A training course for engineers is valuable when the knowledge gained is immediately applicable to their own work. Contrived scenarios, long-winded instructions, and coding examples that only work if all steps are followed perfectly do not create a learning experience worthy of a busy engineer’s time. We sat down with Thetic’s founder to document his vision for capturing an engineer’s attention during courses.
For those who don’t know, who are you and what’s your background?
I’m George Tsalavoutis, founder of Thetic Engineering Ltd. I have a degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of York, am a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the Society of Research Software Engineering (RSE). I also have a keen interest for RF measurements, and am an experienced LabVIEW, Python, and TestStand developer.
How long have you been involved with technical training?
I’ve been delivering technical training courses since 2009 and writing my own since 2011. I even continue to sit a few myself as part of my Continuous Professional Development (CPD) as an engineer and business owner.
What is your vision for delivering the best training experience for engineers?
When I set out to create training courses for my own company, Thetic Engineering Ltd., such as LabVIEW for Test Engineers, I had a clear purpose in mind: I wanted to elevate attendees to the next level of thinking. I took a risk knowing that my first course was going to be an Intermediate Level course, and that attendees would have learned their base skills from other sources, outside my control. This meant that, as an instructor, I would have to be prepared to teach engineers with wildly different backgrounds and approaches to using LabVIEW, rather than having spoon-fed them my own basics training material earlier in their career. It was clear to me then that my responsibility was to get each engineer to their personal best, rather than forcefully try to get them all to same level. The training material and class logistics were tuned to reflect this.
Over the years, what have you learned from running training courses for engineers?
Here is my summary of what closes the gap between engineers and the skills they are trying to gain:
- Keep classes small
- This helps engineers feel engaged at all times without drifting into the background.
- Have a competent instructor that is still willing to learn
- Engineers should be able to ask a question and get a reasonable thoughtful response within the same day.
- Exercises have many possible solutions
- Engineers will learn more deeply from mistakes than from sterile instructions.
- Understand why each attendee is there
- Give engineers the time to describe their work with respect to the training material.
- Represent real software development scenarios
- Engineers will learn in the context of their work by using Git, writing documentation, and designing the software on paper.
How do you apply these points to the full course suite offered by Thetic?
Since then, many more courses have been added to Thetic’s curriculum, always following these guiding principles. The LabVIEW Fundamentals course (and Python Fundamentals) is tuned to have the most open-ended exercises to create the most memorable experiences from ‘failing’ in a safe environment, whereas the more advanced courses are run with fewer attendees, all discussing a common project.
Thetic has received feedback from attendees that indicates we’re on the right track. They indicate that even experienced engineers are challenged, but walk away feeling excited with how they can apply their knowledge. Here is a sample from courses run in 2024.
“It really helped me understand the structure of the LV development system, I know how to correctly structure a project, library, sub VIs and typedefs, which will really enable me to go forward with samples and demos.” – Chris, Support Engineer
“The course material will directly link to future work, allowing for more efficient reading of instruments and analysis of data. The overall content of the course was presented extremely well and George adapted well to questioning regarding specific requirements. A couple of times there was a bit of information overload, however this was noted and the pace of the content was changed accordingly. ” – Adam, Civil Servant
“Course notes very good and will be used regularly for reference. Some of the exercises were a little confusing at first but forced you to think.” – Evaluation Engineer
If you’d like Thetic to assist you in developing and delivering a technical training course, or want to attend a course on LabVIEW, Python, or TestStand, send an email to hello@thetic.co. Click here to view the currently scheduled Training Courses.