QTD User Conference

Join us in 2018!
September 25 & 26
Newport Beach, CA

TABLE OF
CONTENTS
2017 QTD User Conference and
Training Summit Recap
Topics We Explored, Things We Learned and
How this New Knowledge Helps us be Better at
our Job
Each year, we are honored that so many of
our QTS clients attend the Annual QTD User
Conference and Training Summit. 2017 was no
exception as we were joined by 46 participants
in Seattle, to train on new and forgotten features
of QTD, learn about new training techniques
that will help us provide more effective training,
exchange ideas on how to handle routine and
(not so routine) training challenges, discuss
current challenges we face in meeting PER-005,
and so much more. This paper represents a
curated summary of all the exchanges we had
during two action-packed days, and 15 different
sessions.
Feel free to share this summary, especially with
those colleagues who could not join us.
The QTS Team
Unofficial lessons to be
learned from an auditor 2
Why did you place a toy
by my seat? 2
Learning Myths – Time
to let go of outdated
practices
3
On-Boarding New Hires:
Best Practices 4
Testing the Waters with a
New Concept from QTS:
The System Operator 5
Rodeo
New Report Builder: If
You Can Think It, You
Can Build It!
6
Other QTD and Moduledriven
Sessions 7
QTD User Benchmark:
How SMUD is using QTD 7
2017 Training Trends
Presentation Notes 8
General Session Notes
8
Summary of Trend:
Curation 8
Summary of Trend:
Micro-learning 9
Summary of Trend:
Visual Learning/Visual
Narrative
9
Summary of Trend: Brain
Science 10
Lessons learned from
“Pop” 11
Tips and Tricks for
Creating Great eLearning
Courses
11
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
1

U n o f f i c i a l lessons to be
l e a r n e d from an auditor
One of this year’s most
anticipated guest speakers
was Mike Wells, Auditor
from the WECC region.
Mike graciously offered
to share his unofficial
perspectives on what
auditors are looking for
when conducting a PER-005
audit. The following are
some key lessons the QTS Staffers learned from Mike’s
presentation:
Lesson 1. Don’t underestimate the importance of
the annual review – do NOT take the approach of “if
it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Things change all the time
and you should ensure your training is staying current
with the times.
Lesson 2. If all the auditors see when they conduct
an audit on your information is reliability-related
tasks, it gives the impression that all you’re doing
is the bare minimum, and you’re not working on
developing a culture of compliance (you’re developing
a culture of doing the bare minimum to get by).
Lesson 3. IDPs – individual plans don’t need to be
unique to each individual person, but they should
be matched to close the developmental gaps of
individuals (i.e. several individuals might have similar
skill or knowledge gaps that need to be closed – the
plans should match these).
Lesson 4. No training records or training process
records = no compliance.
Lesson 5. Internal controls will be a focus of 2018
audits for the WECC region. If auditors see you have
good internal controls, they may decide to audit you
less frequently in the future.
Lesson 6. The state of PER-005 evidence today:
Auditors see good documentation of performing
training, but information is lacking is how control
centers decide what to train on. There is not much
evidence to document the development and practice
of training processes.
Knowledge tidbit: While NERC has been levying
lower fines now, you can still easily see fines of
up to $100K. Additional update: the “compliance
exception” category has now been added, which does
not carry a fine.
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
WHY DID YOU PLACE
A TOY BY MY SEAT?
This year’s user conference participants
found a “fiddle toy” at their seat. While
some participants pushed the toy aside,
other participants made friends with the
toy and used it to twirl, pull, snap, and
twist these new companions throughout
the conference. The mystery of the toys
was solved in the 2017 Training Trends
breakout session where we learned that
counter to traditional beliefs, fidgeting and
fiddling helps us learn. Accepting fidgeting
and providing something to fiddle with is
becoming common practice in schools
– and we all know that the process of
learning is the same for children and
adults, so feel free to provide some fidget
toys for your adult learners. In case you
are wondering, yes, more than half of the
conference participants were spotted at
one point in time fiddling.
Conference Participant
“Aha”: Fidgeting can be
distracting to the trainer,
but we need to make a
mindset shift to allow for
this, as the student might
be learning while doing it.
2

