Book Image

User Training for Busy Programmers

By : William Rice, William Rice
Book Image

User Training for Busy Programmers

By: William Rice, 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)

Write the Learning Objectives


For each class that you intend to develop, you must ask the question, "What all do my students need to be able to do after this class?"

You will probably have several answers to this question. That is, you will probably have several goals for each class. Each of these answers is a learning objective. Your answers to this question must be specific and stated in business terms. For instance, consider our auto insurance claim example. "Use our new accident claim system" is not an acceptable answer. Use which parts of the system? For doing what? Under what circumstances?

"Enter and edit claims using our claim system" is just specific enough to be reassuring. It’s also ambiguous enough to allow the scope of the course to keep expanding until it’s larger than you imagined. What kind of claims? When? Define ‘edit’.

"Enter claims for in-state accidents, and edit the incident reports for in-state claims that are still pending" is a good starting point for developing a...