ISerializable - Roy Osherove's Blog

Well said.

However, how many employees, when asked "do you *really* want to go to this and that?" would answer anything but "SURE!"?
The way to handle the brightest and loudest is to create a humerous situation, and then, half smiling, shut him up. Usually works.
My way to handle the sleepers is mostly to wake them with roaring silence. But that's just me. I can't stand being in a class and having people mock me like that. That's a personality flaw on my part, but I can live with it. :)

Roy

Sometimes it’s just bad day.

You are great, and the subject is important.

Barak

If people are falling asleep, they probably have some situation at home (new baby) or just don't care, but at least they aren't actively discouraging others from participating, so I leave them alone. Plus you're not their employer. It's like disciplining other peoples' kids, you just don't do it.

As for the people that say "this is crap", ask them to explain why and then just counter each point. They might think they're brilliant, but you've probably heard EVERY one of their objections before and have an appropriate rebuttal. Then just keep on them until they give in or just say "Because I say it's crap!" If you get to that unreasonable answer, I wouldn't be above saying
"You're free to leave." If the company asks why you kicked the person out, I'd say I didn't kick them out, they didn't want to be there. Let the company handle its own problems.

I recall quite a few years ago when I was a teaching assistant in grad school I had to teach freshman programming. These are college freshmen who think more about beer and the gentler sex than computer programming. Sure enough, it was a frustrating teaching experience. The following semester I switched to being a research assistant instead!

Years later, when I taught and mentored on-the-job developers within client companies, I used a much different approach - evaluations for both student and the instructor! These get forwarded to the employers. You may want to consider "grading/evaluating" your students, perhaps include quizzes, homework, class projects, etc..

Oooh, this brings back memories. I totally hear what you are saying, I've had my share. Let it go, think of all the wonderfull moments you've had teaching to interested and eager people, those should make it up.

Roy,

Here's the way I deal with it.

If they don't care, I don't care. As long as they aren't disrupting the class then it doesn't bother me.

Now, as far as the disruptive people if they can't be made non-disruptive with a quick comment like 'We'll everyone is welcome to thier opinon but why don't we let every one decided for themselves". Then I would take a break and explain it a little more strongly.

The point not being to preach to them or get them to care or agree with you, but just to ensure they aren't disrupting those that want to be there/learn.

Hope that helps,
BOb

Ruth Cohn (a very skillful learning psycologist) says "Disruptions have priority". So you have to handle the disruptions first, the return to teaching.
In TeachArt (the Swiss Holy Grail of adult education <g>) you use a number of techniques. One is to take the "leaders" aside in a break and ask them for explanation/help. Another is to take the conduct and agenda and make them topic:
- This is what you are suposed to be able to do after the training
- This are the topics we cover
- This is the schedule
- How do you want to get there
If the class decides that they want to cover other topics reconfirm that with management and deliver different things.
--- So far the theory ---
Being a trainer myself I feel your pain dealing with audience with a different agenda, especially if it is your pet subject. What helped me in comparable situations is the little mantra in the head"It's not personal, it's not personal" and "There is something they want to learn". If that works than putting the why and how of the course (not the content) onto the agenda usually works.
And rest asured: I would pay attention to your teachings!!
;-) stw

Sometimes instructors are to blame. If the instructor doesn't feel enthusiastic enough, it shows easily. Students catch on the vibe.

If someone says "this is crap!", I would have smilingly asked him why? Then gone ahead and teared his arguments to shreds, still with a smile on my face; and then move forward with the class.

You are probably taking it a bit too personally.

If there is a "know all", then just make him happy and side step him and specifically address the rest of the class. He doesn't need your training.

Personally I very much enjoy teaching. Its fun.

I make sure I have a simulation to start, or to pull out if I have to "sell" the topic. With test-driven development, I would have simulation anyway, to help people feel how it's different. Then they might want to learn.

But people are responsible for their own learning. My job as an instructor is to prepare good material, make it interesting, and help people who don't want to be there go away.

You made me realize that I played the part of the "star" at the last seminar I took - up until the point of "this is crap". Whoa.

Roy,
I have taught (both University and training) courses related to the MCSE certifications.

I taught (or at least tried) how to use the product in a manner that allowed the students to learn the material, not just how to take the tests.

This led to many instance of students "not paying attention" and on more than 1 instance "stars" that either "knew it all" or thought it was "crap".

