Choosing Computer Training 2009
With an abundance of computer training courses available, it can be difficult to know what to look for. Pick out one that matches up with your personality and your level of ability, and one that is in demand commercially. The courses range from Microsoft User Skills up to career training for Web Design, Databases, Programming and Networking. There’s a great deal of choice and so the chances are you’ll want to talk through your options with an industry expert prior to making your choice: you don’t want to get on the wrong course for something that doesn’t suit you!
Due to the vast number of low cost, easily understood courses and support, you’re sure to get to something that should take you where you want to go.
Listening to the sheer volume of debate about IT at present, how can we recognize what in particular to look for?
Don’t forget: a training course or an accreditation isn’t the end-goal; the career you’re training for is. Too many training companies put too much weight in the qualification itself. Imagine training for just one year and then end up doing the actual job for 10-20 years. Don’t make the mistake of taking what may be an ‘interesting’ training program only to waste your life away with something you don’t even enjoy!
It’s well worth a long chat to see what expectations industry may have of you. Which particular certifications they will want you to have and how you’ll go about getting some commercial experience. It’s definitely worth spending time setting guidelines as to how far you wish to build your skill-set as often it can control your selection of accreditations. Speak to a skilled advisor who understands the work you’re contemplating, and could provide detailed descriptions of what you actually do in that role. Establishing this before starting out on a retraining course will save you both time and money.
You should only consider learning programs which lead to industry accepted certifications. There are loads of small companies suggesting ‘in-house’ certificates which aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on in the real world. If the accreditation doesn’t feature a company like Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA or Adobe, then you may discover it will be commercially useless - because no-one will recognise it.
It’s so important to understand this key point: You absolutely must have proper 24×7 support from professional instructors. We can tell you that you’ll strongly regret it if you don’t. Avoid, like the plague, any organisations who use call-centres ‘out-of-hours’ - where you’ll get called back during normal office hours. This is useless when you’re stuck and could do with an answer during your scheduled study period.
The best training colleges tend to use a web-based 24 hours-a-day package combining multiple support operations from around the world. You get a simple environment that switches seamlessly to the best choice of centres irrespective of the time of day: Support available as-and-when you want it. You can’t afford to accept anything less. Online 24×7 support is the only way to go for computer-based training. Perhaps you don’t intend to study during the evenings; usually though, we’re at work when traditional support if offered.
Often, trainers provide piles of reference manuals and workbooks. This isn’t very interesting and not a very good way of achieving retention. Long-term memory is enhanced when we use multiple senses - experts have been clear on this for as long as we can remember.
Locate a program where you’ll receive a library of CD and DVD based materials - you’ll start with videos of instructor demonstrations, and be able to practice your skills in interactive lab’s. It’s very important to see the type of training provided by each company you’re contemplating. Be sure that they contain full motion videos of instructors demonstrating the topic with lab’s to practice the skills in.
It’s unwise to choose training that is only available online. With highly variable reliability and quality from your average broadband company, make sure you get disc based courseware (On CD or DVD).
Often, students don’t think to check on a painfully important area - how their company divides up the courseware, and into what particular chunks. Usually, you’ll enrol on a course staged over 2 or 3 years and receive one element at a time until graduation. This sounds logical on one level, until you consider this: What if you find the order offered by the provider doesn’t suit. What if you find it hard to complete all the elements at the speed required?
Truth be told, the best option is to obtain their recommendation on the best possible order of study, but get everything up-front. You then have everything in case you don’t finish quite as quick as they’d want.
One interesting way that training companies make a lot more is by adding exam fees upfront to the cost of a course and presenting it as a guarantee for your exams. It looks impressive, but let’s just examine it more closely:
Everyone knows they’re still paying for it - it’s obviously been added into the gross price invoiced by the training company. It’s certainly not free (it’s just marketing companies think we’ll fall for anything they say!) Trainees who go in for their examinations when it’s appropriate, funding them as they go are far more likely to pass first time. They are aware of the cost and revise more thoroughly to ensure they are ready.
Shouldn’t you be looking to not pay up-front, but when you take the exam, not to pay the fees marked up by a training course provider, and to do it locally - rather than in some remote centre? Why borrow the money or pay in advance (plus interest of course) on examinations when you don’t need to? A great deal of money is netted by organisations charging upfront for all their exams - and then cashing in when they’re not all taken. Additionally, ‘Exam Guarantees’ often aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. The majority of organisations won’t pay again for an exam until you’re able to demonstrate an excellent mock pass rate.
Exam fees averaged around the 112 pounds mark twelve months or so ago through VUE or Pro-metric centres in the UK. So why pay hundreds or thousands of pounds extra for ‘an Exam Guarantee’, when common sense dictates that the most successful method is a regular, committed, study programme, with an accredited exam preparation system.
Huge changes are about to hit technology in the near future - and this means greater innovations all the time. Many people are of the opinion that the increase in technology we have experienced is easing off. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are huge changes to come, and the internet significantly will be the biggest thing to affect the way we live.
A usual IT technician throughout Britain has been shown to earn much more money than fellow workers in another industry. Standard IT salaries are hard to beat nationally. With the IT marketplace increasing nationally and internationally, it’s likely that the requirement for qualified professionals will continue to boom for years to come.
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