Bill – in fairness, there may be people in the class that find that sort of fluff engaging. I come from a math and science background – fluff and classrooms don’t mix for me. And I do enjoy the discussion, as long as it stays on topic, and doesn’t degrade into story-time. That’s why I keep doing live continuing ed, and not online classes.

Scott – my favorite continuing ed classes are the ones where the instructor will say, “Now, put a star by that, you might see a question on the test that says something like…”. And at the end of 3 hours, you have 20 stars, and 20 questions on the test. That’s not teaching me material, that’s memorization.

I realize it’s not practical to have five different broker courses for every sort of person. But I feel like the current course isn’t aiming at the middle. It’s aiming at the bottom quartile. In every other education I’ve had except real estate – ballet, college, scuba – there were expectations set that we had to meet. We had to come up to that level in order to move on. And once you moved on to the next level, there were fresh challenges and levels expected of you. I don’t find that to be true in real estate at all – in terms of the formal education offered.

Why couldn’t they put half those hours online and fail people out for showing up unprepared for the classrooms?

Furthermore — I REALLY don’t like (as you mentioned) when an instructor over-promises at the start of the class telling me there will be SOOO much information conveyed!

As an example, let’s take easements. You got your 4 kinds. Great. Here’s the drawing (the same drawing every time), here’s what each is, here’s examples of their use. Now, instead of telling me 4 stories about different transactions where there was a trouble easement, why don’t you tell me one and then review how to identify easements, ways I might be able to mitigate that risk in my business practices especially if I’m a broker and have my own agents. But that’s not on the exam, so we don’t go over it.

They start the course by saying they’re going to cram so much stuff into your head that you should take the exam immediately before it all leaks out. I have trouble with that premise. The stuff we’re learning is basically all review – if you didn’t know this stuff before, or if it didn’t jog your memory after a review, then how can you read a prelim? How can you measure a room? How can you read and understand all the REO contract addenda that your client has to sign? How have you made it this far?

Can you imagine if our test scores were made public? Agent X passed the national exam in one try with a 97%. Agent Y took 3 tries, and finally passed with a 78% on the last try. All this talk about ranking agents, no one mentions that.

/rant

Matt’s right, the retention rate in classroom training IS better, but I’ve always had problems keeping up with classroom training simply because of the tangents the instructor inevitably seems to go off on. It’s got to be hard as an instructor to keep on task AND make sure that you’re teaching the material in a way that everyone, with different learning styles, can best absorb, though … maybe that’s one reason why some instructors tell so many random stories.

Doesn’t matter though … you still can’t touch the thermostat! Good luck with the classes.

Sorry it sucks, but I’m still glad you’re moving that direction. I’ve always felt that being a broker is the best place to be as an agent. The freedom to (or potential ability to) run your own business is the best part of being an agent.

If they presented the information, you took a quiz and could go home… people with questions or who wanted extended discussion could stay and do that.

But literally – enya and the ‘A B Cs of being a Real Estate Broker’? Ridiculous.

I am glad to hear that you’re moving in the Broker direction. I know you’ll do well!