Shifting your thinking about learning.

How we learn is probably as unique as there are individuals to learn the material. Mentor Graphics has, for almost a decade since Capital was first released, up until recently delivered training principally as a classroom based, instructor-led, training guide. Lab-work exercises were part of the experience for students. Last year, in a substantial shift of emphasis on-line training delivered through the Mentor Learning Center challenged that status quo. Change is good, isn’t it?

The content of the original Capital training courses was overlaid by incremental changes and re-development of course materials over the years since the first versions appeared. New software modules, like the Capital Formboard and Modular XC offerings necessitated new courses too. However the Mentor Learning Center pivots to a different way of delivering Capital training. The Mentor Learning Center delivers training not just of a different sort, but also on different topics to those contained in the standard classroom-type education.

Education – I remember discovering this at the age of 12 – comes from the Latin verb “ducere” meaning to lead, prefixed with “e” – which denoted in ancient Latin ‘out of.’ So a way of thinking about learning is not that the trainer or teacher is putting something in to the pupils, but that something is being led out of their skills and aptitudes and potential.

Education consists of a process for the person doing the learning, from an inclination to know something reaching the state of mastering the required knowledge. I have delivered a few training courses in Capital as a guest or substitute trainer. My philosophy is that I am not bombarding the students with some knowledge and trying to make it stick.  I am making a body of knowledge available, accessible and attractive – facilitating participants’ desire to learn.

The delivery system of Mentor Learning Center (MLC) is more available and accessible, with the “anytime” and reduced cost of the internet. The body of knowledge contained in the MLC has been curated to be useful and beneficial to students interested in all domains covered by the Capital software.

Mentor Learning Center showing Chapters in the Learning Path for Capital’s Manufacturing tools

Take a look for yourself at  https://www.mentor.com/training

Leaning into learning:

What may get in the way of learning, once you are participating in a class is antipathy to the course materials or the instructor.

The training materials for Capital are comprehensive, relevant and thoughtfully put together. The trainers are experienced and skilled. The materials in the somewhat newer delivery system – the on-line and on-demand Mentor Learning Center are derived in part from this curriculum and in part from a body of knowledge previously not available to expert and new Capital users. This second resource was internal courses used within Mentor IESD to bring up to speed new hires into our own experts group. This second resource has been re-purposed by training professionals so customers can get the benefit of it too. And then there was a third resource too. A new element in the Mentor Learning Center has been completely new material added in support of this “self-paced” learning.

One personality may thrive more in a mode of training where there are frequent stops for review. Those types of people consolidate the knowledge by testing their mastery of the concepts, through performing exercises. This is an archetypal approach of engineers – and is embodied in a quote from Elon Musk, the celebrated founder of the Tesla Company which makes electric cars. “I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.”

Transitioning from teaching about the functionality of Capital to knowing how you leverage features/automation/modeling to do your job takes decisions and analysis from the deployment team. The practical application of the things learned in training – cementing them into the daily demands of a design or engineering team discipline is essential. It is where the results of teamwork begins to be seen in the return for an investment of time and expertise. And the return is what’s in “it” for everybody.  The yield is faster design at better quality. A project outcome is for example, fewer issues transitioning to manufacturing, using the same number of engineers handling more projects in the same time timespan.

Where a person can be Capital Subject Matter Expert, and has good written communication skills, and knows your company’s culture and processes – hang on to that person!

To arrive at the point where knowledge about Capital transforms into a team comfortable using Capital to meet their production deliverables takes more than just exposure to the knowledge. I reproduced above a simple graphic about the “pull-it-all-together” talent which I have used for about the last five years to explain one especially valuable member of the team. One person in isolation is not enough to make a successful Capital deployment project in most large organizations of course. But just think about the skills of an internal trainer – the mastery of the software features is one essential aspect of their value, but without joining this to comprehension of the design and engineering processes, the value is limited. That’s true also, but more so of an external vendor’s trainer.

Training requires more attention than just showing up for it.

In the next post, I will run through some of the ways in which your product training should be characterized for your success. A lot of what I’ll be discussing will be applicable to other technical & software training projects too – not only relevant to Capital. I believe the success is defined by transitioning from the initial burst of product knowledge to having a communal product knowledge that will sustain you through the workflow. Add a person here, subtract a person there – but the communal skills pool and knowledge is robust enough for the design and manufacturing tasks to complete on time.