Nov 16, 2011

Just What is Training?

I see the phrase “SQL Server training” tossed around a lot these days and often times it makes me want to stick a fork in my eye because I know what is being offered is not training, but something different. I was discussing this recently with some colleagues and being the set-based geeks we are I decided it was time to classify the types of presentations that exist out there.

The reason I am writing this post is to help clear up confusion about what is (and is not) considered to be training. When an employer pays for an employee to go to “training” they are more than likely expecting the employee is going to put their hands on a product in some way, and most likely that means lab exercises. When the employee returns and informs the employer that they sat in sessions and never touched a product, the employer is likely to not send that employee back. This hurts everyone involved and is why we need to make certain we can use these terms in a consistent manner.

The last formal training classes I attended were for Six Sigma. The formula was simple: we were taught something, we were given an exercise to practice what we were just taught, then we were taught something new but was built upon the concepts we had just been taught (and touched). The one thing that really stands out for me here is Minitab. We were told about it, we used it, and then we built upon that foundation. That’s what training is for me, and I believe for others as well.

Training Presentations

If you aren’t putting your hands on the product, you aren’t being trained.

When you enter the military you go through what is called “basic training”. This training is not a series of PowerPoint presentations on guns and grenades with the hope that you’ll know what to do the day of a battle. No, they actually put guns and grenades in your hands so that when the time comes you’ll already know what to do.

Proper training classes take longer to prepare and as a result often cost more. And when employers pay for a training class, they are expecting to get proper training.

Now, think about the times you have heard the phrase “SQL Server training” and you were just shown a handful of slides. You aren’t being trained. You are being lectured to, which is the next classification…

Teaching Presentations

This is the lecture style format, usually involving a slide deck (or maybe an overhead projector, remember those?) This is effective at providing information for a group of people at the same time but where actual training is impractical. Think about the first Star Wars movie, where they get together to discuss how to defeat the Death Star. They didn’t use slides, they used animated visuals in order to deliver the briefing to the pilots. But this wasn’t training the pilots for what they were going to experience in that trench.

This is the most familiar of presentations for many of us, and are often also called webinars, meetings, or sessions. They are meant to teach us something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we can take action on the subject. For example, I learned a lot about big data from Dr. DeWitt this year at the PASS Summit, but it wasn’t training, and it is not something I can take action upon at the moment. Which leads us to the last classification…

Helping Presentations

These presentations are the ones that give practical advice that people can use to take action upon immediately, and are my favorite to build and present. I built a talk this past year titled “SQL Server Memory Management” and it was geared towards helping people understand the very basics of how server memory works in conjunction with SQL. It was not meant to be a deep dive, because 80% of the people in the audience don’t need a deep dive, they need to understand why 64-bit versions of an O/S are better than 32-bit. And when a server is suffering from memory pressure I wanted to give them some easy steps to follow in order to triage the situation.

In other words, I wanted them to leave with something they could use to take action upon should the need arise. My talk wasn’t training (we didn’t touch anything), and it wasn’t a lecture on something they couldn’t act upon after leaving the room. It was designed for them to go back to their desk, sit down, and take real action.

Is there overlap between the three? Of course! But when I see someone talk about offering training and you don’t actually put your hands on anything then it isn’t training, and that drives me crazy.

[Special thanks go to the amazing Karen Lopez (blog | @datachick), Buck Woody (blog | @buckwoody), and Andy Leonard (blog | @AndyLeonard) for their help with this post. Thanks for being part of my SQL Family.]

sqlrockstar Professional Development, SQLServerPedia Wiki 15 MSSQL, SQL, SQL MVP, training

Fred Woodbridge (@fwoodbridge)

Excellent!
http://www.brentozar.com Brent Ozar

Errr, not sure I agree there. The dictionary definition of training is:

“The action of teaching a person or animal a particular skill or type of behavior”

From: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=ybh&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=training&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=XgDFTtOtB8qBgAer-bTtDg&ved=0CCsQkQ4&biw=1399&bih=756

I can teach someone a behavior without putting their hands on something. Classic example – I don’t need to open SSMS to train someone when it’s appropriate to shrink databases and when it’s not.

I think you’re operating off a different definition of training – can you point me to it? That might help me understand where you’re coming from.

Thomas LaRock

Brent,

Thanks for the comments. As always I appreciate your feedback and sharing your experiences as a consultant.

My post was not about you.

My post was an effort to help clear up some confusion regarding what the word “training” means, and I didn’t do it in a vacuum. In addition to having my own experience as a college instructor, I had Buck review the post before it went live because I know he is currently working with college students (I hesitate to say “adults” without knowing his students). I also asked two very respected trainers in Andy and Karen to share their thoughts. And I expect to write more on this subject matter in the coming weeks and months ahead.