Learning Myths:
Time to let go of outdated practices
Remember the VAK Model? It’s the one where you take
an assessment to discover if you are more of an Auditory,
Visual or Kinesthetic learner? It turns out - there is NO
research that supports the VAK model! Our learning
styles vary with what we need to learn. For example, if
we must learn how write a switching order, it is better to
write the switch order than to see pictures of how to do
it. Lesson learned – forget about tailoring your training to
learning styles, focus instead on the best way to deliver
training for the given topic. Other learning myths we
debunked include the following:
Myth: 10,000 hours of practice makes an expert.
There is no evidence that time put in makes an expert.
Yes, our trainees need practice, but time alone will not
make them experts. The differentiating factor for us to
master a skill is getting constructive feedback on how
we can do better. Lesson learned – provide plenty of
constructive feedback during training, simulator, and OJT
sessions on how the trainees can improve their skills and
task performance.
Myth: Left Brain vs Right Brain.
Actually, both sides of our brain work
together. Here is what has not changed:
The process of how we learn! When
developing training it is important to
provide learners ample opportunity to
practice the new skill or how to retrieve
the new knowledge. If you don’t use
it, you lose it! Training needs to be as
engaging as possible to allow people to
utilize the information, so they recall it
when needed.
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
3

On-Boarding New
Hires: Best Practices
In this session, we shared
that on-boarding is not
to be confused with
new hire training,
which typically is
completed by the HR
department. A solid onboarding
process will set
a newly-hired employee on a
solid path
for training success. The key is to
figure out the required skill and knowledge level
for the role, determining where the individual
is at, and then match the training to their
specific needs. Both a training map detailing
the initial training program as well as IDPs help
communicate training
expectations to the new hire.
Here is a list of “real-world”,
on-boarding best practices
user conference participants
shared during this session:
• Involve the new hire in
their training process.
Not involving the new
hire or introducing them
to key players can make
them feel unwanted and
send an unintended message that they’re not
welcome.
• Assign a trainee to a specific senior operator/
mentor as a part of their onboarding
and have the trainee
follow the same shift schedule.
• Have two senior operators sign off
on new hire readiness to perform
tasks to ensure the team agrees
on the trainee’s capabilities to
perform tasks on their own.
• Establish an interview a panel of
senior operators to discuss and
agree on the new hire’s readiness to sit the
desk.
• Ask the senior operators to complete a
“report card” on the new hire they’ve been
paired with to rate their training progress or
readiness to sit the desk.
• Pairing the new hire with a mentor
throughout the entire program is a good
idea, but it’s important to select a mentor
with the right attitude. It is also important to
ensure all the mentors are on the same page,
if you’re working a group of new hires into
the team.
Overall, it takes a team to train a new hire
system operator – so look for ways to engage
all of the control center in the process.
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
4

Testing The
waters with a
new concept
from QTS:
The System
Operator
RODEO
From time to time, QTS likes to use User
Conference attendees as a focus group
to get their take on new concepts, product
enhancements, and more. In this conversation,
we talked about an emerging idea – the System
Operator Rodeo. The thinking behind this event
is simple:
Lineman can showcase skills important to their
craft and compete with each other, so why not
provide an opportunity for system operators to
do the same? No, system operators would not
climb poles, but they could compete against each
other to resolve a given system condition safely,
correctly, and in a timely fashion.
User Conference participants debated the pros
and cons to starting up a system operator rodeo.
On the pro side, such a competition fosters
critical thinking, system awareness, ability to read
and interpret system data independently of a
company’s specific system – skills that are a hot
commodity in a new reality that includes higher
turnover rates in the system operator ranks. On
the con side, participants would have to learn a
generic system to participate, which would take
away from training time on the company-specific
system. Logistics of such an event would also
have to be considered. One option discussed
was the use of the Mini Power System at the
EPTC.
Overall, a number of conference participants
were intrigued about this idea – so much so that
QTS will send out an invite in 2018 to further
explore possibilities with interested parties.
Could this be the industry’s next big thing? We’ll
find out…
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
5

