As many of you know, the classes I teach tend to be anywhere from 16 to 30 hours. I’ve been trying to spread those out over a couple of weekends and week nights, and that seems to be difficult for people to work with.
I’d like your thoughts on how to make these classes more palatable to people’s schedules.
For example, the Drone Pilot class I’m teaching is going to be about 16 hours. I’ve had several people ask if we couldn’t just do that in 2 8-hour days (9 hours with a lunch break). That’s a LOT of material for people to absorb in 2 days (believe me, I’ve sat through those marathons and it’s tough). And, honestly, it’s a lot for an instructor to present. But, some people have said they’d rather do a Saturday/Sunday weekend and get it done rather than spread it out.
So that’s question 1: for a 16-hour class, would you rather just do 2 long days and get it over with?
The next issue comes with classes that need 20, 24, or 30 hours of instruction: I honestly don’t see a way to do those without involving days over a couple of weekends. But I’m willing to listen to ideas on how to do it.
As I’ve said a couple of times - for the upcoming Drone Pilot class, I’m willing to do some make-up sessions for those who can’t make one of the sessions, that’s a bit less practical when we start talking about longer classes that are less “granular”…
Many people in a professional setting have been required to sit through multi-hour/day classes or conference that were not enjoyable and were largely a requirement. These suck.
What you are offering, on the otherhand, is ellective and objectively something that a participant would get a lot of joy and entertainment from at the end of it. I would gladly sit through a two day/8hr marathon of information if at the end i gained the knowledge and ability to fly a “professional” drone.
In my life it is a lot more viable to block out a weekend then to try to roll the dice over 3-4 classes and hope work schedule will allow.
Thanks, That seem to be a common consensus. I’ve been talking to others who are interested in the 16-hour course but just doing it in 2 days. Gonna be tough on the instructor…
That’s my concern. 8 hours is tough for anyone to absorb and it’s tough for the instructor. I don’t know, maybe 2 Saturday Mornings and 2 Sunday afternoons?
It’s simply impossible to find a schedule that works for everyone, and in some cases doesn’t piss people off.
At least I’m trying to be as flexible as possible and even offering make-up sessions for the Drone Pilot course… That’s harder to do with the Ham Radio courses because we have a scheduled test at the end…
I guess it all comes down to priorities and choices in the end…
Thanks for your input. I’m in the same boat, but I will do whatever it takes to get people what they want.
I would say anyone thats pissed off by an instructor choosing times that he can commit to probably shouldn’t attend.
Split weekends would probably work just as well as a marathon 2 day set, though i would suggest like a saturday evening/sunday morning arrangement to minimize ‘brain drain’.
This may be a case where you just have to try some of the options. I know I tried a 4 hour CAD session and people were worn out at about 2 hours… and now I put on 2 two hour sessions. I have just been randomly choosing dates that work for me…