Offer low priced, self-paced CBTs that mirror the offerings and full content of Instructor Led Training classes (ILT)

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• Online and in-person ILT classes price many would-be students out of the market. There's no difference in price between online and in-class ILTs. As a hoop-oriented motivational poster exhorts: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." I submit: "You miss 100% of  the students you don't reach." (source: suprisingly good film port of Economist Steven Levitt's Freakonomics).
  
  Sure, there are low cost virtual campus courses and no cost Live Training Seminars. These are welcome, wonderful and have their place in a total GIS education portfolio. But they don't match the depth or variety of ILT content.
  
  Please consider converting some or all ILTs to a CBT format (Computer Based Training). These don't require the resources of a live instructor once published. Create once. Deploy everywhere. Yes, they'd be a lot less interactive (no instructor-to-student or peer-to-peer interaction). No problem. Adjust pricing according to your perception of value of the interactional deficit. If the interaction is a huge and proven value add, ergo CBTs should cost less.
  
  My crystal ball tells me there's peril in the Road Ahead for local, state, and government training budgets. CBTs could help level out learning asymmetries.
  
  To those new to ideas.arcgis.com, here are more ideas that may help those wanting to expand their GIS skills but can't afford ILTs:
  
  Offer ArcGIS for Home at ArcEditor (Standard) license level--not just ArcView (Basic)
  http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=08730000000bpaL
  
  Include ArcGIS for Home with Esri Enterprise License Agreements (ELAs)
  http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=08730000000bqGg
  
  ArcGIS for Home: Could be a home run?
  http://spatialdba.com/?p=68
  
  Publish instructor led training lecture and exercise manuals online in PDF format - ArcSDE, ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Desktop
  http://ideas.arcgis.com/apex/ideaView?id=08730000000bmrJAAQ
  
  Dana Nibby
  GIS for DBAs. Database Concepts for GIS
  http://spatialdba.com
  

  Tags :

   esri CBTs, esri instructor led training, arcgis for home use, esri virtual campus

  Posted by   dananrg  to ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Server, Training Ideas Aug 14, 2011