I've been teaching in the information management space for more than 20 years. In that time, I've taught a number of private and custom courses and workshops and thought I'd share a bit more about how they work.
Private Courses
Private courses, as the name suggests, are generally limited to a single organization - more on that shortly. The primary reason for a private course is to allow the organization to open up a little about its particular environment, challenges, and needs. Students can talk about their processes in the context of their particular industry and how their organization is set up. I find that students are often both more relaxed and more focused because the course is more directly relevant to them.
Other key benefits of private courses include:
- Costs. When I teach private courses, it's a flat fee that covers up to a certain number of students, with a minimal per-student fee above that. This price is often at least a 50% savings compared to sending the same number of students to a public class. If it's an in-person class, I also charge reasonable travel fees.
- Flexibility in scheduling. I work with organizations to schedule private courses at the time and location that makes most sense to them and the people they want to attend. If you want to host a 3-day course from 7 am - 3 pm, I can do that. I can also generally do courses as live online as well as in-person.
- Consulting. Because the course is private, we can leverage the discussions and activities to work on your actual business issues. For example, during a private Playbook workshop, students will start to build your organization's playbook. And we can take the time to talk about what they're working on and the challenges they're trying to solve.
- Access to senior and specialist staff. This takes two forms. In some courses, it may make sense to have the general counsel, or CIO, or even CEO or agency head come to the group to share their insights. This wouldn't work with a public course for any number of reasons, but if that person just has to walk down the hall to the conference room, or join a video conference, why not? At the same time, there may be attendees that would benefit from just a portion of the content, or whose schedules would make attending a full course difficult but who could attend a half-day on Tuesday afternoon.
- Networking and relationship building. Training courses are great for networking and building the kinds of relationships necessary to effect the behavior changes indicated by the course content. This is particularly true of in-person courses, which can include time built-in for these kinds of activities such as a happy hour or after-hours social event. Even without those, though, students interact during the group activities, and during breaks and lunch, developing stronger ties with their fellow students and the instructor as well.
When "Private" Courses Aren't Private
Sometimes a group of individuals will get together to set up a "private" course. It's private in the sense that it offers the advantages of flat-rate pricing and flexibility in scheduling. It's otherwise a public course; registration is generally fairly open to anyone willing to pay to attend. I do these regularly with information management association chapters, where the chapter sets up a "private" course for their members.
Private Course Content
I am an authorized AIIM Training Partner and can teach any AIIM training content, including but not limited to AIIM's Certificates of Specialization. I also teach a workshop on Building and Sustaining a Records Program with a Records Playbook and am actively developing additional courses; I'll update this post as those become available.
Custom Courses
Custom courses are identical to private courses, and I usually teach them as such, with one significant difference: the content is customized to meet the organization's unique requirements: their industry sector, their laws and regulations, their systems and processes, and even their terms and terminology. Sometimes this includes custom content development - for example, I have developed and delivered custom modules on scanning, on privacy and data protection, and on building playbooks as part of custom courses.
In other cases, the interest is in paring away content felt to be less relevant or to meet a shorter course schedule. Instead of a 4-day workshop, for example, the content is reduced to only 2 or 2.5 days.
And in still other cases, the content consists of a selection from various courses. For example, I delivered a course a few years ago that included content from AIIM's SharePoint, records management, and capture courses. Since the courses I teach are broken into 45-90 minute modules, it's pretty straightforward to pick the modules that are of greatest interest or relevance.
As noted above, my custom content can include any AIIM training content, my own RIM content, and anything I develop custom for a course. The broader point here is that I can work with you to develop and deliver exactly the content you need, where and when you need it.
After the Course
After a private or custom course, you and your students will continue to have access to me for a year so the learning can continue. I hold monthly office hours for my public course students; for a private or custom course, your students will get access to that as well as to their own custom office hours. If permitted, I can also add them to my private Slack learning group, which includes additional resources, news and articles of interest, and access to other students.
Setting up a Private or Custom Course
The easiest way to set up a private or custom course is to reach out to me directly to set up a discovery call. At this call, we'll talk about the intended audience, the content to be delivered, timeframes and scheduling, and cost and logistics. I generally try to book at least 60 days in advance so I can minimize expected travel costs, but I can be available sooner than that if necessary. Custom courses may require additional lead time if I need to develop custom content.
If you have any questions about private or custom courses, I encourage you to drop me a note at jesse.wilkins@athroconsulting.com. Non-profit chapters in particular, let's talk about how we can bring high-quality educational content to your members, and benefit the chapter as well.
