You thinking of running a technical study group? Fantastic, here are a few suggestions from my personal experiences
Dec
30
Written by:
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 10:49 PM
Are you thinking of starting up a study group to help get a technical certification? Study groups are great for achieving certifications for what they provide, positive learning environment, non judgemental, enthusiastic and willing participants. But is that all you need? Unfortunately a bit more is required. Read on for some of my personal experiences with running three study groups.
Warning: Due to the type of material this is, this is a long post.
Are you looking at getting certified with Microsoft, RIM/BlackBerry, Oracle, Cisco, Sun, IBM or something else? Have you tried studying on your own? Were you successful? Did you find it lonely? What mechanisms did you use to get help? Did you find yourself able to stay motivated throughout the entire time you're studying and taking the exam?
I have participated in three Microsoft development study groups to date.
I have lead the last two and I would love to share with you some of my findings to help you have a successful study group! The lessons I plan to share with you are not limited to just Microsoft certifications, these experiences/observations can easily be applied to any type of certifications you want to create a study group for. The only limits will be your enthusiasm, and as the cliché goes, the more the merrier! :>
This is a longer blog entry than my usual entries. The reason, running a study group is not a trivial task, and requires a lot of preparation, administration during and some continued positive reinforcement for people to continue their hard work after completing the study group to complete and hopefully pass the certification exam.
Before I go any further, I would like to thank a personal mentor, Orest H for his continued support, never ending enthusiasm and constant positive reinforcement. Without his help I wouldn’t be where I am today and would certainly not have gone this far with the study groups. Thank you OH! :>
Before You Start
Where To Start
Talk to the head of the local community group for the technology you’re getting certified in. I’m sure they will be MORE than happy for the volunteers and added enthusiasm you bring to the table! It’s new blood and enthusiasm, who can say not to that?!
Meeting Place
Setting up a meeting room you can meet regularly is vital to your success. Look at training providers who are affiliated with your certification. Some of them are more than willing to open their doors to 20 new potential clients, but expect to trade room availability for a bit of advertising time in front of your crew. It's a small price to pay for "a warm roof over your heads."
Frequency
Picking a frequency is also key. Too often and people won't have time to properly prepare for each session. Not frequent enough and you'll risk people not being fully invested into their success nor will they properly prepare (procrastination is a momentum killer). I suggest once a week is enough time for people to read the material, practise anything they need to practise, and enough time for presenters to prepare their material.
Orientation session
A few months ahead of the first scheduled meeting, I would suggest having an orientation session where you invite everyone and anyone who wants to come! (
Sample Link) This is a great opportunity for the technology manufacturer to show their support for your study group by letting you use their presentation facilities. Microsoft loves to let their local user group's use their presentation facilities. Their facilities will usually be large enough to include anyone who's interested in finding out more information. Also the local community group is a great place to get email distribution lists to get the word out.
We have found two months ahead of time is enough lead time for people to decide, send you an email if they are interested, as well as give people you decide to include the time to buy/receive any study material and begin preparing for the first night. Be prepared to distribute the first chapter in PDF format just in case Amazon or Indigo/Chapters is back ordered or people haven’t received their books yet.
Your orientation presentation should talk about the goals of the study group (#1 should be to get certified), what everyone can get out of the study group (soft skills should be included) and lastly, to have some fun. Yes, I did say to have fun. :> People will be committing quite a bit of time to this investment, reassure them they are going to have fun participating.
Another important topic that always comes up is the duration of the study group. Our first study group, we wanted to get done in four months. The problem was some nights required HUGE amounts of work while others required an hour to complete the preparation. The next study group, we said one chapter per week. Again, some chapters contained over a hundred pages and we found it just too much material to sufficiently prepare for that week, too much material for the presenters to prepare for, and lastly WAY too much material to present in one night. The end result is, nobody feels prepared after the night is over and people still need to redo that night's chapter before they write the exam. :< Our last study group, we said no more than 60 pages per session and that worked out to be a happy medium. Yes, some weeks were a little short on material but if you read further down we have some other mechanisms to account for such nights. Also, yes, this means the study group takes as long as it takes to cover 60 pages a week, but that’s the cost of getting certified. If you rush it, you risk alienating the very people you need to succeed.
Culling the Herd
After you've had the orientation session, you are hopefully going to start getting emails about people being VERY interested. I suggest having people email you with reasons why they want to participate and you can then decide who's in or out based on merit, enthusiasm, excitement, requirements, prerequisites, those kinds of things. You will glean some very useful and interesting information from the emails. The other benefit is people will be forced to think about participating, if people are going to commit, they won't have a problem emailing you. If they balk at this point, they're really not that interested.
