Truckee Roundhouse Curriculum

The problem

The Truckee Roundhouse is a community makerspace with expensive, specialized equipment: CNC lasers, lathes, a full wood shop, and metal shop. Safety training and equipment operation knowledge lived in the heads of a few experienced instructors. When those people moved on, their institutional knowledge left with them. The Roundhouse had no centralized system to track who had received training or been approved to use specific equipment, creating high liability risk if someone injured themselves, others, or damaged the machines. Instructors also taught differently, so there was no good way to verify that all members understood the fundamentals before using equipment independently.

Approach

I worked directly with subject matter experts across pottery, woodworking, metal shop, and textiles to formalize the onboarding process and identify key information that all users needed to demonstrate competency on. I recorded and edited video documentation of basic equipment operation and created a YouTube channel (youtube.com/@truckeeroundhouse4712) to organize all training materials in one place. From there, I built curriculum frameworks for each discipline, developed a quiz system using Google Forms to formalize assessments, and trained staff on how to create, modify, and improve the quizzes over time. I also designed a teach-the-teacher program to support new instructors as they onboarded and a feedback system for students to share what was working well with classes and trainings so the Roundhouse could iterate continuously.

Process

1. 1

   Subject matter expert collaboration

   Met with experienced instructors across pottery, woodworking, metal shop, and textiles to identify critical safety knowledge, equipment-specific risks, and the foundational competencies every user needed before working independently.

2. 2

   Onboarding process formalization

   Documented the step-by-step onboarding flow for each discipline, defining what needed to be taught, demonstrated, and tested before a member could be approved to use specific equipment.

3. 3

   Video documentation and YouTube organization

   Recorded instructional videos documenting the basic operation of all major equipment at the Roundhouse. Edited and uploaded the videos to a dedicated YouTube channel (youtube.com/@truckeeroundhouse4712), organizing playlists by discipline so members could reference training materials independently. The most popular video reached over 28,000 views.

4. 4

   Curriculum development across disciplines

   Built structured curriculum for pottery, woodworking, metal shop, and textiles, defining learning objectives, key skills, safety protocols, and assessment criteria for each discipline.

5. 5

   Quiz system design and staff training

   Developed a Google Form quiz system to formalize competency testing. Trained Roundhouse staff on how to create new quizzes, modify existing assessments, and use quiz data to improve training quality over time.

6. 6

   Teach-the-teacher program

   Designed a framework to onboard new instructors consistently, including how to deliver safety training, what to emphasize in demonstrations, how to assess readiness, and how to use the video library and quiz system as teaching resources.

7. 7

   Student feedback system implementation

   Built a feedback mechanism for students to share what was working well in classes and trainings, giving the Roundhouse continuous data to refine curriculum, instructor support, and operations.

8. 8

   Sustained adoption and scale

   The quiz system remained in active use from 2022 through 2026 and beyond, with hundreds of volunteers completing safety certifications through the formalized curriculum. The system proved durable enough to survive staff turnover and organizational change, fulfilling the original goal of preserving institutional knowledge independent of any single instructor.

Outcome

Formalized safety training across pottery, woodworking, metal shop, and textiles with video-documented equipment operation, Google Form quiz assessments, a teach-the-teacher framework for new instructors, and a student feedback system. The quiz system has remained in active use since 2022, with hundreds of volunteers completing safety certifications through the formalized curriculum. The Roundhouse reduced institutional knowledge loss when instructors left, standardized fundamentals across all instructors, and lowered liability risk for injuries to people and equipment. Training videos reached 28,000+ views on the most popular video, demonstrating substantial community reach beyond in-person instruction.

Stack & services

• • Safety training formalization
• • Curriculum development
• • Video documentation
• • Assessment system design
• • Instructor training program
• • Feedback system implementation