Dealers'TV Bank

A LL TOO often in the past, the training 13. o1 new employees and the re'training of present employees has been hampered or ev"n stymied by the lack of qualified people with the ability to successfully im' part their knowledge to others. Usually, the men who knew their subject couldn't teach it and good teachers were restricted by lack oI product or subject knowledge.-

A major step in redressing this problem has come about by the use of video tape equipment. By using these recorders, it is possible for the first time to get good ieae,hers and then get the message to thou' sands of people, rather than hundreds.

The Western Building Material Associa' tion has been particularly active in utiliz' ing this new business technique. Beginning last fall and continuing thru tle Winter quarter at Green River Community Cgl; lege, they started fihning the classes held there on product information, end use and sales techniques.

The association lined up industry ex' perts to pxesent their material and ex-pe-ri' ence to students at the Auburn, Wash.' school. Among the firms that supplied ex' perts for the teaching/tape sessions are b*ets Corning Fiberglas, Weyerhaeuser, U. S. Plywood, P. H. Bowman, Johns Man' ville, Simpson Timber, Fentron Industries, Boise Catcade and several of the forest products associations.

Sfory o] s Gfonce

Video taping by Western Building Material'Asdn. of industry classes builds a bank of tapes to helP train and update industry me-T-bers of all- levels nearly 300 sessions are now preserved on tape.

Presently, V/BMA is searching for the best ways to get wide distribution and hence the most use from their ever increas' ing bank of TV tapes of the classroom Pre' sentations, Several methods are under con' sideration:

(l) Presentation of the tapes at the Learning Resource Center at WBMA's new headquarters in Olympia.

(21 Duplicating tapes and distributing them thru the community colleges and high schools; dealers might this way be able to tie in with the school presentations'

(3) With the WBMA equiPment the sta{f, members or districts could sche' dule evening classes.

Wide use of the product information tapes by dealers, wholesalers and manu' fu"r,tt"tt is seen by observers as probably the best hope the industry has of over' coming the problem of providing -Proger training and updating for its people, lhe video tipe recoiiling's ability to multrply a sood teacher's effort abnost indefinitely is .-"". u. a maior milestone in industry edu' cation.