Excel Plug-in
Report
Designer
Data Library
Reports
you need
Custom Report Builder
Time Saving
New Report Builder: If You Can Think It,
You Can Build It!
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
6

Other QTD and Module-driven Sessions:
How to use EMP and TDT
How to track Apprenticeship programs in QTD
Top 5 Mistakes in using QTD and how to avoid them
Several other sessions focused in-depth on specific topics or applications of QTD or
individual modules. Many other conversations occurred throughout the conference,
where attendees honed their skills and got answers to challenging questions.
Rather than attempt to spell these all out here, we’d recommend checking out our
instructional videos on the new-and-improved QTS website! We’re building a library
of short video snippets that customers can access, wherever and
whenever they need a quick tip or tutorial, and we will periodically
add to the growing collection that’s already posted – visit https://
qualitytrainingsystems.com/download-2/ for more information
and helpful clips today!
QTD User Benchmark:
How SMUD is using QTD
a presentation by Lori Peterson and Kevin Riedinger
Conference participants had the opportunity to get a view of how SMUD is using the
GAP Survey feature of QTD to gather detailed feedback on their system operators level
of comfort using control center tools and performing tasks. Feedback from the gap
survey is used to plan and design targeted continuing training for the operators. Key to
a successful gap survey analysis is to structure the questions the job incumbents need
to answer in a non-threating way.
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
7

2017 Training Trends
Presentation Notes
In this interactive workshop session,
participants learned about the latest (and
sometimes surprising!) research surrounding
the latest training trends. This segment
provided attendees with an overview of many
of the “hot topics” training professionals
encounter in the course of their work today,
including curation, micro-learning, and how
people really learn. More than one light
bulb went off – check out the following
summarized take-aways and lessonslearned
for a quick download on the
conversations!
Summary of Trend: Curation
• Curation = knowledge management, structuring data
in a way that makes it easier for individuals to use
quickly.
• Helps you to efficiently use data in your operations.
• Data overload is occurring now; curation makes it
easier to use all the information that’s out there
now.
General
session
notes:
Comments from participants:
“A-ha”: The fact that 10,000 hours
doing something does not equal
mastery is surprising, but makes
sense.
Idea: Group review and discussion
with learners after they’ve taken
CBT’s is a great technique to
supplement learning, especially
when it’s less than exciting!
Participants’ lessons learned about Curation:
• Information overload is a problem, it’s a “friction”
in the efficiency of operations. We have more of
a need now than ever before to get to relevant
information, quickly.
• Organization of information is not the same as good
curation of information.
• Curation needs to be done with a view toward actual
USE of the information, not just learning it.
• Curation can help you as a trainer focus your
training program on the critical things your
learners will need to get the work done.
• Pro-Tip: Give operators the skills
to figure out how they can
curate important.
information
themselves.
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
8

Summary of
Trend:
Micro-learning
Micro - learning: Small Learning
Units, Short-term Learning
Activities, Images, Short Videos.
Participants’ lessons learned about
Micro-learning:
• Micro-learning can actually benefit trainers too – it could
reduce manpower hours needed to deliver training.
• Micro-learning allows learners to learn at their own pace.
This is increasingly important for the new generation of
employees joining the workforce.
• Could be applied via videos for operator training. The
majority of the workforce is now millennials who want
technology and engagement with their learning, and short
bursts align well with their attention span; we can reduce
training time and increase ROI as a result of this.
• Allows the learner to match what they want to learn about to
what they’re taught.
• Could be a video library with short videos on different pieces of equipment.
• Trend is toward helping people see where to get the info, not in giving the actual info.
• Solving the availability problem internally is a key aspect to using this technique.
• One challenge – people independently developing their own video training and it’s not SAT
or consistent with the way they should be getting trained.
• Could also be used to cover procedure changes.
Summary of Trend:
Visual Learning/Visual Narrative
Story using video, graphics, or audio to
enhance a story.
How can this trend be used for system operator training? Participants
shared some real-world examples of how they’ve applied it:
• Used in safety, used in simulators now. Safety pictures of accidents and victims stirs
emotions, gets people’s attention.
• There are different ways to use visualization (e.g. whiteboard drawings or use of props).
Regarding using props – one participant described using a conductor that’s broken as a
visual aid to talk about conductors that fall on the ground.
• Role play can be used in simulation. Have a field person be the operator to learn switching.
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
9

