The State of TYPO3 Training

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Fly-half Ronan O'Gara

Centre Brian O'Driscoll

Prop John Hayes

Scrum Half Peter Stringer

By: Virgil Huston

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I've been an instructional systems designer / trainer for more years that I care to think about. I've gotten pretty good at it and have some opinions on the state of TYPO3 training that may not be overly popular. This is an important topic and something Acqal is focusing on.

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Back to Training

TYPO3 training materials are a lot like TYPO3 documentation. There is relatively quite a bit out there, but what is there is often very outdated. And, while much TYPO3 documentation is available in a central location, training materials are spread out all over the Internet. TYPO3 training is available in a few ways:

-Documentation used for training
-Videos
-Face-to-face classroom based courses

There may be more options, but I haven't run across them. Depending on how a manual or book is written, it may or may not make a good learning tool and it may or may not be up-to-date. Many people leave TYPO3 behind because the documentation is not enough to get them over the learning hump.

Videos are the training of choice in the software world. Coming from an instructional design background, I can tell you that most of these videos are perhaps the worst and slowest way to learn. Most are like Powerpoint slide shows with a little more animation. While you can usually go back, they are essentially one-way lessons with little time to retain anything before it moves on. For me, these videos are extremely frustrating. I believe they are so popular for developers is that they are quick and easy to make.

For programmers and developers, training is usually the last thing they are thinking of. They know the program or extension intimately, so, even if they do produce training materials, they almost never adhere to essential instructional design standards and experts often omit important things because they are too close to the subject they are writing about.

The end result is mediocre training at best and no training at worst.

Face-to-face training is probably much better because your audience will force you into explaining things they don't understand. I know this is the case with training I conduct at Acqal. I have to know my audience, what they need to be taught, and do extensive preparation for classroom training sessions face-to-face or via screen sharing and teleconference. I cannot speak about others conducting this type of training, but I imagine it is similar. If you can't provide the proper training in the appropriate way, you won't be getting many training jobs.

We at Acqal hope to bring TYPO3 training to a new level.