Since the orientation meeting happens possibly two months before the start of the first session, you will probably see some people coming in late to the game. That's fine, I suggest referring them to an online version of the presentation. This does two things, first informs them with roughly the same information everyone else has who went, but more importantly it lets you know if they are capable of following instructions. I highly recommend putting as your last slide instructions to email you and what you want in the email. You will be surprised just how many people won't bother reading/doing what you ask. If they cannot follow simple instructions (read presentation and do like it says), then how can they be counted on to commit to the study group and to take the exam?
Teams
Teams will allow you to build comradery and a little bit of healthy competition. We have found teams starting with four people work the best. If you decide to accept future participants, teams can easily absorb one more person, if something unfortunate happens to participants (aka they must drop out), teams can adapt to losing one person. Having teams natural leads to the discussion about team leads, I suggest people who are a bit more senior in the technology you're studying for and who have some personal communication skills. Some negotiation skills and tact also help. I highly suggest not skipping on this point! If you are running the study group and the study group takes eight months, it is highly possible you will be sick at least once and will need someone to run the night for you. If you have leads already assigned, you can trust your crew will be taken care of automagically!
At the beginning of the study group, you will create a syllabus listing topics, dates and material assignments. The leads own their nights! They are responsible for everything that goes on that night, from starting on time, to handling discussions that digress from the main topic, to ending the night on a positive high! They have a lot of responsibility; you will need to be talking/emailing them weekly! Sometimes they need a pep talk too if things are going a bit rough for them which happens from time to time.
Hardware
Hopefully which ever location you pick, you will have some type of overhead projector. If not, then you'll have to figure out some other way to project that week's material. Projectors hooked up to laptops are the easiest way. Which leads us to computers, I suggest team leads have/use their laptops. You could use Virtual Machines at the physical location you're using, but you risk having the machines
MIA the night of your sessions (this has happened to us before unfortunately). Having dependable people with laptops is the easiest mitigating strategy against having no hardware to present on.
Fees
This is a hard topic to breach with people (especially in tough times). You will have to be aware some people are paying for their training out of their own pockets! Some will be lucky enough to be reimbursed but not all. However, I would suggest some type of deposit at the least. Having an admin fee helps cover incidental costs as well as dinner/pizza and a thank you gift for graceful hosts.
CTE Solutions was VERY helpful in hosting our study groups, we're EXTREMELY grateful to them for their continue support.
We did not have any fees for our first two sessions and we had a 10% success rate (two people took the exam out of 20, but more importantly we had ~50% attendance rate every week :<). People need to be committed from day one. The deposit helps weed out the "wanna bes" from the seriously committed. The admin fee helps with buying pizza (if you're doing this at night, having supper helps) as well as sample exams. In our third study group, we bought one copy of the
Transcenders exam and used that to help prepare instead of the book exam questions and it worked out incredibly well. That is paid for from the admin fees. The exam questions from the book, well, they were grossly inadequate for exam preparation and we weren’t doing anyone any favours by using them. Transcenders was an awesome exam prep tool.
The deposit needs to come with criteria to get it back. First, attendance is mandatory, but life happens, people get sick, people have kids, family comes into town, people play sports, there has to be a happy medium between attendance and life. We have found 75% attendance works well. For a study group of 20 sessions, expecting people to attend 15 nights to get their deposit back is fair. Also put a deadline for taking the exam. Notice, I did not say passing the exam, just taking it. If someone isn't able to pass the exam the first time, chances are they've more than showed their commitment to passing, they'll eventually do it, so don't let the passing status be a criteria.
Something you should try to make perfectly clear is the money is not for you nor the training facilities, it's for the study group. Be prepared to reiterate that over and over again to help convince people the objective is certification, not a money making scheme (it helps if you're actually honest about this point). You might find yourself in a sticky situation about having to give someone their money back. Be VERY careful about this. Someone wise said to me (thank you OH) when it comes to people's money, you have to do it for everyone, no exceptions! Be fair, transparent and honest to everyone.
During the Study Group Sessions
Now that you’ve started, what’s next?
Setup a nightly agenda. We’ve found starting at 6:00 and going to two and a half hours lets us cover the night’s material sufficiently with plenty of room for discussions. It’s those discussions which people will REALLY come to love about the weekly sessions. Anyone can read a book, but it’s the lively debates/discussions people come back for!
During the nightly sessions, you might have to prod some discussions out of some people. Everyone there will have something to contribute, you just need a bit of coaxing to get it out of the shyer people. That’s ok, with a bit of encouragement and support, they’ll open up. Some people might be coming from negative environments where they get laughed at or yelled at for expressing their opinions, make sure you provide a supporting environment for everyone.