Summary of Trend: Brain Science
Your brain works more effectively when you apply brain science techniques like those described in “the 6 trumps” (see
graphic below). Google training using brain and cognitive science principles.
http://bowperson.com/2016/07/the-6-trumps-bookmark-to-go-with-the-6-trumps-guide/
Participants’ lessons-learned about brain science:
• Use of simulator, creation of work-books, games during class, providing breaks and
movement, playing with toys while learning – these all take advantage of what we know
about brain science.
• Leveraging brain science results in greater attention from learners.
• Research shows that children fidgeting is actually helping them learn, adults may learn the
same way. If your hands are doing something, you might be processing information better.
• CBTs should provide something for learners to do (i.e. activities with their hands), not
just dump content at them.
• The more the learners are made to do something while learning, the more they will retain.
If they work for it, they’ll learn and retain it better, but structure is key to this.
• Trainers need to include specific questions, specific timeframes, and add controls/
boundaries to their courses.
• Straight memorization is out – it’s been shown to be less effective than brain-sciencedriven
learning.
Six Trumps
Movement trumps sitting
Implement a training
exercise instead of a lecture.
Talking trumps listening
Ask questions and allow
trainees to respond out loud.
Images trump words
Include a visual presentation.
Writing trumps reading
Shorter trumps longer
Try a written exercise instead
of assigning several pages of
literature.
Allow breaks in between:
instead of sitting for 3 hours
break for 15 min after an hour.
Different trumps same
Switch up your courses;
don’t make them all the
same.
Note: Participants requested the link to one of the templates we used at the conference – this one from thebalance.com was a “Family Feud”
template we used in one of our gamification demonstrations.
https://www.thebalance.com/free-powerpoint-games-for-teachers-1358169
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
10

Lessons learned
from “Pop”,
a presentation by
Cullen Richie
Storytelling is always an engaging training
technique, and attendees to this session were
treated to a richly-detailed collection of tales
and lessons-learned from guest speaker Cullen
Richie of Tacoma Power. Tied to the story of
his grandfather’s life in a small town in North
Carolina, Cullen shared four lessons he learned
from Pop that help him in his role of System
Operator Trainer, to this day. We won’t attempt
to re-create his stories here, but we’re happy to
share the lessons he passed on to the audience,
from Pop.
Lesson 1: Adapt your skills and
tools to meet your customer’s
needs.
Lesson 2: Enhance your skills
and tools to grow with your
customer’s needs.
Lesson 3: Don’t be afraid of
hard work.
Lesson 4: Creativity may be
required (and it might become
your legacy).
Tips and Tricks for Creating Great eLearning Courses
eLearning remains a hot topic in the training world, at the 2017 User Conference was no exception.
This year’s discussion revolved around the characteristics of an engaging eLearning course. Think
for a moment, what’s the best e-learning course you’ve taken? What made it good? Often, we fall
back on using humor or animation to make the eLearning course engaging – which is useful within
reason.
Some of the Lessons Learned in this discussion, which were shared by participants, included:
• The online tool “Poll Everywhere” can be used
as a good ice-breaker tool in group training.
• Beware of acronyms! Be sure to write acronyms
out the first time, and don’t assume the audience
will know them.
• Storyboarding: Always think about looping back
into the process, if a step needs to be repeated.
Staying flexible is key, because you’ll start
big picture and then discover new details that
you weren’t aware of, and you’ll have to insert
them into the flow. Think early-on about the
functionality you’ll want to use throughout the
CBT, because you might be able to copy it again
and again if you plan it right.
www.QualityTrainingSystems.com Office: 443.755.0790
11