I’m an unlimited member and get frequent emails for discounts on eLearning and online courses. So I get a Father’s Day special offering a mix of courses from Fine Woodworking and Fine Home Building including the Fundamentals of Handplanes by Mike Pekovich. I love Mike’s Video Workshop courses and signed up for the course at the discount price of $35.40. I started watching and found it was all vaguely familiar. Turns out it is EXACTLY the same course as the Video Workshop offered on the website, which I get as an unlimited member. What a rip off! Guess we’re beginning to see the influence of AIM in action as they slowly drive this fantastic publication into the ground as they squeeze every penny they can from it. Happy Father’s Day sucker.
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Replies
It would be helpful to AIM if they would lower themselves to the customer and check various forums to put a finger on the pulse of its customer base.
it has to be an enormous task to actually go through all of the different sources of materials that are out there now under the AIM umbrella and try to not have something that doesn't have significant overlap.
I don't envy those who get stuck with that. Maybe this is the kind of thing AI can do OK, but I doubt it will do it really well.
The bait and switch is not intentional, and it's supposed to be noted that the course is a part of the membership. We'll get that fixed. Please send eLearning an email and they'll get you refunded right away.
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Thanks Ben. Sorry to be so cynical, but I just hope FWW stays intact. You guys do a great job.
Thanks for clarifying Mr. Strano. Hopefully the community can help point out things like this that have been missed in communication. Certainly with the amount of legacy content FWW provides it's difficult to keep everything straight!
At least some of the elearning courses are bound to repeat information passed on over the years by various professionals. There is only so much information available on each topic; actually more than most of us can embed in our brains. I regularly use FWW Unlimited as a resource on various topics when I'm not sure about a technique, a finish, a joint, etc. I find it very helpful. My experience with almost all online courses, regardless of the host, is that there is so much information I can generally only hang onto a portion of it; usually the portion that applies most directly to me or a project I have or am currently working on. Because I can find most of what I need via my Unlimited membership, I have decided that is what I pay the annual fee for and use it regularly. Whether a particular online course provides additional information relevant to my work is always up for grabs. What I retain after the course is even more of an unknown and depends on a lot of factors. This isn't to say that online courses aren't a useful resource. I do, however, think elearning or online courses are much more useful for beginners or for those who have no knowledge of a particular topic rather than woodworkers with more experience and those looking for a more specific topic to assist in a project.
I purchased $500 in e-learning courses during 2023 and it was disclosed prominently that course materials would be removed after one year. Who benefits from this policy? Anyone on management or staff think I am going to re-purchase the Pekovich course for another year for $300 so I can have access to the videos again? I can see possibly building a library of e-learning courses if you know you have access to them for life, like Amazon videos that you purchase. You can go back to them and re-watch at leisure when you want.
Roger makes a good point. There are a wide variety of policies for online demos and courses, ranging from allowing access for 30 days to lifetime. While I have some empathy for a limit on access for 2-hour demos which show a technique or process and cost in the range of $10-$20. However, even some of those give access for life once you paid the initial demo fee.
I equate access to more expensive and extensive online courses like FWW has begun to offer to buying and owning a DVD or a book (hard cover or ebook); a resource that you can use in the future when you might need to refresh your memory for planning a new project or in the middle for a particular technuique. The audience for these elearning courses are people who generally are not professionals (maybe some are but not most). For those of us who don't regularly get in the shop everyday and don't design and construct high end projects as part of our everyday life, we need to be able to use these $100 - $300 course videos and material as a resource down the road when we need it.
If there is some significant cost to storing the videos and material, maybe there should be a surcharge for those particiapants who want to access the material in perpetuity. However, I would add, data and archival storage is realatively cheap these days and it seems to me that the course fee could be increased slightly for everyone to provide permanent access.
Right now, I have been interested in a couple of FWW elearning courses. However, there are 2 things which always stop me. The first is that generally there is no access to enough detail online prior to the course to determine whether the course gives me enough added knowledge to make it worth the price. (This may be changing. I don't know as I haven't investigated any courses for some time because I couldn't get a handle on their benefits with the information provided.) Second, the retention issue needs to be addressed also. It just makes sense that a participant who pays the cost of these courses should have access when he/she needs it, not just when FWW feels they need it.
