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Fast track training courses with Wise Owl

Clients frequently ask if they can cover all of the contents from our basic and advanced courses in a subject in a shorter time frame. We've therefore published a new family of fast-track courses in C#, DAX, Integration Services, Power BI, Reporting Services, SQL and VBA.

We spent ages trying to choose what to call the courses! "Boot camp" was perfect, but too American; Andrew's "Zero to Hero" a bit too whimsical; and Sam's "VBA to VBZ" clever, but too specific.

How the courses work

For each fast-track course we've taken the contents of two two-day courses and combined them together into a single three-day course.

Two into one does go - you just have to pour carefully, as explained below - although occasionally the odd extra topic has been "spilled".

So where does the extra time come from? A combination of two things:

Reason	Notes
Faster pace	Our fast-track courses run (as the name might suggest) at a faster pace than our standard courses, allowing us more time to cover extra topics.
Bulk time savings	For any training course some time on the first day is not spent on training, as the trainer gets to know the group, understand their abilities and limitations and as everyone gets settled in. For a fast-track course days two and three can then be devoted entirely to training.

Set against this it's worth noting that people naturally fade towards the end of a course, and the longer the course the more pronounced this effect!

Should you book on a fast-track course or not?

Let's say you want to learn everything about Microsoft Widgets. Here are your choices:

Choice	Notes
Do it in stages	Book a place on the two-day introduction course with us, and consider booking a place on the two-day advanced course at a later date.
The whole caboodle	Book a place on the three-day fast-track course and absorb all of the knowledge in one go!

For the majority of people we would recommend the first option - here's why:

You may never need to become a Widgets guru, so why waste the time, money and effort learning advanced topics that you may never use?
A three-day course is a day too many for most people: better to learn the introductory topics, then have time to practise and reinforce what you've learnt before going onto more advanced stuff.
If you find the three-day course is going too fast for you (and you may), you have a long time of not enjoying it!

However, the fast-track course does give some advantages for fast learners:

If you need to learn everything about Widgets, you'll save time and money attending a single three-day course rather than two two-day ones.
It's easier to cover advanced topics while the introductory ones are still in your head.
Above all, try as we might we can't ensure that the right people attend our advanced courses, so you may attend the introductory course and then find that the advanced course goes a bit too slowly for your liking.

The fast-track courses are especially suitable for people who have a reasonable working knowledge of a program but who are self-taught, and who want to fill in the gaps in their knowledge and then progress onto more advanced topics.

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