Book Image

User Training for Busy Programmers

By : William Rice
Book Image

User Training for Busy Programmers

By: William Rice

Overview of this book

If you need to write a successful software training course and are unsure of how to start, then this book gets right to the point with clear, concise directions for developing an end-user software course. This step-by-step job aid walks you through the process of developing a successful, instructor-led software class. There are many good books on training theory. This book takes a more practical, condensed approach for when you don't have time to learn training theory. It is based on fifteen years of technical writing and training experience. In under 100 pages, the book guides you through the process of developing an end-user software course using a method that is tested, proven, and based upon sound instructional theory.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Who Needs to be Trained?


"Who needs to be trained?" is the first question you must answer. Not "What do my students need to know?" or "When do they need to be trained by?"

In the training profession, we call discovering who needs the training and what they need to know an audience analysis. Many people who conduct this analysis assume that they have only one audience, with only one set of goals. Don’t make this assumption. Your audience might include managers who need to know only what the software is capable of, users who need to know how to use it, and technical support people who need to know how to troubleshoot it.

Consider training people to use particular software for say, processing auto insurance claims. To accommodate different audiences, you might need a series of courses. Here are some possible audiences:

  • Managers

  • Users

  • Sales

  • System Administrators

  • Technical and User Support

Here is a list of information you might include in the courses:

  • Business needs addressed by the software: Example...