I’ve been fortunate to lead official training as a Certified Professional Instructor (CPI) with NI. Unfortunately, I’ve indefinitely paused my instructor training support with NI to focus on more compelling engagements. Although I love teaching LabVIEW and NI still offers stellar training, there are some real issues with the related instructor supplier arrangements. Here’s 3 high-level observations from this experience that may be of value if you’re an instructor, considering becoming an instructor, or additional context for booking-building technical training programs for your team. This is an opinion piece with the intent of constructive comments.
1. Instructor booking process is often last minute and fluctuates.
Many on-site classes start customer preparations 1-3 months out; however, I was booked typically 1-2 weeks out. This creates many challenges with travel, class logistics, and interleaving steady bookings. The frequency of on-site classes does fluctuate based on customer demand. Even during peak times when many classes are provided and available, external instructor suppliers must compete with internal instructor (employees) in terms of priority for who gets to teach. Having a more transparent process for instructor booking would seem to be value added for those teams involved.
I’ve put together a process diagram showing an example set of milestones leading up to a critical training class. Perhaps portions of this model might be adapted in the future. Having explicit goals for when dates are locked and when preparations are complete help give all parties an even better chance for success.
2. Learner skill level screenings and training content matching needs more refinement.
Bulk training with 8-12 students is a great way to save time and money for a test team. Taking into consideration that many learners start classes with varying skill levels, it can be challenging to match the class content to each and every student. Adding some additional screening steps for each learner with supplemental or alternative training options may help increase learners’ engagement. The specific disconnect is that individual learners’ skill levels are often not adequately screened before a class (at least 1 learner per class from my experience). For example, having intermediate class content with students that are not regularly using the programming environment can be a major learning hurdle or even result in an ineffective training class.
The diagram below illustrates a typical compressed learner progression. The orange regions show important areas where learner preparations are needed. These become more critical as the class content becomes more difficult. Also noting the vertical axis shows some relative complexities between the classes with progressive difficulties per class. Screening learners’ current skill levels for intermediate classes is essential for success. By screening learners and adding additional self-directed training or alternative pre-requisite training more carefully learners will have a better chance for successful engagements.
3. Compensation for instructors is not commensurate with the total value of the class.
Finding instructors that are technically informed and active developers, enthusiastic technology-toolchain advocates, and effective instructors can be a challenging skillset framing. By incentivizing instructors (both internal employees and external suppliers) with competitive compensation these roles will be more easily filled and even perhaps sought after. While instructors are not expected to be compensated as ‘keynote level’ presenters they do lead training often for weeklong instruction segments. As a generical example of cost comparisons a typical weeklong on-site training class might cost a customer approaching $60k, sans team member down time costs, while an instructor might expect to be compensated less than a tenth of this revenue. If you’re considering becoming an instructor, make sure to screen the compensation both in terms of general market rates and in reference to bulk revenue for the service you help enable.
Closing Thoughts
Here’s to hoping some change happens in these areas for instructors. I’m still a LabVIEW super fan and hoping that NI will continue to update its strategic plans centered around supporting engineers, developers, and the ever-growing community of new learners and solution partners. It will be interesting to see where NI takes its strategies in the months and years to come. I'm still hoping for a return to the NIWeek format in 2024!