Does anyone have any articles to support superusers' involvement in training?

quote:

Originally posted by PaulG:
Does anyone have any articles to support superusers' involvement in training?

What does superuser mean to you?

We are using the term superuser in the following way: A business expert who helps define the business processes and helps guide the configuration of the system. Because they are intimately knowledgeable about how the business is run and how to use the system, we want to utilize them as trainers to augment a large implementation-training rollout, even though they do not necessarily have a training skillset. We would conduct train-the-trainer classes to ramp them up on classroom facilitation. I am looking for evidence that this model has been effectively utilized.

Instead of using them as trainers, use them as your subject matter experts...because that's what they are.

Fifteen years of experience (personal and observation) tell me quite clearly that unless your SME has an innate talent and interest in truly learning about facilitating learning, using these people to train others is a MISTAKE.

I have to agree with Fanatic. We learned this the hard way last year.

We had developed a software training workshop for one of our large clients and had been tasked with training 500 users within a 30-day period. We decided to run concurrent sessions using super users as the facilitators. The super users, we reasoned, knew the program exceedingly well and had bought in to the merits of the software and of training the rest of the organization.

We ran T3s and provided supporting materials, but the workshops didn't go very well. It's one thing for a super user to train an individual, but quite another to train a room of people.

Now a year later, we are providing "refresher" courses to those 500 users using the same two effective facilitators over and over again. It's a vast improvement.

Let me know if I can answer any other questions about the project.

Jay