Don’t forget about a break about half way through. This can certainly be flexible, but people are going to need a bio break, they can’t sit for two and a half hour straight without a bit of, uh, relief. :>
Try to have the leads get everyone’s material to present the night before. This is more difficult in practise, but it’s still a good goal to have. You should also have a backup plan in the unfortunate event the team lead isn’t able to show up that night (yup, this has happened more than once). You can use your Transcenders exam prep (or something else), or you could have prepared the material yourself. Either way, cancelling the night should not be an option. People paid money, they expect to get value for it. The other huge advantage to giving the lead the material early is to help work out the kinks before the night starts! You will lose a lot of credibility if you’re fudging with database security after the night’s supposed to have started.
On a weekly basis, you will have to communicate to everyone. Try to have an email template, don’t forget to have a logo about the training facility hosting your weekly sessions and the community group supporting you. Also, don’t forget to email you’re leads weekly to keep on track of any potential issues brewing which you should be made aware of. If there are any major issues, please include all the leads. And if it’s severe enough, include everyone. You will have to balance this though, too much emailing will only confuse people, get the people involved which you need then make a decision and communicate it.
Try to create a website so people can view their attendance online. It’s a great motivator for people to be able to see their attendance in real time (or in real-enough time as you can). Oh and another suggestion, if you’re doing a JSP study group, create the site in the technology you’re studying for! :> People will understand if the functionality is “work in progress” (WIP), but you will certainly lose credibility if you create it in PHP if you’re studying for and ASP.NET exam!
It would only be natural if you can get space on your community group’s website for advertising and forums. But some community groups might not be setup for that. Maybe you can help them out? Try to setup a place for the syllabus as well as have a forum for ongoing discussions.
Talk to the technology manufacturer to see if they can pony up some give-aways. Tell people you have some great prizes but don’t mention it too often. People are participating to get certified and have fun, not to win free stuff.
After The Last Session, Is It Really Over?
Not, not by a long shot! You have deposit money to track, maybe forum postings to answer, and maybe even a few more informal sessions to help keep people motivated to write the exam! Those info sessions will also give people who have written the exam an opportunity to tell the other’s about their experiences (good and bad). If they passed or failed, their observations are invaluable for others to hear. It can serve as a HUGE motivator for people who need a bit more oomph to get going or who are a bit nervous and just need a small nudge to commit to writing the exam.
These are just a few observations/conclusions I’ve had after participating in three study groups. This is not a complete list cause, well, I have to go study for my next exam! :> But please post any comments/questions you have and I will answer them! I hope this was helpful and I wish you all the best of luck with your next study group and certification exam! :>
Resources:
Microsoft Certifications:
Sun/Java Certifications:
Research In Motion/BlackBerry:
Agile Certifications:
Cisco Certifications:
IBM Certifications:
Oracle Certifications:
4 comment(s) so far...
Re: You thinking of running a technical study group? Fantastic, here are a few suggestions from my personal experiences
One key benefit of the team approach is that no one person is responsible for the evenings presentations. Life happens and it is useful to have others step in at a momenets notice. This also avoids the study group lead having to scramble to for each sessions presentations. That responsibility goes to the team
By John Marshall on
Saturday, January 03, 2009 6:42 PM
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Re: You thinking of running a technical study group? Fantastic, here are a few suggestions from my personal experiences
Thank you John for your comments and it's very true! After learning more about Agile, I think the next study group I'll be even more hands off and let the leads tell me what they want. I think we've built a mature enough process to try this out.
Thanks again! :>
By phenry on
Tuesday, January 06, 2009 11:38 PM
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Guelph Coffee and Code Study Group
Hi Peter,
Thanks again for this post, it was very useful for getting my head into the Study Group game. I'm running the Focus Group next week to solidify some details.
I'll try keep you posted on our progress, but be sure to keep up with us at http://www.guelphcoffeeandcode.org!
By Cory Fowler on
Friday, September 10, 2010 8:59 AM
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Re: You thinking of running a technical study group? Fantastic, here are a few suggestions from my personal experiences
Hey Cory, glad I could help (sorry, no Timmy's/Starbucks supplied with this looooooooooong post DOH! LOL).
I'm certainly going to keep an eye out on the website. Good luck with the study group! For all the hard work, the knocks, the bad, there's usually one or two people who come up to you on the site and say Thank you. They make it all completely worth it! I've seen one usually about 1/3 to 1/2 way through and then you get the 2nd one right near the end, 1 or 2 sessions before the last one.
Good luck with your study group and thanks for posting your comment! Have a good weekend.
By phenry on
Friday, September 10, 2010 9:03 AM
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