The Sutherland academy puts emphasis on the students' personal preparation who must familiarize themselves with the theoretical contents of a seminar before it starts. At the beginning of the seminar the teacher answers questions related to the theoretical contents to quickly put the emphasis on integrating the theoretical contents and practice. Practice representing 80 % of the training.

Every year of study includes 7 seminars (6 seminars of 4 days from Thursday to Sunday and a 5 days seminar on Wednesday to Sunday) given at about 6 weeks interval, which gives you the possibility of working full-time while taking your training.

To support the student preparation and learning :

- The duplicated lecture notes and the learning guides are given before the seminar. This allows the student to discover, deepen and get ready for the subject of the next seminar and to be able also to ask pertinent questions to the teacher.

- During the practice part of a seminary, alternately, the students photograph technical demonstrations, with a digital camera. Then students regroup to conceive their own course notebook, which will be corrected by the teacher before distributing it to all the students in the group. It is about group work that is an important element of training.

Typical sequence of an inter-seminar period (6 to 8 weeks) :

- Reading the duplicated lecture notes ;

- Answering the learning guide's questions ;

- Read the books required for the training ;

- Review and integrate the practical and theoretical material of the previous seminar ;

- Practice the techniques learned during the previous seminar with the reference document of the previous promotions at the students disposal on the Academy's secured Web server, while waiting for the distribution the corrected work group.