Revit training retention

[DoTheBIM]

We are in the process of bringing Revit online in the next few months. Becuase of our business niche, we're developing a "system" to use with Revit which means Revit is of no use to us until this system is completed. We want to train on Revit in the meantime and have to make some scheduling decision of what point to train. My opinion was to train no more than two weeks before the user is required to use Revit... becuase people tend to not retain the training. This opinion was met with some oposition. I wondering if others have experience with timing training and/or training retention times.

[Steve Jager]

I have been training people in our firm for over three months now and have 18 able bodied users, unfortunately, management has not seen fit to assign anyone a project even though we have 3 power users to assist newbies. So their training will be lost and will have to give them a one or two day refresher course. Don't wait to train everyone before rolling out Revit its just a waste of time,. Get a project moving as soon as possible.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Becuase of our business niche, we're developing a "system" to use with Revit .

Just out of curiosity can you divulge what your 'niche is?

One of the misconceptions that I run into about Revit is that people believe you need to have all your standards 'finalized' before you begin to work. Through the use of Transfer Project Standards Revit allows you to impose project wide standards from one project to another at anytime during the process. This allows development of standards to happen in conjunction with the project. Through the use of placeholder families and well considered naming conventions it is very easy to change how a project looks graphically and, to some degree, the assemblies and systems used simply by doing a 'search and replace' to swap old for new.
I'm with Steve. Get people going on the right pilot project and, if possible, work out the kinks as you go to help develop your 'system'.

[ron.sanpedro]

Just out of curiosity can you divulge what your 'niche is?

One of the misconceptions that I run into about Revit is that people believe you need to have all your standards 'finalized' before you begin to work. Through the use of Transfer Project Standards Revit allows you to impose project wide standards from one project to another at anytime during the process. This allows development of standards to happen in conjunction with the project. Through the use of placeholder families and well considered naming conventions it is very easy to change how a project looks graphically and, to some degree, the assemblies and systems used simply by doing a 'search and replace' to swap old for new.
I'm with Steve. Get people going on the right pilot project and, if possible, work out the kinks as you go to help develop your 'system'.

One more vote for Ready, Fire , Aim. At my old office we started the pilot project with no title blocks. We just printed views for the first month. It was all in house stuff, and the views looked great, and billable work was getting done.

As for retention, the sooner the better, but having some Gurus mitigates a long wait. And the truth is, a three day class just barely scratches the surface. You (hopefully) understand the overall ideas (one file, what I do affects everyone, etc) and you have seen a lot of things once. But even if you start working on a project the day after training, you won't be detailing for a while, so you won't retain as much of that part of the class. When you start detailing, it is the second time you have seen it and you "learn" it that much faster.

Best,
Gordon

[rjcrowther]

Training retention times/training timing : 1 week to 1 month before.

During my mis-guided stint in the military the above timing was the thinking. The idea was there was a certain time required for the information to 'sit' with you - that is the week. Then there is a certain time that most of the information is lost - that is the month.

Also, during 'the week', people will chat amongst themselves and reinforce ideas learnt. After that it starts to become old news and peoples minds are moved elsewhere.

From what I've seen and experienced, this was one those things the military had right.

As far as a three day course goes, I did some short courses few years ago and vowed never again (they weren't Revit).

The commercial reality of training these days seems to relate to content - the more content you can squeeze into the time period the better. Consequently nothing is covered to any depth. Concepts are skimmed over or just covered enough so you can follow what comes next (thats follow, not understand). My feeling was you walk away with a study guide that has been introduced to you (thats introduced, not taught). These courses tend to expose you to the language and that is about all. They completely ignore the idea that a person can only absorb 5 or 6 concepts at once and then need time to reinforce them.

So, by way of introduction, I am guessing a three day course will do the job of introducing your people to Revit. However, the learning will not start until they get to use it and ask questions of the people who have already used it.

If you are starting up with out any experienced users then you can overcome that to a certain extent by getting everyone to research and present a 40 min session on an aspect of Revit. This gets everyone in the mode finding information. Why 40min? That is the length of the average adult attention span, not the 2 hours the commercial trainers that I saw in action work to.

Rob