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http://www.brentozar.com Brent Ozar

I appreciate that you didn’t do it in a vacuum, but asking people – even respected people – what they think doesn’t make the definition of a word. I know you get that because we’ve had the Wikipedia discussion before: you’ve laughed when I’ve cited Wikipedia for definitions, but you’re doing the same thing here.
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http://www.SQLskills.com Paul Randal

To start with, I’m not taking your article as a dig at anyone in particular – responding from POV of someone who does 100+ days of training per year.

Got to disagree with you (violently) on this one Tom and totally agree with Brent. Training does *not* means hands-on the product. Hands-on is an integral part of learning, but training is about being told and shown how to do something. Hands-on reinforces that. We give out hands-on labs for reinforcement in the student’s own time – paying to sit through us walking through labs is daft, and doesn’t work unless everyone in the room progresses at exactly the same rate – which doesn’t happen.

Training needs to be practical, not just academic, and needs to be blended with real-world experience – which is why so many ‘training’ classes are just slides with best practices and are dry and boring.

We don’t do hands-on in class and companies send more and more of their people to our classes. You’re wrong (oe maybe over-generalizing) on that one buddy – no matter how many training experts you had help write the post.

Successful training depends on who’s doing the training – no matter what form it takes.

Thanks

sqlrockstar

Paul,

Thanks for the comment. I believe the real point I want to make is that there is a difference between training and teaching. And to me, I think of training as taking action in some way. Hands-on is a big part of that, and as you said it helps with reinforcement.

The word I left out of my post that I think I really want to dive into work is ‘andragogy’, or adult learning. I’m hoping to write more about what it means to train, to teach, and to learn with regards to adult education. I find the methods I need to use for my children to be very different than what I need to use for adults.

Your last comment is spot on: “Successful training depends on who’s doing the training”, and I would counter that the trainer needs to have their ‘learners’ be active in some way. For some learners that would be hands-on labs. For other trainers it is merely getting the learners to have an active response when they pose a question (and the response can be internal, it doesn’t have to be vocal, but it has to be). When the learners are engaged, the teaching is reinforced, and would evolve to what I consider ‘training’.

When I was still teaching I always took it upon myself to engage the learner. If they were not understanding what I was saying, then I needed to find another way to engage them. I would keep doing this until they understood what I was saying. Never would I simply blame my tools (the lecture, the book materials, or a lab exercise) for their lack of engagement.

A great book on the subject would be ‘Telling Ain’t Training’, http://www.amazon.com/Telling-Aint-Training-Harold-Stolovitch/dp/1562863282

And no, I am not saying that my opinion on the internet is the definitive answer here. It’s my opinion. I believe I am allowed to have one, even if it differs from others.

Thanks for being able to respond without sending me a picture of your middle finger. I take back (mostly) everything I ever said about Scotsmen having little to no class.

Cheers!

Tom

http://sqlskills.com/blogs/jonathan Jonathan Kehayias

Hey Tom,

Being a qualified Drill Sergeant in the Army, I have to point out that your analogy about Basic Training is completely incorrect. We do “Death by Powerpoint” in the Army better than any place else in the world, especially in basic training.

There are multiple blocks of PPT based instrucation that contribute to BRM before a private ever fires a round. They recieve blocks of instruction on disassembly, cleaning, inspecting, maintaining, and reassembly of the M16, ballistics theory including minute of angle (MOA) calculations and the effects on strike of a round at known distances, the fundamentals of marksmanship, applying immediate action to clear blockages and then remedial action should immediate action fail, as well as range safety and range procedures, all before they fire the first round. The hands on experience of firing a rifle simply reinforces the training we provided by powerpoint and lecture, and it occurs after the classroom training on a separate day.

sqlrockstar

Jonathan,

That’s the real point I want to make here: reinforcement.

I’ve seen all the training manuals, my brother was a Drill Instructor also (I believe Fort Carson was his last stop). I also have pictures of my brother in basic training where he is lobbing a grenade. Even after all the manuals and classroom instruction, he had to put his hand on a real grenade in order to have the instruction be reinforced. And he needed to do this before he was going to ever go into field combat. He didn’t head to Iraq in 1991 armed with only some manuals, he went there after spending months in the desert in California where he was trained for desert warfare by actually touching things.

As I said to Paul, engagement is key, and putting your hands on something reinforces what you have been taught. And to me, that is where you go from “teaching” to “training”.

I believe if I change the words I used: “This training is not a series of PowerPoint presentations on guns and grenades” to this: “This training is not just a series of PowerPoint presentations on guns and grenades”, it might be better for you to accept.

As soon as I see children learn to swim by reading about it, I’ll be more likely to believe that “training” doesn’t involve “doing” the activity. Same thing for repairing a corrupt database. Until you have done it a few times with your own hands you aren’t actually trained on what to do, you are only aware that recovery may be possible.

Thanks for the comment.

