Should we run training courses during the week, or at weekends?

Our 'traditional' business has been 80% + employees of companies, government organisations and educational establishments who have wanted weekday courses, with the remaining fifth being independents and contractors who are somewhat flexible, but see weekend courses as a bonus as they're able to learn in what is their customer's non-prime time. Our 'traditional' business has also been in training delegates with a little programming background (at the least) in converting them ... from Cobol to Perl, from VB to PHP or from Matlab to Python.

But we're seeing changes - brought on by dynamic web sites moving from the specialist to the more general, brought on by people having more time and bringing dynamic web sites more into the hobby / club / new career line, and brought on by people with little IT experience taking on the roles formerly occupied by specialists who have now moved (or been moved) on. So there's a need for us to be able to train Learning to program in PHP as well as PHP Programming.

So we've added a "Learning to ..." day in front of most of our programming language courses - where delegates who are new to computer programming (or almost so) can learn some of the fundamental principles and learn them as they relate to their target language. These days mean that newcomers get a flying start - typically with a one-on-one day, helping them get up to speed for the main course, with demonstrations and practicals written to suit their particular needs.

And we have decided to add the extra days - in many cases - directly in front of the main (Monday starting) course, which puts the extra day on a Sunday. There's no 'right' solution here, but we have done it this way because:
a) It leaves the main course on weekdays
b) It reduces the working days that learners are out of their office
c) It avoids blocking the week with sparse training days
d) It allows a continuity from a learning day onto the main course

With 80% of delegates still 'converting', I expect these "Learning to" days to be sporadic in when they run (this is where our guarantee that once you have booked, we won't cancel is so important to you) ... but they are scheduled now for the rest of the year.

Learning to Program in C - 25th March
Learning to Program in Python - 29th March
Learning to Program in PHP - 19th April

Also ... Learning to Program in Lua, Learning to Program in Ruby, Learning to Program in Tcl, Learning to Program in C++ and Learning to Program in Perl ... click on the individual topic for desctiption and dates.

If you're looking to learn but must have weekdays ONLY ... or if you want a weekend ONLY set of sessions ... please email me, and we'll do our best to help.
(written 2009-03-10 23:27:55)

 G310 - Well House Consultants - A better class of course
  [2633] Why do I teach niche skills rather than mainstream? - (2010-02-13)
  [2187] Are we IITT (Institute of IT Training) members? - (2009-05-17)
  [2109] Why most training fails ... - (2009-03-30)
  [2084] Books and distance learning from Well House Consultants? - (2009-03-15)
  [2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20)
  [2010] How long should a training module be? - (2009-01-27)
  [1933] Learning to Program in C - (2008-12-10)
  [1645] Seeing how others do it - PHP training - (2008-05-17)
  [1576] Making PHP and MySQL training relevant to the course delegates - (2008-03-15)
  [1488] New trainee laptop fleet for our Open Source courses - (2007-12-30)
  [1453] What makes our courses special? - (2007-12-02)
  [1035] Longer hours and better value courses - (2007-01-15)
  [726] In praise of training course delegates. - (2006-05-20)
  [646] PHP - London course, Melksham Course, Evening course - (2006-03-14)
  [579] Short Linux and Perl courses for small groups - (2006-01-27)
  [577] Learning to program in Perl or PHP - (2006-01-26)
  [559] ''I don't know'' is sometimes a good answer - (2006-01-09)
  [554] What backup is adequate? - (2006-01-04)
  [497] I have a river to cross - (2005-11-16)
  [394] A year on - should we offer certified PHP courses - (2005-07-28)
  [371] The training team that's looking out for you - (2005-07-07)
  [350] Want to be one better - (2005-06-17)
  [292] Elegant languages - Perl, PHP, Python - (2005-04-26)
  [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27)
  [224] YOUR application and YOUR data - (2005-02-22)
  [219] Some unusual features - (2005-02-18)
  [215] Open Source becomes mainstream - (2005-02-14)
  [211] Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL. - (2005-02-12)

G500 - Well House Consultants - Running a training company
  [2144] Looking for a career change - Physician to Web Site Designer - (2009-04-28)
  [2021] Short health and safety course - (2009-02-02)
  [2003] Discount Training Courses - PHP, Perl, Python - (2009-01-21)
  [1963] Best source to learn Java (or Perl or PHP or Python) - (2008-12-28)
  [1884] Recession? Depression? - (2008-11-14)
  [1433] Linux, PHP, Tcl, Ruby, C, C++ - last minute training course availability - (2007-11-16)
  [1393] First Alternative / what has happened there? - (2007-10-16)
  [1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
  [1040] What the customer is looking for - effective training - (2007-01-17)
  [978] Wellhouse Manor, Hotel, Melksham - (2006-12-10)
  [926] Training rooms to learn Open Source programming - (2006-11-15)
  [838] Talking about other training companies. - (2006-08-19)
  [813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
  [652] Morning Post - (2006-03-20)
  [627] JIT or JAU - (2006-02-27)
  [545] Is training seasonal? - (2005-12-28)
  [470] I wanna be a Python trainer - (2005-10-20)
  [402] Netless - (2005-08-05)
  [385] Feast or famine - (2005-07-21)
  [251] WIBNIF - (2005-03-19)
  [171] Skills and techniques of being a successful trainer - (2005-01-06)

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A lot has changed - but the memory lingers on
Why put Apache httpd in front of Apache Tomcat
A New Advert for Well House Manor
Supporting Parkinsons and Trains
Weekday or Weekend PHP, Python and Perl classes?
Extra PHP Examples
Copyright, Portability and other nontechnical web site issues
Setting up a MySQL database from PHP
Converting to Perl - the sort of programs you will write
Efficient calls to subs in Perl - avoid duplication, gain speed