How can you get trained?

For those who don't benefit from a company training department, what options are available for Computer training?

Self-help courses

There are masses of online courses, books, videos, DVDs, all of which promote themselves as the best way to learn how to use your PC.

The real problem is that they rely on you to stay motivated and keep plugging away - which can be quite difficult if the script you have to follow might as well have been written in a foreign language! It is reckoned that more than half the people who buy one of these books or courses don't get beyond the first lesson.

Classroom

There are free courses available at local colleges and Adult Learning Centres, as well as fee-based courses from any number of IT training establishments. Some of these are excellent - the real problem though is that they have to assume a certain level of knowledge.

If they go too slowly [yawn] they lose the more advanced students, too quickly [what the ...?] they lose the less advanced. And it's a thankless task for the instructor. Very few multi-session courses reach the end - or if they do, there are far fewer students than they started with.

Mentored e-learning

These are generally more successful, as the instructor can help with the motivational aspects, and can change the course content/pace to suit the individual. But generally there is a curriculum to be fulfilled, and sometimes the system is too inflexible to suit some people.

There are special offers available on the Intertrainer website, including a 'sampler' session. Click the link on the left to see more details

What can ACSL offer?

We know about the different types of training listed on the left - we've been there [and got the e-shirt!]

We believe that the best form of training takes place on the customer's own machine, and is either:

Pro-active - I need to learn about x, where x can be anything from Windows Basics to advanced database construction.

Reactive - I've been trying to do x and I get stuck at the same point every time.

A lot of customers keep lists of things that have defeated them, and then they call us and book a session. And they learn from it, because it is specific to their needs and pitched at a level they can follow.

Some people like to have a one-on-one training session, but most people have started to appreciate our remote training sessions, where we [or they] can control the keyboard and mouse, and where we can even show examples from our own system directly on to their screen.

That's why we developed INTERTRAINER, using some hi-tech remote access via broadband, and with 'voice-over' via a Skype connection or speakerphone.

<Click here> to be taken to the Intertrainer website for more information - it probably costs a lot less than you think!

If you have looked at our 'Testimonials ' section, you will have seen that we have catered for a whole variety of needs by this approach:

• parents wanting to keep up with the kids
• work people falling behind colleagues
• returning mothers

Then again there are customers who just want to use a PC more effectively. We recently ran a Windows Basics course for a [self-confessed] beginner, with [self-appointed] super-user wife listening in. Afterwards, she said it was the best training session she had ever been to, and now we do separate courses for both of them [although she always attends his ones as well]