Tom

http://sqlskills.com/blogs/jonathan Jonathan Kehayias

Hey Tom,

Repeated hands on operations makes things second nature, that doesn’t mean you weren’t already trained on the materials. To the same measure, if you go a period of time without doing something, you lose that second nature response, but you still know what should happen.

For example, I know how to perform military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) and I am a qualified instructor for this as well, but I don’t do it everyday, and because of this, I make it a point to review the information amd run through glass house drills with other instructors well ahead of having to teach that block of instruction so that it comes back to me. Even the infantry Drill Sergeants I work with, that did that stuff for real in Iraq and Afghanistan and spent day after day practicing it in training prior to going overseas go back over the materials and run through it using the walk-crawl-run training methodology before we teach it. This makes things much more smooth and natural looking when we actually demonstrate kicking a door in on a building and sweeping it for occupants.

Now, even though every soldier does the hands on for MOUT in Basic Training, what is equivalent to your “lab” experience, if you jump ahead 4-5 years in the career of a Army Truck Driver, which happens to be my primary military occupational specialty (MOS), and goto a school like the Warrior Leadership Course (required for promotion to Sergeant), Basic Non-Commissioned Officers Course (required for promotion to Staff Sergeant), or the Advanced Leadership Course (required for Sergeant First Class and higher), there are only a couple of people in a class of 30+ that know what they are doing for MOUT. This is after having done the hands on in the so called “lab” scenario at Basic Training, as a part of pre-deployment tasks for every deployment they’ve been on, and as a part of each level of the NCO schooling system.

The same thing happens in the SQL Server world as well. When was the last time you tried to troubleshoot a performance problem on SQL Server 2000? At one point in time we all used to do this daily, and now, you don’t even know where to start because its no longer second nature, you didn’t keep it up even though you had hands on practical experience at one time.

I think I’ve rambled on long enough to make the point that no matter what style of training you have or receive, it is really about what you go forward and do with the information. I don’t have to have someone show me how to do things hands on, I am pretty good at reading a book and figuring it out that way, but if I actually practice and repeat, it becomes natural to me and I don’t have look things up when I need to execute.

sqlrockstar

Jonathan,

Thanks again for the comments, your viewpoint on teaching, training, and the use of defining something as “second nature” is very interesting. I plan on writing more on this subject in the coming months, so look for a few emails from me on the subject.

Tom

http://interflextech.com Ken Watson

Hi Tom,
Great post, and I agree with you, but I also agree with other comments here. I understand that you are trying to call things by their proper terms, or at least terms that make ‘sense’. Terms that describe, with accuracy, the type of presentation that is being offered.
I have conducted training. In a past life I was Safety Director for a large painting crew. It was impractical to demonstrate a fall from a 40 foot ladder, or a high pressure paint injection injury, but it was ‘training’, for lack of a more precise word, and we were mandated to provide it. In no way were my students expected to go out and practice what I had taught them, in fact, quite the opposite, but their ‘training’ was none the less instructional and helpful. Perhaps this should have been called a lecture, because there were nothing but projector slides and pamphlets provided. What we have here regarding the term used is ‘ambiguation’. This is defined as, “the possibility of interpreting an expression in two or more distinct ways, vagueness or uncertainty of meaning”
I don’t believe that Tom is trying to cast aspersions on anyone that trains as being inferior, rather he is simply trying to give different types of training their proper titles, or disambiguation of the concepts. Perhaps if we work together in defining better terms we could arrive at something that would benefit the community as a whole. For those of you who train for a living, this may even prove to be lucrative over time.

sqlrockstar

Ken,

Thank you for your comment. Part of the motivation for the post is that I am seeing many CXOs not want to send employees to something that is promoted as “training” and turns out to be nothing more than a lecture format. Some employers expect more than that. I know that my former company would bring in trainers and have them conduct classes where we would actually touch the product. To me, that was training. If those same people had come in and just presented some ppt slides without us ever having touched the product, those people would have never been invited back.

I certainly understand that people don’t need to fall 40 feet to be trained on how to not fall 40 feet. Same for sexual harassment training, that doesn’t need to be hands on either. So I am struggling with how to define the different levels and styles of education that is being conducted.

Thank you for understanding that my post wasn’t meant as an attack on anyone in particular. I hope to write more about this subject in the coming months, as it would appear that it is a good topic for further discussion.

Tom

http://dbalink.wordpress.com Marlon Ribunal

I know 2 types of training: Classroom Training and Hands-on Training. They are both “training”, right?

When we talk about Technical Training, we usually do the lecture/classroom portion, then hands-on. That’s what we did when I got a certification training with KOFAX (my MCP was through self-study & hands-on).

Conferences are lecture-based most of the time with the hands-on part done mostly by the attendees either while they are in the lecture or afterwards in their desks at work or at home.