My way of dealing with the former students was to ask questions of the class, and specific students relating to information covered earlier in the classes (either previous days, or earlier in the same class).

Questions were generally something like "how does this compare to xxx" or "how else do you think you could do this" or "how do you think you could use this in your job - with specifics".

As far as the stars that wanted to argue, I generally tried to answer 1 or to of their questions, and then after a few minutes gave them the "these are good points, but we need to get through the "current information" so that everyone can have an understanding of this material, why don't you and I meet outside of class (either during lunch or after class depending on when in the day this happened) and discuss this more thoroughly". 9 times out of 10, the person would let it go, and we could continue, and they did not want to spend "their" time arguing and BSing.

On a few occasions when the student would not "let it go", I told them that what they were arguing about might very well have merit, and asked them to prepare a 1-2 page discussion of the pros/cons of their argument that the entire class could hear and discuss the next day. If memory serves me correctly, one 1 student ever followed through, and because the rest of the class was expecting them to bring something to the class and they failed, the rest of the class generally changed their opinion of the person and discounted what they said from there on out.

In the instance where I really had "stars" that new what they were talking about and were too advanced in the subject compared to the rest of the class, I would pull them aside during a break and explain to them that they were going to be "beyond" the class for the first part of the class, and then ask them if they could help "student x" during the labs because "student x" seemed to be having some difficulties. This generally worked out very well, because the "star" got the feedback that they were "good" and could feel good about their level of knowledge, and also got to feel "good" about helping someone else.

The other benefit to this (from what these "stars" told me later) was that in order to help someone else, they had to think more about the material and be able to answer the questions of the student they were helping, and many times the questions they were asked were not ones they had ever thought about.

This also worked for me because the "star" could bring things to my attention that the student was having trouble with, and many times, I found that other students were also having trouble with the same issue, so I could re-cover the information in a different manner so that everyone could have a better understanding of the material.

Using these approaches I found worked very well for me and for the students.


Sorry for the long post, but I hope it helps.


Later,


Eric

I guess you probably encountered those 9-5 cubical employees in fat giant multinational. These guys are usually totally washed out from internal politics and beurocracies and have neither no willingness to improve anything anylonger. They would have so much exposure to beurocratic environment that they would evolved themselves to live in it and would probably die if you put them in to agile air. Managers in such companies would throws such free training every now and then to have them look nice in their reports and emplyees would tend to just totally exploit those opportunities (like just concentarting in food and nightouts in TechEds and maximizing hotel and restaurent bills). I'd several encounter with these species. All I can tell you is that bad training day wasn't your fault, these systems have evolved to resistant such things. Your options are, try talking to highest level in beurocratic hierarchy OR just keep away from these beasts. My experience is that it would be usually imposible to get to top level in such companies and complete revival wouldn't be possible without removing most managers by their new generation counter parts. You may find that even top levels don't care because these companies are the types with large monopolies in their area and top levels are already making more then they can spend and have no intention to do more.

It remind me a long time ago when in a precedent life I was a computer teacher. Reading your post remind me those similar situations.
One very bad was when I was doing some training for a company's staff and everybody was very sleepy or moody.
I couldn't resist to ask what was wrong and heard that the company has made them redundant an hour before the session. Sad day!
The other scenario is when you expect to teach people something and you face people who knows more than you, and you discover that you were wrongly briefed on their real needs! It happens to me twice, one I remember was about Paradox (THE database product of the 80s) anfd my surprise when I came teaching the basics of the product and face a panel of 10 experts who want to go further :-)
Last thing I remember too was this not so funny time where I was supposed to train a dozen of people and I find myself in a huge auditorium with more than 300 people... and no microphone, no projector, just a tiny white board

Ignore them, teach the ones that care, and let the other's wonder why their lives suck cause they're out of touch, out of favour, afraid of change and don't offer them any condolences when they finally realize that they're obsolete. You should motivate a child to learn and grow, but an adult should know better.

Actually, Eric's post is a better solution than mine. See, I'm willing to learn too!

Thatnks for the great feeback, people.
I think I already came up with some of these answers on my own , but It sure helped me take the steam out :-)
I'm sure many people will enjoy reading these and get the benefit of experience.

Just lower your voice and continue with it.
If no one wants to listhen you can start whispering...

I'm a bit late here, but wanted to mention something. Geoff Snowman gave an MSDN event recently where he gave a sleeping /snoring attendee a good talking to! I was very impressed! I think you pay attention, or get out!