Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1330321
48 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2021 a class somewhere, and you don't have to pay the airfare or their hotel for the week. Online is a lot less expensive, so that's a big positive for the customers. One caution, however, is the internet band- width available in your community may not be large enough to deal with the speed and to- tal time frame of the class. For example, it may be noontime and everybody's at home, getting online to do whatever they're doing, and you can actually feel it in the presentation. Both the industry and communities will need to ad- dress this situation in some fashion. Johnson: We have our own internet rush hours nowadays. Lambert: That's right! I don't think it's going to go away, we'll just devel- op new techniques, new methodologies. For ex- ample, at EPTAC, we've talked about "Death by PowerPoint." How do we clean that up? We need to be able to make a Power- Point presentation that's exciting, with videos, per- haps, colorful and such. We want to avoid, "Oh man, I have to listen to this for three days?" There are new things coming out that we're playing with and we're learning. Johnson: After years and years of having a strong in-person, front-of-the-classroom tech- nique, now you're all learning to be video pre- senters. And you're finding value in that, as well. What is the training staff learning about doing their jobs in this environment that helps them grow? Lambert: We've preserved the ability to get to- gether often and to share the experiences of teaching the class online. If you're teaching a class in-person, internet interruptions are not a problem. But if you're teaching online and the system hiccups, then you're shut down. How do you recover and go back? I finished a class recently and right after the class finished, I heard an explosion outside and the power went out for four hours. How do you handle something like that? How do you treat the stu- dents? How do you get the students involved? Every month, we have a staff meeting, and we do two things. One is an instructive meet- ing on the technologies, the problems that oc- curred in class, the registration and so forth. The next is we have a life coach, training us on how to relate to people, how to interact across the screen. You can't be a dictator in front of the class; you've got to get the flavor of what's going on in the video portion of the program. We spend a lot of time on that, and we've been doing that for a year. It's how we're training our people. It works whether you're in class or you're online. Johnson: How do you en- gage your students in that multi-day interactive TV show? Lambert: We do it through conversations we're leading with our students. One of the tools that we use is the introduc- tions: "This is who I am, this is what I do." We get to know everyone. "I work in a board shop." "Well, I work in an assembly house." "I'm a materials guy. I just build cables. I don't know why I'm here." As an instructor you take notice. You talk to the board shop guy and—if you're doing a boards class—you say, "Don't go too far away. If I've got a problem, I'm go- ing to ask you about it, and you can help us out." That gets them involved as an expert too. Johnson: Leo, thank you for sharing. Lambert: You're welcome. PCB007