Tuesday 17 April 2012

Tech Training - another view


This response to John Maizels’ “Toss the Dice with Training” (April CX) is by Paul Matthews.


John brings quite a few issues to the forefront in his blurb about the reworking of CUE03. After having experience with both this and also the far more popular industry training courses for electricians, here’s my $0.002.

John mentions the need to “keep up with technology” in our training courses. Certainly it’s important for students to be exposed to current technology otherwise they’ll be useless in the modern workplace. However learning skills with modern technology is something quite different altogether.

To consider this more carefully. If you’re a 40 or 50 something industry veteran like me, take a moment to think back into your past career life and determine where you truly learnt your skills. Chances are, like me, most of your skill was learnt using grossly inadequate equipment (by today’s standards) in impossible situations with no budget or training whatsoever and surrounded by completely ignorant amateurs, many of them probably considerably less than sane or sober.

Things worked or you crashed and burned. When they worked, we learned. When they crashed we learned even more. We learned what things did by playing with them in an imperfect world. In many cases we learned that stuff could do things that the original designers never imagined (anyone ever used a disco strobe to light up the port a loos?)

Now fast forward to today. We shove the orange vests on,  “teach” our future crews on the latest equipment and strive for things to be as much like the “professional industry” as possible. They pop out the other end knowing how to push buttons, follow the bouncing ball and make it work. But they still lack the SKILLS which now separate generations.

Why? Lack of opportunity, that’s why. Our modern vocational training system is completely starved of the experience opportunities which existed in spades in the industry 20 to 30 years ago. It’s not about getting a bunch of the latest gear in a room, getting students to set it up and make it sound and look great. Anyone can do that.

Give them a horrible, noisy, heavy, unreliable, under powered and dangerous 20 year old stack of gear. Give them a deadline, light blue touch paper, stand back and watch your students rapidly gain the SKILLS THEY NEED to solve problems, work within limits and get the best results from what they have at hand.

Only by NOT HAVING everything at your fingertips, can you truly learn how individual components work, why they are there and why we still use the digital equivalents today. Imagine trying to teach 30 years of experience to a student in less than a year. That’s what you’re trying to do with students in CUE03 – and that’s why the industry is not responding to your calls to “fix” the system. It’s not just that you can’t squeeze this kind of experience but the fact that even if you could – the opportunities to experience them in today’s  perfect digital world have long vanished.

Now I’m not advocating that CUE03 include units of competency on how to tune Concord boxes or focus Patt 263’s. What I WOULD like to see though is a measure of ability to do the “impossible with nothing”. Sort of like “Here’s a pair of Mackie 12’ boxes, three mics, a 5 piece band and a footy field. Now make it sound good”.

Now that’s the sort of “competency” I am interested in as an employer. Let me worry about teaching them about the new stuff  - on our jobs. I need you guys to give them the opportunities that I can no longer give them myself because we just don’t do things that way anymore. The stuff that I learnt back when those opportunities were still everywhere.

Paul Matthews.






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