4 hour long sessions(for now, there’s 1 or 2 more I might consider later). The first of those sessions, which I’m teaching this week, is the absolute very basics of Summation. In fact, I named the class “Summation: What is is and what does it do?”. Subsequent weeks will see me spending an hour talking about Searching, Working with Transcripts, and Tagging/Foldering and other coding shortcuts. I feel like the hour isn’t too much to ask, and limiting what we talk about allows me to be a lot more interactive, show off a number of usage scenarios, answer questions, etc.

Unfortunately, the next challenge appears to be actually getting people to class. Today all but 1 person had to cancel on me. So, that one student got a great session, basically they got individual attention and answers to their questions for a little over an hour, uninterrupted. Not too shabby for them. Now, I’m not complaining, because having 1 student allowed me to test out the format and try a few different things before I have to do it for a larger group. I enjoyed this session, and I feel pretty positive about this format, but we’ll see how attendance is tomorrow, and forward from there.

Interestingly, the round table discussion at the local ILTA Litigation Technology group meeting yesterday was Training, and much of the discussion was about the frustration of trying to get people to training! At least I know we’re not the only ones struggling with it. It also helped to know that I’m not the only one who is breaking Summation training out into many short, topical sections as opposed to one long session. That gives me hope that I’m on the right track….

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