RE: How do you conduct live software training workshops properly

["Daniel Ng" <kjng -at- gprotechnologies -dot- com>]

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What a gem! 

That's why I love this list and its contributors...how pertinent.


A training database is...
 - A list of attendees?
 - A spreadsheet with a list of training feedback questions/answers? 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jessica Weissman [mailto:Jessica -dot- Weissman -at- hillcrestlabs -dot- com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:45 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: How do you conduct live software training workshops properly

The last time I did serious software training was as part of a rollout for a
new custom system in a Federal agency.

The new system gave users more freedom to use their judgment, but was more
complex than the previous system; tasks would take a bit longer until users
were as familiar with the new system as they were with the old system.  They
were moving from old character-based terminals to Windows clients.

So I had to convey both the goals of the new system and how to do the daily
tasks using it.

We had a training database, a training manual, and an exercise set.  I led
people through each task deemed worth teaching, took their questions, then
let them do more examples drawn from the manual on their own.

We also had a comprehensive help system and a CBT simulation people could
use later.  Few people used the CBT, but many used the help system.

We were lucky in that the agency allocated enough time and money to create
the training database and the other components of the training program, and
assigned people to come to the training and made the training convenient for
users.  Many of these things are luxuries.

We repeated the training in all ten regional offices.  It went okay the
first two times, but experience helped us pace things better after that.

-  Jessica



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