I can see both sides of this, but the Netflix password sharing crackdown shows just how prevalent second-generation access to content has become. "Use my login" seems to be pretty common today.
If you take a class you get some limited access to the teacher for some amount of time after, but not the ability to re-take the class, and certainly not the ability to have a pal sit in on it with you. High quality content is expensive to produce. I think a year of access is generous, and possibly foolish from the FW side of the coin.
If you buy a book or a DVD you are licensing the content transferred with the physical possession of the item. You can re-read, give away, sell, or destroy that content but NOT make copies. When you sign up for a class you are paying tuition for the experience of the class over its fixed timeframe. Experiences and value obtained are largely dependent on the students' ability to show up prepared, pay attention, take notes, and do the homework. The student does not own the content, only what they are able to retain. A year of access equates to a school allowing you to sit in at the back of the next class and take better notes, pretty good I'd say.
All of what mj says is correct. However, when you buy a DVD or a book you aren't generally paying a couple of hundred dollars for the access. I admit I haven't taken any FWW elearning courses yet (started once but ended up not for the reason I gave in my previous post). While it's true that for, in person, courses, you pay a lot more and travel costs a lot these days, you do get a much fuller experience, a small group experience with personal attention, and hands on coaching, none of which you really get with an online course. One of the main things I would get from an online ecourse is the value it gives me as an ongoing resource.
Partly this isn't a huge decision for me as I've been a woodworker for 45+ years and can probably get along with the resources I currently own, my in-person class experiences, and a lot of experience making things and making mistakes. I just feel some empathy for those who are more toward the beginner end of the experience spectrum who may not have the same resources to draw from I have. I find that all resources available to me are valuable even though I have quite a bit of experience and many tools.
Is FWW the only one following this model?
As a consumer I couldn’t support that.
Many professional woodworkers and turners have moved to online classes and demos to supplement their income since Covid. In addition, traveling to in-person classes is extremely expensive; a 4-day class costing $3000 including travel, lodging, and meals. The consumer has to be really sure the value for him/her is there before spending that kind of money (at least that's true for most of us). So, online classes and master woodworking curriculums have become a way of doing business; a reasonable one for sure. Online demos are, for sure, a great resource; usually inexpensive, a couple of hours long, and directed toward a type of project or a specific set of skills. I have done a number of them and feel they generally are a good use of money. Online classes, however, need to be evaluated on a case by case basis. Is the topic something that will provide a couple of hundred dollars of value or are there online videos which could serve the same purpose? Is the instructor, not only well-known in woodworking and can he/she pull off an online class and make it worthwhile? Access after the class or multiple class course is another issue to assess. If it's a skill that will take some time to develop on your own, you may need access over a longer time after the class. Many classes don't offer extended access. FWW's policy isn't the most liberal nor the least. It's not bad. The one thing I have found is that, in advance, I need to be absolutely sure the class will cover topics I really need. The one thing has been lacking with FWW is access to sufficient information to determine the class's use to me and to prepare in advance by getting the materials together and having access to the right tools. If this detail isn't available, I'm not going to sign up. I'll find another way; generally less expensive. So, from a "model" standpoint, FWW is conceptually not unlike other resources. Policy-wise there is a wide range of guidelines and restrictions, depending on the vendor or professional.
For me, having access to a number of courses is most attractive while paying a monthly fee: Cosman or McLauglin for example. The cost for 1 year is competitive with one of those FWW courses. And you know exactly what you’re paying for.
Of course it depends on what you want from your woodworking.
Just went to the Active Interest Media website and saw that Mike Pekovich is listed as the Editorial Director of Fine Woodworking! Now I'm far less certain of FWW's demise.
A few years ago, I purchased a guitar building class that I could download or access from my library online. I refer to it refer to often over that time.
I received Gary Rogowski's router class for Christmas and was very disappointed when I found the one year limitation. I won't be buying any classes until that limitation is removed.