https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8836657677340179713
Showing posts with label Planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Planning. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2016
Planning for Success
If you are waiting for success to just drop in your lap, you may be waiting for a long time. Successful people have to work at being successful. Even after achieving a degree of success, you have to keep working to maintain your current level. However, hard work is not the only pre-requisite to success. Planning makes your efforts more productive by focusing your attention on the details and directing your energy to items which you might otherwise overlook. When teaching HVACR, lab work can be chaotic. Planning helps bring the chaos under control. I will be giving a Webinar on " Tips for Running an Effective Air Conditioning Lab" Wednesday, March 30 at 3:00 PM. The webinar is free. To register, got to the following link
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8836657677340179713
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8836657677340179713
Friday, March 18, 2016
March Madness is Here!
I am caught up in my own version of March Madness! No, not the basketball championship brackets, but the annual educational seminars and meetings that come every year in the spring. I will be speaking at HVAC Excellence National HVACR Educators and Trainers Conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, March 22 on “Developing and Evaluating Performance Exams.” If that is not your idea of a good time, then check out some of the other 50 sessions! There will be hundreds of HVACR instructors, and 70 exhibitors showing the latest and greatest at the expo. Youi can find me at the Pearson booth where I will be showing off the brand new third edition of “Fundamentals of HVACR.” This event is always energizing and inspiring. But wait, there’s more! I will be giving a webinar through Person on “Tips for Running an Effective Air Conditioning Lab” at 3:00 Eastern time on March 30. Please join me to learn how you can plan for success.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Do You Have a Plan?
Soon, schools will be starting their Fall term classes, traditionally, the start of the academic year. Most programs have their highest enrollment at the beginning of the Fall term. So I have a question for you. Do you have a plan? I don’t mean any particular document or form, just, what is your plan for making it through the Fall term? Life is so much smoother when you think ahead just a bit. Even though I often use a GPS when traveling, I always look at maps and routes so I have a clue about where I am heading and how long it takes to get there. Things are bound to come up, something won’t go just right, and there will be issues to resolve. However, all of this is easier to handle if you have a plan.
One of the most valuable parts of planning is that it forces you to examine the details. What topics are you going to cover, how many tests will there be, how many labs, will there be time to do everything you want, and when will you eat lunch. Yes, eating lunch is important. You have to build in down time if you want all your uptime to be productive. The more thought through and detailed your plan is, the better it will serve you. Modifications to your plan can always be made when things come up, but having thought through what you want to accomplish and how you plan to do it is especially helpful when unforeseen circumstances occur. If your GPS loses satellite signal in the middle of some deserted location you have never before visited, knowing a bit about the route and having a map are invaluable.
I spend a full week every semester planning. I lay out the lecture topics, labs, homework, and tests for all 10 classes that we teach trying to make sure they the courses complement each other and the labs make sense for what the students know. I do a schedule for each class, determine lab assignment dates, determine test dates, and put all this in documents that both the instructors and students use. I make sure the online materials make sense and dovetail with the lectures and labs. Yes, it is a lot of work. However, it makes the rest of the semester so much easier – we just run the plan. If anyone would like a copy of any of my planning documents, I would be happy to send some examples to you. You need your own plan, not mine – but having something to work around can often help you get started.
One of the most valuable parts of planning is that it forces you to examine the details. What topics are you going to cover, how many tests will there be, how many labs, will there be time to do everything you want, and when will you eat lunch. Yes, eating lunch is important. You have to build in down time if you want all your uptime to be productive. The more thought through and detailed your plan is, the better it will serve you. Modifications to your plan can always be made when things come up, but having thought through what you want to accomplish and how you plan to do it is especially helpful when unforeseen circumstances occur. If your GPS loses satellite signal in the middle of some deserted location you have never before visited, knowing a bit about the route and having a map are invaluable.
I spend a full week every semester planning. I lay out the lecture topics, labs, homework, and tests for all 10 classes that we teach trying to make sure they the courses complement each other and the labs make sense for what the students know. I do a schedule for each class, determine lab assignment dates, determine test dates, and put all this in documents that both the instructors and students use. I make sure the online materials make sense and dovetail with the lectures and labs. Yes, it is a lot of work. However, it makes the rest of the semester so much easier – we just run the plan. If anyone would like a copy of any of my planning documents, I would be happy to send some examples to you. You need your own plan, not mine – but having something to work around can often help you get started.
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