I think this class has set a standard for quality professional development that will be hard to beat in the future. – Mara Kaminowitz, GISP, GIS Coordinator.
Easily one of the best workshops I have ever attended. Sam Stanton, GIS Coordinator, Queen Anne’s County Information Technology.
I had a great time at the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, leading a workshop on Spatial SQL using SQLite and SpatiaLite – thank you to Mara Kaminowitz for organizing it! There were 25 people in attendance, and I just received the evaluations. To cut to the chase, you can see the evaluation results here.
But, for the high level view, here is what people thought:
Over 95% said the workshop was better than other GIS training they received.
On a scale of 1-10, 95% of the attendees rated the course an 8 or above.
95% said they learned something new in the workshop.
100% said the workshops would help them in their careers.
87% said they would apply these skills to their job.
I decided to throw one curve-ball on the evaluation sheet and asked:
This was a half-day workshop. Most one-day GIS training classes cost around $600/day. If we developed other in-depth full-day workshops on topics like this for under $250, how likely would you be to participate in it?
It turned out that 91% of the respondents rated a 7 or higher, indicatin
g that the attendees valued the training enough to pay $250 for a full day course (opposed to $600 for most GIS courses). This means it is possible to offer really good, low cost training to GIS professionals. Keep an eye out on this, as I am very likely to take these training classes on the road.
The comments the participants provided were great – in fact, the response was slightly higher than the response at the TuGIS conference.
The course evaluation will have lots of free-form comments you can read, but a couple of the ones I liked were:
One of the most valuable pieces of this workshop was how it drove home the fact that Spatial SQL is not as intimidating as it may seem. Going over the basic SQL functions and how closely it reads to standard english was very helpful in driving this home.
Gave me a much stronger foundation for SQL, the instructor was extremely knowledgeable and presented the information well. I am so happy to have a stronger understanding and feel this will help me immediately in my job.
Dr. Lembo was very effective in showing the analytical framework behind the use of SQL in the development of databases, geometric layers, and even modeling. He was really good in putting it all together; I had little exposure to SQL before the class, and now I feel confident on how to approach it to solve problems I encounter in my job.
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