19 January 2022

Excel Training Course Experience

Chloe Feather

Red Tiger Consulting

CATEGORIES

In November 2021 I took part in the Intermediate Excel for Analysis excel training course run by Red Tiger Training, and so I felt it would be a good idea to share my experience to provide an in-depth look into the course, and reflect on its usefulness long-term.

Now I have to admit that I was no great user of Excel prior to the course, with my level of ability and knowledge reaching as far as what I had been taught and needed for university/school. Even then, it had been a good 8 months or so since I had opened Excel by the time it came to the RT Training course; it was safe to say my skills were somewhat rusty and in need of a refresher. I knew the basics of Excel along with some count and maths functions from GIS/data-mapping related university modules, but for the most part the course content was new to me.

EXCEL TRAINING COURSE STRUCTURE

Excel Training Course - person using a laptop with excel document open
Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

A week before the sessions, we received the digital content to browse and familiarise ourselves with, which I found very useful as I like to have an idea of what we will be covering beforehand. On the actual course, the day is broken up into 4 sessions which is a great way to cover the content in depth whilst having time for breaks to consolidate learning (and get a coffee!). I found the first few sessions to be great refreshers for me personally – it’s surprising how many of the more basic tasks in Excel you can forget about!

In terms of the excel training course structure, the individual session format was clearly laid out and I appreciated how the sessions got progressively harder, with the majority of the afternoon content being new to me. This was great as it gave me the opportunity to really enhance and challenge my learning, but it also makes the course suitable for a range of people with varying Excel knowledge. Although there was a lot of new information to take in, I didn’t feel rushed or overwhelmed at all as the tutors were great at thoroughly explaining everything and providing additional help when necessary.

I liked having the functions broken down in written terms and then followed up with practical examples, as that helped to solidify what they actually did and how they can be used in relevant scenarios. The sessions went at a good pace that I felt matched what the students on the course needed, with it being a friendly and interactive environment that encouraged people to ask questions throughout if need be. I found this interactive setting to be great for learning new content, especially for software like Excel that can get confusing or where things can go wrong at times and you need someone else’s input!

POST-COURSE ASSIGNMENT

After the excel training course, we get to keep digital copies of the presentation and worked examples along with a recording of the sessions, which is a great way to refresh our knowledge in future by going over the content again. We are then given a deadline to complete and submit an assignment that assess what we had learnt. The assignment is set out to reflect a realistic scenario in which we may need to use these functions with data in our actual working days, rather than simply going through a list of questions that have no integrated context.

This style of assessment was a great way of testing everything we had learnt in the sessions, covering all the different functions but in a way that actually felt useful and even helped me to understand some of the trickier functions more. I appreciated having two sets of instructions to work from (the standard ones and a more challenging set), which I think would be great to reuse in future if I want to brush over my skills, highlighting the longer-term usability of the course.

Overall, I feel that I have gained a lot from the Intermediate Excel for Analysis excel training course sessions in terms of what I can now do with Excel, feeling much more confident and comfortable with using the various functions and features for work (and even for personal planning spreadsheets!).

Back to All Posts

Published by Chloe Feather

Chloe is a recent Human Geography graduate from the University of Leeds, working as Red Tiger’s Research and Marketing Manager

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *