Microsoft Excel In-house Training Checklist
Class sizes
One of the main benefits offered by on-site training courses is that you can focus on those topics which are most relevant to your organisations. A good technique is to ask the company providing the training for a list of topics they cover on their standard courses then to provide them with a guide as to which features you feel are important, less important or can be omitted all together.
If your staff are trained on an older version of Excel and then have their software upgraded to 2007, the differences are so significant that many of them will need retraining!
Who should attend
As to the size of the class, somewhere between five and ten people can usually be accommodating in a training room with reasonable facilities. You will need to ensure that you have a conference or training room equipped with a computer for each delegate and a projector which can be connected to a computer used by the trainer to demonstrate each technique.
Which topics should be covered
Which version of Excel?
The obvious answer to this question may seem to be “the version that we are currently using”. However, because of the significant difference between Excel 2007 and previous versions, if you are currently using Excel 2003 but plan to upgrade within the next year or so, it is definitely worth making sure you upgrade before getting your staff trained.
If your staff are trained on an older version of Excel and then have their software upgraded to 2007, the differences are so significant that many of them will need retraining!
Who should attend
Ideally, training courses should be attended by users with a similar level of experience and with similar requirements. If you have a mixture of skills levels, it is best to split the training into separate sessions to cater for people’s different needs. It is also important to limit attendance to those people who can attend for the entire duration of the training. Having delegates nip in and out of a training session is disruptive and doesn’t really benefit anyone.
