Hi all,
I'm wondering how much time everyone feels like they spend creating tech training materials (like guides for employees)? Do you usually search the Web to see if the materials already exist? How often does that work?
I'm curious to hear actual stories because I'm thinking about
Creative Commons licensing and whether that's helpful for this type of material and whether nonprofits know about it.
Thanks,
--Amit
Joined on 01-17-2007
TechSoup Member
Creating training material is currently a fair part of my job. (I'm the Computer Systems Assistant, sort of the junior IT person) Most of our materials are geared very specifically to using templates we have created for our agency. So while it may show you how to create a table in word it also instructs you to format it based on our agencies guidelines so I wouldn't post those documents as they might be confusing or of limited use outside our agency.
If we start to do some more general documents, I would probably consider finding posted material and citing the author or writing my own material and posting those documents under a gpl or a creative commons license
Lisa
Joined on 05-10-2004
TechSoup Member
I'm a one-man IT department, so I dread when I have to take the time to document new or updated software or procedures. It would be great just to grab instructions from a source and distribute them to staff.
However, like Lisa, so much of what we do and use is so agency, department or location-specific, generic instructions just wouldn't work.
Curtis
Good points, Lisa and Curtis. And thanks for the feedback.
Does it help, at least, to see what others have done for their orgs, even if that means you have to rewrite some of it?
Thinking beyond training materials in particular, I could see things like RFPs being handy to have examples of. (That's why TechSoup has an RFP Library online.) Are there other categories of documents like this that might be helpful for us to look at gathering / making available?
Just curious if there's a specific need there for more "example material" like this, or if you think you'd pretty much always build entirely from scratch.
--Amit
Joined on 06-28-2006
TechSoup Member
Timely post, I am just begining to draft some structure to training manuals (ughh even the name inspires a waft of sleep potion ;0)
The articles about webcontent here on techsoup like this one: http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webbuilding/page5937.cfm are very useful, even something similar on the topic of writing 'skills development tutorials' (hmm i like that a bit better) would be a great help
Joined on 06-09-2003
Davenport, Iowa USA
I too have very specific training manuals to write that would only benefit other users of the same custom software package.
What I have looked for and haven't really found is a nice looking and easy to use template and style guide to format the training materials so there is a consistent look and feel for any training materials written.
What I've found for Microsoft Word are very complex templates that as soon as you try to tweak or use you discover it destroys the document lay out etc.
Dave
Joined on 02-25-2004
TechSoup Member
My role is not training/documentation of systems. However it was a previous role I had and since there is no group/person responsible for that role here it often falls on me to produce documents for the new projects/software we develop.
That combined with a shift in our internal processes to Agile development (less use of documentation) has resulted in re-thinking of what the by-product of a software project/enchancement/etc should be. As such we have been looking into shifting our documentation/user guides into very small "Quick Reference Guides". These guides should describe the easy/simple/no issue route of completing a task. They would not include alternate scenarios out of the norm, just plain vanilla. They would of course follow the same format and are produced using the same MS Word template we created for consistancy to the user.
After this is created, our thought is to then use a Knowledge Base for all subseqent documentation. A database driven KB that allows users to search on keywords to help solve their issues as a first step. This of course assumes a user will attempt self-serve!
The nice thing about using this KB is the ability to catagorize data into a more usable system on the backend. As an example, if a change is made to a specific portion of software that deals with shipping, the entire guide/documentation is not replicated, but only a single article in the KB.
I welcome feedback and other ideas as this is something we have recently begun to investigate and we are looking for a good KB to implement this concept.
Joined on 01-17-2007
TechSoup Member
The knowledge base approach sounds excellent something I've been toying with trying to add to our intranet but I haven't found the right solution yet, but then I'm just starting to look so I'll keep people posted.
I certainly check out articles on line, Techsoup, Tech Republic, Windows IT Pro, Ziff Davis PC Mag and MS help to flush out our How to's or most of our other papers. Great resourses and that is in the order I tend to troll.
If others have online resources love to hear about them
Lisa
Lisa
Joined on 06-28-2006
TechSoup Member
yes IF they take the inititave to self help..
I can see where a kb wiki-like program would be good for this as well.
I havent had any experience with this but it looks ok from the website demo i found it and many others doing a search on sourceforge for 'knowledge base faq' http://kbpublisher.sourceforge.net/
Im not sure how techsoup like there links delivered? only refer stuff with experience?
Joined on 01-21-2007
TechSoup Member
I spend several hours per week researching issues and creating hard copies of training materials for employees. Yes, I do spend time on the Internet and go to free and subscription services that I have accumulated as resources to assist me. Otherwise, I would not be able to provide the materials required in the time alloted me. Most of the time the Web works for me if the subscription services do not. However, I am always looking for others such as, TechSoup to add to my collection.
Joined on 10-26-2006
TechSoup Member
Hello,
This is something I would find useful.
I come from a Healthcare I.T. background. I soon learned that in Healthcare people "borrow" all kinds of material; policies, procedures, training material, power point presentations, etc. Of course this is just a nice word for plagerize I suppose but it is extremely common.
~Mike Cottle
Joined on 02-04-2007
TechSoup Member
We have a small training department and find ourselves spending alot of time creating training materials, reference guides, etc. which means it takes along time to get new programs ready to offer. I have often thought that it would be nice to share training materials across non-profits to help in reducing reinventing the wheel.
I think this is a great idea and I doubt most non-profits know about it.
Cathy
I create a lot of basic training material (how-to's) by running thru a given procedure taking screenshots along the way. Then I create a Word document, inserting the pics, and have a nicely illustrated guide. I often submit quickly-drafted guides to supervisors who try it out and give me feedback (edits).
Screenshots can get quite tedious, but it's worth it in the end. Half the battle with educating users is bumping up their confidence, and pictures help immensely.
You know the old saying: A picture's worth a thousand words.
Joined on 10-26-2006
TechSoup Member
"You know the old saying: A picture's worth a thousand words."
That is a very good saying. However, in my own experience it is not quite on the mark. I find that a picture is actually only worth approximately 874 words. This does vary though due to certain environmental conditions. Of course if your readership is color blind then the actual figure drops to about 736 words.
All in all it is still a very good saying though!
~Neeva Candida :)
Joined on 08-19-2001
TechSoup Member
I've been exploring the area of screencasting for a little while now. When I worked as the IT lead for my former agency, I had a dream of putting how-to screencasts on an intranet server that people could access. I never got to that point (moved out of an IT role), but I'm exploring the idea again for the non-computer classes I teach at the local university.
Does anybody have experience with/ideas about screencasts?
Don