Re: Training Materials vrs User's Guides/Online Help

[Edwin Skau <eddy -dot- skau -at- gmail -dot- com>]

>From what I've seen and worked on:

User manuals are often application oriented. Even if best practices in
user documentation do recommend a user task-based approach (some
manuals implement them and some don't), the user task-based "approach"
is the perspective used to present the application.

Training is almost always role-based. Training is (or should be) more
customized material  intented to take a particular skills profile from
one level of capability to the next.

While training is goal oriented, user documentation is task oriented
(smaller, distributed goals in very restricted, often abstracted
contexts).

Because our world is often defined in wide bands of grey with
feathered edges, the above distinction may not always be obvious. But
if you're looking for a specific difference, I think that would be it.

You can extrapolate that into lists of points for your presentation.

Hope this helps.

-ed

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