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)

Chapter 5. Develop the Demo

In a software class, usually the best way to teach how to perform a task is by demonstrations. This section discusses how to develop an effective teaching demonstration.

Write the Demo Instructions

Remember that the purpose of the demo is to enable the students to complete the in-class exercise successfully. Therefore, your demo should use the same core functions that the students will use during the exercise.

Look through the exercise that you developed for this unit, and identify the menu options and functions that are essential for successfully completing the exercise. For example, if the purpose of the exercise is to create a new customer, the menu items that are used to create a new record and the required fields in the New Customer screen would be core functions. Any other optional information about the customer would not be a core function.

When writing your demo, you can literally make a copy of the directions for the exercise. Then change the data that...