Setting up for a Class

Terminology

Classes generally involved a teacher (and TA) and slides or a presentation. Events are weird and great, and don't have a teacher. Workshops are usually 'work at your own pace' events, without a presentation, but with someone around who has *some* experience and can help people out when they are stuck.This post is only about classes.

How to Setup for a Class

If you want to run a class at a hackerspace, that is pretty easy. If you want to run an amazing class that people rant about, love, and tell their friends about, then there are a lot of details to get right. This is a rough guide of how to setup a class at Hive76, from idea to clean-up after the class.

Come up with a class

Come up with an idea for the class. Something you know, or something you want to learn. You can do 'something other folks want to learn' but that is easy to mess up, since you don't know what to teach, or the weird or unexpected assumptions about what other folks want to learn.

Price the Class

We have a separate page on how to Price a class.

Get it on the web

Post your class to the weblog, the calendar, make tickets, and tell a few friends.

Setup the space

Setup the space. Put a note up outside. Be ready to answer the phone or buzz people in.

During the class

Teach!

Cleanup afterwords

Put the space back. Put food in the garbage. Chat with people as they leave, but feel free to tell them 'you need to get going, I need to close up. Recruit people to help clean up the space. Do a quick for left or lost personal belongings. Go treat yourself to a post class beer, ice cream, or smoke or something. Seriously take a break. You just taught a class, it can be stressful. Go unwind for a while.

Follow up

Email the list on how the class went. Check for feedback. Media:Example.ogg