Our local ham radio club, the Tri-Lakes Monument Radio Association (WØTLM), just wrapped up another of its semi-annual license class offerings (November 2024). As Bob KØNR reported earlier this year in this blog piece, the club restructured its class offerings in 2024 to utilize Ham Radio School's online courses as the primary student learning content. This approach has students individually study the online lessons' content instead of the more traditional in-person or remote meeting group classroom with live instructor lectures. The results have been very impressive - a 100% pass rate for students taking the license exam. To date in 2024, over 70 successful student exams have been completed in the two class offerings.
Keeping It Together: The class is structured to keep all students progressing through the online learning content together. While the online content can be accessed by the student at any time convenient to his or her individual schedule, the class directors provide a pacing schedule that defines the expected lesson accomplishments or deadlines for the students. Along with encouragement and check-ins by the club's volunteer Elmers, the entire group learns in lockstep, facilitating group review sessions held weekly by online remote meeting.
A Personal Touch: While students learn using the online course readings, video lessons, reviews, quizzes and more, the club maintains a personal connection with each student through a combination of periodic in-person meetings, weekly remote meetings, and regular Elmer check-ins with students. Each course has at least three in-person group sessions for students in addition to the weekly remote meetings and Elmer check-ins:
Kick-off Session - Includes personal introductions, a class overview, background information on ham radio and its uses, a variety of ham radio operational demonstrations, and establishment of student expectations.
Dedicated Exam Session - An exam session with student seating priority held about one week after the expected completion of coursework.
Get On The Air (GOTA) Session - Held about one week after the exam, students receive assistance programming HT radios and making their first on-air calls by simplex and repeater communications.
The Elmer's Role: Prior class survey feedback clearly indicates the importance of having an Elmer assigned to each student who can provide on-demand help and encouragement. The club assigns 3 to 4 students to each Elmer to keep the responsibility easily manageable and to help ensure that Elmers can get to know students well. Elmers and students agree to a regular check-in schedule and communication method at the class kick-off session. Elmers also make themselves available for answering questions as needed by the student. During regular check-ins, Elmers often inquire about things the student has learned in the assigned lessons for the week to get a conversation going and to gauge student comprehension. Many club Elmers also provide shack visits for their assigned students, broadening their exposure to ham radio equipment and station setup options. Many Elmers and students in this year's class offerings have become well acquainted and established longer term mentoring relationships. Clearly, the Elmer is a key component to a successful class offering.
Tech + General in Parallel: In this recent fall class offering, the club expanded the license class options beyond just a Technician License Class. Instead, the class offered students the option of adding General License study as well, utilizing the Ham Radio School online General License Course. The General License study option was available to students possessing no license or to students already possessing a Technician license. For the brand new student with no license, taking on both Technician and General content simultaneously was recommended only for those possessing a good technical background and who were comfortable with science and mathematics topics. To date, 5 of 35 students in the class have taken and passed both the Technician and General exams, while two additional students already possessing the Technician license upgraded to General.
For students seeking to go from scratch to General, Ham Radio School provided a recommended combined lesson sequence blending the Technician and General License Courses' lessons. In this blended lesson sequence, the Technician License Course lesson sequence is followed primarily, and General License Course lessons are injected at appropriate points. This way, a student can study both Tech and General content together by topic, first covering the topic at the Technician level and then deepening their understanding with closely related General learning content. Student feedback on this experimental parallel course is pending, but the 100% pass rate for the students who have attempted it is a good early indicator that it worked well.
Tentative Conclusions: Student survey feedback is still pending, and a handful of students who delayed taking the exam have yet to report their results. However, the perfect success achieved with 80% of the class reporting results so far is very encouraging. And, this includes 20% of the total class enrollment achieving the General License. We will update this report in a later blog piece once survey data and remaining exam results are collected.
We are sharing this experience to encourage existing and potential license class instructors to consider this class structure. While it still takes a bit of work to provide students an exceptional license class experience, the Ham Radio School online courses vastly reduce the preparatory burden. It takes a big load off the instructors and provides much greater flexibility for the students. It allows the instructor team to focus on individual student needs and providing hands-on fun demonstrations and activities, improving student success rates. We hope you'll give it a try with your next class offering, and we're confident you will see the results with your students.
If you are interested in offering a license class using the Ham Radio School online course approach, drop us a note and we'll be happy to help with your planning.