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Figure 2. Production Manager Course Outline Example 
Defining the number of students per course can be one of 
the most difficult items to determine. There are at least 
four major roles of users to consider: the system 
manager and assistants, the programmer, the application 
manager and assistants, and the workstation operators. 
Each of these roles requires a unique sequence of 
courses which may start and finish at different times. 
Eventually, at least one operator per workstation per shift 
needs training. Also, each production shift needs 
application and system managers. To cover potential 
course drop outs, employment attrition, vacations, and 
other absences, we added at least ten percent per job 
category above the production requirements. Other 
factors to consider are the desirable number of students 
per workstation during lab exercises, the number of 
available instructors, lab assistants, and workstations 
available for training. Sometimes two students per 
workstation is very effective and lightens the load on the 
lab attendants. However, since a second student can not 
easily observe what is going we found stereoplotters 
practically demand one student per workstation. 
DEVELOPING THE CONTENT 
Initially, selecting the subject matter for each lesson may 
seem obvious; simply follow the production worksteps. 
Basically, the students must learn how to handle their 
equipment and get started using the software. They must 
learn how to interpret the inputs, and how to create, edit, 
and manipulate the output data. They must manage the 
progress, recover from errors, and assess the quality of 
the results. In addition, the developers of courses for 
cartographic systems must also address a number of 
other problems. The length of the course must be 
realistic. The order and depth of presenting the topics to 
a novice can be quite different from how an experienced 
operator may use the functions. Creating a balance 
between the duration of lectures and labs is an art and will 
also alter the topic sequence. 
There are numerous techniques to keep the students 
alert, the course duration reasonable, and to develop 
decision making skills. For example: • 
• Provide as much lab time as possible. 
• Have optional and more difficult exercises for 
those who complete their work rapidly. 
• Create lectures that concentrate on concepts and 
lab exercises that develop decision making skills. 
• Promote self-reliance by incorporating reference 
review for lab answers. 
• Cover functions used frequently in detail and 
only mention others. 
• Promote local 'experts' by assigning simple functions 
to individual students to exercise and demonstrate. 
Determining the ratio of time between lab and lecture is 
not an easy task. Most everyone has strong feelings 
about this subject for operators and production system 
users. The phrase, "Too much lecture, not enough lab' 
can actually become a chant of complaint. Lengthy 
lectures loaded with new technical jargon, concepts, and 
processes can be stupefying. Other things that make 
lectures difficult are inappropriate facilities. Production 
facilities may not have comfortable lecture rooms or there 
may be distractions. Presenters may be forced to 
conduct lectures in hot narrow bowling alley rooms or 
near loudly humming machinery, or the students may be 
perched atop high chairs with notebooks in their laps. In 
any case, a lecture should cover the concepts and 
anticipate the questions that all the students will ask in 
lab. A ratio of less than three lecture hours per five hours 
lab makes a significant difference. Special 
demonstrations of difficult lab exercises are very useful, 
however more than four people around a large 
workstation can exceed the ability of the demonstrator to 
keep their attention. 
There are other people who don't operate the production 
system who also need training. These people are often 
overlooked when preparing for the new production 
system. They may be representatives from other 
agencies or planners who prepare project directives. 
They could be specialists (such as photogrammetrists) 
who need to understand the equipment, the algorithms, 
and software capabilities. Examples of alternative 
approaches for addressing their needs would be to have 
them audit courses or to create unique workshops with 
the system developers. In our case, we presented a 
photogrammetry workshop and arranged auditor seating 
for course lectures.