Or to put it bluntly – is there any kind of quality control for instructors? Students come to a class expecting that the instructor knows the subject matter, has been through the labs and knows something a bit more than what is presented in the courseware. This should be the accepted norm for instructors – but from what I hear from students – there are some instructors who leave much to be desired.
We use good ‘ol Metrics That Matter (MTM) whereby the training facility, course content AND the instructor are evaluated. If an instructor does an excellent job, the evaluations will reflect this, likewise, if the instructor does a poor job – the evaluations should reflect this as well. So, if an instructor consistently does a poor job (and the evaluations should reflect this) are there mechanisms in place to identify these instructors and do these mechanisms work?
There are mechanisms in place to identify these instructors, but not to limit or curtail their bad work. Unfortunately, this allows these less than average people to go about their less than average job, which helps to foster the bad reputation about instructors (the one where those who can – do, and those that can’t – teach). I and other instructors should not have to suffer at the expense of poor trainers. They should move on to a different profession (would you like fries with that?). So what can we do to identify and help these “challenged” instructors? Perhaps someone can setup an anonymous tip site – a website you can post a message that would then be forwarded to the instructor in question? This might help, but somehow I think the message would be lost or not understood by the person in question. So what next – visit MTM of course, but that is not the final solution either.
I don’t think there is a definitive way to ensure only quality instructors get contracts. After all, I did have an instructor in a class that I attended (from another CPLS that I won’t name) who asked – and this is not made up – if anyone had had an UFO experience? This was in the morning of the first day of class – during the afternoon of the first day, this same instructor asked if anyone “does recreational drugs” I kid you not – class actually went downhill very fast from there. I also saw this same instructor at another CPLS a few years later – still teaching and if this person was not the “Poster Child” for instructor quality reference, I don’t know who would be. There should be some method of weeding out the page-turners, those who can only teach from the MOC and have no other skills as well as those instructors who are so totally out of their league that they need to move on elsewhere.
