of the program, which you will need in one way or another. This is the first step. Now let’s explore some different tips, tricks, techniques, and methodologies you may find useful for developing your teaching style.
to talk and contribute in the learning process, and you must have the talent to handle this desire and make use of their experience throughout the lecture.
PLANNING
Self-Esteem. Everyone likes to be listened to—especially adults; try to fulfill this desire for them.
Planning is the most important part in your preparation as it describes everything for you. It organizes your thoughts and clears your mind so you can achieve the best results. Before you start a new class, do the best preparation you can, because it’s all about that. Following are some best practices regarding the planning process.
Relevance. Focus on techniques in your lectures, not tools. Give students real-life problems and teach them how to deal with these things. Give them tasks and examples from the industry and expose them to the different pipelines. That’s what I have been doing for many years of training and it works great for me.
The lesson plan is the most important part of the planning process. The Plan organizes your thoughts, materials, duration of the class, examples used, and files needed for activities.
Benefit. Help the students to see what they have achieved, what they will achieve later, and how this is beneficial to them along their career.
Let’s take a look at sample lesson plan.
Time Orientation. Impress upon your students that present, current, and now are when they’ll see the return on this training in their career.
It starts with the lesson title, learner level, module you are teaching, and the duration of the lesson. It must contain a brief description of learners’ backgrounds, including their industry, level of education, experience with the software or other CG software. This helps when you prepare your content; you prepare the best assignments and examples for them. After that you must state the Objective of the lesson and that is something you must start your lecture with, because it gives the learner a solid understanding of what he is going to be able to do after completing this lesson. Example of a bad objective statement: “Today we are going to learn how to create 3D objects using 3ds Max.” Example of a good objective statement: “Today we are going to model a low-poly warrior helmet using graphite modeling tools.” After that you talk about the lesson delivery and the timing of your lesson. You will talk about what I like to call “The Magic Cycle,” described later in this article. Then you conclude your lesson in about five minutes by restating the Objectives of the lesson. If necessary, provide a short review of the key points covered in it.
PRESENTATION At a recent Autodesk training workshop, I learned that people learn in different ways, by different methods, and at different rates. And you as Instructor must have the ability to deal with different types of adult students.
Principles of Adult Learning
PRODUCT FOCUS
3ds Max 2013
Participation. Always give students the opportunity to participate—either in conversation or even in demonstrating something for their classmates. Self-Direction. Try to guide students in achieving what they want—not what you want for them. In the real world, they will always be self-directed.
Different Types of Students You need to know many things about your students to achieve best results in your training sessions. One of the most important things to know is student type. Is he an experienced user of the software (for example, Autodesk 3ds Max) or is he a beginner? Is he experienced in other CG software such as Adobe Photoshop or is he a CG beginner? You must understand that you’ll deal with every student type by way of different methods and means, and that every student type has different needs and expectations from the learning experience. You’ll need to plan for this.
BUTTONOLOGY VERSUS WORKFLOW Buttonology is something we all have done, yet it’s a bad thing. It occurs when you open a menu or rollout and you begin to explain every icon, radio button, slider, or option you find—whether or not they are relevant.
Experience. Students often are experienced and they bring this experience with them. They would like to have the opportunity November 2012
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