The Evolution of Technology Training
As a technology trainer for nearly 35-years I have seen the industry go through a lot of changes, but never the cataclysmic changes that are coming in the near future.
When I first started we were just introducing PCs to corporations and doing training in the use of environments like DOS, WordStar, Multimate, Lotus 1-2-3, and dBase. Most of these are no longer in existence. Programming training was practically none existent with the possible exception of maybe BASIC every once in a while.
Approximately 20-years ago, with the advent of the Java Programming environment, programming training exploded everywhere and training companies couldn't get enough trainers. Along with Java came programming for the web with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Unfortunately, as training grew it became prohibitively expensive and most of the training was done for large companies or the government.
About 4 years ago technology training took another leap. It jumped from delivering training either in person to delivering in online classrooms using platforms like WebEx and Go To Meeting. However, this presented new and unexpected challenges. While it was less work for the trainer, as well as less traveling, training companies failed to adjust their tuitions accordingly. Today, as an example, a 5-day Java course will cost somewhere between $2,000 - $2,500. In actual learning time this comes out to about 28-hours of actual training for the week. For many of today's development environments this is woefully little with the training company trying to book you for so-called "advanced" training for another couple of grand.
Sadly, the courseware many of the training companies present is either poorly written or, more often, very out-of-date. And in many cases you have trainers who have not kept up with advancements and updates. As a result, more and more companies are seeing diminishing returns on their training investments.
In order to address this a new paradigm is emerging in the technical training market: Self-paced videos that, potentially, deliver the same experience as being in a classroom with a live instructor.
Let me show one example using the Java model I cited above:A published it on a platform called Udemy.com. The course, as of this writing, is over 70-hours in length. It has lab exercises with published solutions, a question and answer forum where if the student is having a problem they can get answers either from the instructor or fellow enrollees, and even a place where they can copy and paste code they may be having a problem with. They can repeat a video (the average length of each video is about 15-minutes) as many times as they want and go as fast or slow as they want. As of this writing, my friend has 231,617 enrollees in his Java Course. The tuition, which I will get to shortly, is for a lifetime enrollment including all updates. Many instructors on Udemy periodically add additional content and update existing content at no additional charge.
The Tuition? Brace yourself: $9.99. No, that is not a misprint. Udemy has near constant sales and while the course lists for $194.99 (still a bargain) the price structure keeps it at the $9.99 mark most of the time.
Is there a downside? Only one I can see. The enrollee must be disciplined to keep up with the course without the time pressure of a live classroom. But for a very minimal cost businesses and individuals can get training of a higher quality than they would get from most training companies with a resulting high return on their training investment.
With most training companies barely hanging on today, this next evolution in technical training may prove to be the only future for technical training. In the case of the above Java course, that is 231,000 potential students that will probably never spend $2,500 or more for a training company.
