TTi’s Continuing Education Programs
After more than forty years, TTi’s continuing education
training business is expanding with an ever-wider range subjects
offered. The new courses are being well-received.
The same subject matter can be found, to some degree, in local
colleges and universities, so how do we manage to compete with
these university presentations? The disadvantage of taking a university
course is that the courses are usually presented in the evenings,
spread over a semester or two. It requires a long commitment to
complete a course. The course material is usually presented in
a mathematical format and is theoretical in nature without practical
application examples. The instructors are generally college professors
with little or no industrial experience and they “lecture,”
rather than teach.
There are many advantages of attending a TTi short course. Here
are just a few:
- The course material is application-oriented.
- The skilled instructors have many years of actual application
experience.
- The short course format provides total immersion in the subject
matter with no interference from job or family demands.
- The subject matter is difficult to find locally.
- Attendees from different industries have the opportunity to
interact.
- Attendees from different parts of the country (and even different
countries!) have opportunity to network with individuals of like
interests who can be contacted in the future for assistance.
- Attendees learn new information that can be immediately be
applied back at the job to improve reliability of their organizations'
product or to solve some existing design test or manufacturing
problem.
In many ways, obtaining training can be compared with shopping
for software. The typical computer user understands that for
his/her particular computer needs, there are some features that
do not seem to be available in the commercially available software.
There may also be features that the user will never need. The
user would prefer a custom software package that includes all
the features he/she does need and none of those he/she does not
need. However, the skill, time and cost involved in writing, checking
and maintaining custom software is extremely high compared with
the cost of “off-the-shelf” software available from
commercial software companies.
Similarly, in the case of training, individuals sometimes feel
that in the short course they attend, some of the material covered
does not directly apply to their particular application.
It would be impractical for any organization to generate the many
different courses needed to exactly fit the dozens of different
applications of the topics in TTi curriculum. Courses must be
developed that are within the price range that industry is willing
to pay for training and to appeal to individuals from various
industries.
TTi method of developing courses is to select a topic where there
seems to be a demand or lack of viable training opportunity and
generate a course where the basics of the subject are covered
in sufficient detail to provide the student with a good foundation,
then extend the material in as non-mathematical a form as possible
to teach how the topic is implemented in industry. Examples are
given for specific applications, but these methods can be applied
to other situations. TTi recruits skilled instructors who have
a broad base of experience, but who obviously cannot be experienced
in every industry, to develop and present the courses.
TTi instructors do not lecture,
they teach. They have a finite time, usually twenty one
hours, in which to present the course material. They may decide
that the majority in a particular class has no more than a passing
interest in certain items, in which case those topics are covered
in less detail than items that seem to be of more interest to
the group as a whole. Class attendees are reminded that it is
their responsibility to understand the material being presented
and they are encouraged to seek assistance from the instructor,
either in class or at lunch time or after class where greater
detail or further clarification is required.
Another factor to be considered is the variation in educational
background of the participants. In each class, there can be students
whose engineering discipline vary; Electrical, Mechanical, Structural,
Industrial, Chemical, Physics etc. The formal education of the
students can range from high school diplomas to degrees as advanced
as Doctor of Science. All our students have the same objective:
they want to learn and understand the topic under consideration.
In a given class, there may be people who feel that the mathematics
is too “hard” and others who feel that too much time
is spent on basic concepts. So, like the software example described
above, without spending considerably more money than for a TTi
course, allowances have to be made for the requirements of others.
Questions and Answers about TTi Training
Toll-free tel. 866-TTi-4Edu (866-884-4332)
E-mail: Training@TTi4edu.com
© Technology Training, Inc. 2006
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