Chris Dickman (bio)

The Sessions School of Online Design (disclaimer: a current advertiser on the Graphics.com Network) has been around a long time, providing online training in such areas as graphic and Web design, multimedia, digital arts and business marketing design since 1997. While I have never used their services, I can only imagine how tough it must have been in the early years to provide a compelling learning experience, hampered by dialup connections and the limitations of rich media.

The Sessions approach has students interact with their instructors and other students online, with lessons, exercises, quizzes, critiques and discussion boards all being part of a typical course, and students uploading assignments to receive feedback from instructors. Different, then, from services such as Lynda.com, which are simply repositories of video tutorials.

While the Sessions approach is worthy enough, what caught my attention was their newest service, DesignMASTER Training, which provides training for “professional or serious amateur designers.” I’m not quite sure what a serious amateur designer is, to tell you the truth, but I like the fact that this service offers another level of training for those already established in the graphics, design and photography fields. The project-based approach employs veteran trainers who are successful in the real world—not as common as you might imagine in the domain of training. The opportunity to pick the brains of people who have decent clients and a solid track record is actually pretty compelling.

Poking around the DesignMASTER site, I was pleased to not only see this as a way for upcoming designers to benefit from the in-the-trenches wisdom of those who had gone before, but also for those battle-scarred veterans to be able to monetize all the time and effort they’d put into actually succeeding. And beyond that, to reap the benefits that can accrue from the act of helping others achieve mastery in a domain. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a particularly benevolent person, if you find yourself in the situation of being able to help people, to make a significant difference in their lives, the experience can be transformative for both teacher and student.

For starters—perhaps paradoxically—you’ll develop your ability to listen. It’s no secret that the best teachers are also the best listeners, and for designers, knowing how to listen to clients is right up there as one of the most critical skills. Training will open you up to the concerns of your fellow humans in countless ways—not a bad thing to balance out all those hours plugging away in front of XPress or Photoshop.

Beyond the touchy-feely stuff, having students pay you for your training services is just another way to demonstrate that you have competencies that have value in the marketplace. In my case I combined training with writing related books and magazine articles, presenting at conferences and making public appearances on Oprah. (Okay, one of those isn’t true.)

You probably know more than you give yourself credit for. Frankly, we all do. But without a conduit for this knowledge, what’s a designer to do? That question forms the inevitable segue into the closing element of this screed, which is my recent discovery of the awkwardly-named Nuvvo.com (as in the French “nouveau”).

Nuvvo is an elearning platform that makes its capabilities available free of charge. It also offers a more robust version for a modest monthly fee, but either way it wisely doesn’t try to take a slice of course fees. Instead, it simply provides a platform that trainers can use to build and deliver on-demand courseware, with support for video, sound and Flash, complete with student billing.

Yes, developing a course is just the beginning, as it is for any new business venture. You’ll need to add an area to your existing site to promote this or even create an entirely new site optimized for the search engines. A Google AdWords campaign might also make sense to drive targeted traffic, etc.

Nuvvo is nice but you say you want complete control over your training environment and have some dev skills? Then check out Moodle, an open source elearning platform. Or maybe online training is simply not for you? Then find some other channel for your expertise—as long as you make 2006 the year you go beyond hustling clients and begin helping others in your field. Once you start, I can guarantee you’ll be hooked.

Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com