RE: Developing training materials

[Gregory P Sweet <gps03 -at- health -dot- state -dot- ny -dot- us>]

Sorry this next bit needs to be shouted: POWERPOINT DOES NOT EQUAL
TRAINING!

While it is a very useful, powerful, and fun tool, just because you call a
slide show "training" does not mean that you are creating a learning
experience. Likewise training is not standing in front of a room and
talking.

You have much background to catch up on before you even attempt to put pen
to paper (or pixel to screen) on this. Establish for yourself a solid
foundation in adult-education topics, learning styles, assessment
methodology, etc., at the very least learn to write a proper course
objective. It should only take a year or so to get the basics down. And
unless you do, you have no business trying to create training, there is a
reason why you can earn advanced degrees in education and instructional
design.  And before everyone jumps down my throat, put the shoe on the
other foot and you think good and hard about statements like "Anyone can be
a technical writer, you just have to know Word or Framemaker." And I'll say
again, powerpoint does not equal training.

So by all means if you are interested in wasting people's time with yet
another worthless pile of slideuments, go ahead and write up whatever crap
you want and call it training.  If on the other hand you are interested in
imparting knowledge to the people good enough to give you their time,
you'll spare them the powerpoint and _purchase_ a solid, well-tested
curriculum. And here's a test when your shopping, if they won't send you an
eval copy of the course, you don't want it.

Yeah I'm bein' rough this morning. It was a hard weekend, I'm cranky and
this nonsense about powerpoint just angrys up the blood!

-greg

techwr-l-bounces+gps03=health -dot- state -dot- ny -dot- us -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com wrote on
05/09/2008 09:07:17 PM:

<Snip blah; blah; blah; some nonsense about the bast way to format a
slideument;>
> I wouldn't do double-sided because that gets messy when writing on both
> sides and referencing is easier without having to flip over pages.  I
have
> done handouts with one slide and a lined page beneath the slide to make


> > I'd knock out a really *good* PowerPoint presentation with handouts
> > featuring three slides per page and a space to the right of
</Snip blah; blah; blah; some nonsense about the bast way to format a
slideument;>

> >
> > On 5/9/08, Rob Hudson <caveatrob -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I was recently approached by a client who wishes to give a one-day,
> > > 8-hour seminar to his clients about basic PC and Networking
> > concepts.
> > > He's asked me to develop the course for him based on an outline of
> > > topics that he'd like to cover.
> > >
> > > What kinds of deliverables would such a project include? I've
> > > considered some form of lesson plan, handouts, and
> > "take-away" items,
> > > but haven't ever "designed" a course before. This is for a small
> > > company and will be delivered to about four to ten students per
> > > session.
> > >
> > > Any resources for templates for this sort of thing? Or for
> > pricing out
> > > the effort of developing such a course?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Rob
> > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^




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