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Technical Training Tips - Group 3 (20- 30)Tips for Computer and Web Based Training Note: All General Tips (1-11) as well as the Tips for Lecture and Self-Paced Courses (12-19) apply to CBT courses. Summary Click Tip (below) to review entire tip.
Tip 20: Strive for stand-alone content, screen by
screen. Tip 20: Strive for stand-alone content, screen by screen. Try to design screen content to avoid having to use several screens to present text on a single concept or thought. Many developers write material for screen presentation just as they would for printed material. While the writing effort, in this case is the same, the reading effort is altogether different. In books, readers can easily scan previously read text on the page and even flip backwards several pages without a major break in concentration. With CBT screens, this becomes, for lack of more descriptive terms, a real pain in the neck! Although providing an easy means for "backing up" is essential to any CBT course, writing large amounts of text that spread the content of a single subject over many screens is simply not a good idea. Reading screen text (especially large amounts of it) is more difficult, for some people, than reading printed material, especially for those who wear bifocals. Minimize it where you can. A good example of what not to do is this particular web site. I've presented many ideas, or tips, on this site and they are all in text. If you have tried to back up to review an idea or tip and then tried to get back to your original place, you probably have some idea of what I'm talking about. Where your course-media needs include sizable amounts of text, consider printed matter as supplementary material for the course. Tip 21: Design course navigation so that it is as intuitive as you can make it. Keep this in mind -- each time learners must think about what they have to do next to move ahead in the course, they break concentration with content. Make navigation and the structure of the course as transparent as possible to the learner. For instance, such cues as "click NEXT to continue" are great if you have a button labeled NEXT. That same cue is questionable if your "next button" has only a right-pointing arrow. An example of what-not-to-do is a silent screen where the designer want to reveal points one at a time and chooses to do so with automatically timed changes. There is absolutely no way to know the reading speed of the learner. Here the learner is, midway on the first point and you pop on the second point and distract attention. But that's not enough - the learner is midway through the second point and here comes the third or maybe the forth point popping on. Or even worse, situations that prompt learner's to say to themselves, "this thing is as slow as molasses in January!" Automatically timed screen changes can disrupt concentration. Don't do it. Give the learner control over screen changes and presentation rate. For example telling learners such things as "Click Next to continue" is great. But how about the situation where the next screen is the first screen of test? In this situation, directions such as "Click Next to continue to the section test" at least prepares the learner for what will happen next. Having surprises when taking CBT courses can result in learner anxiety. Anxiety is no friend of concentration. Consider potential learner anxiety with respect to the course itself and design to reduce that type of anxiety as much as possible. (Zero is a good and reasonable goal!) Much has been written about using colors in CBT and I won't even attempt to cover all of that material here; there is simply too much. Just be sure to devote sufficient attention to color choices when designing content for CBT or WBT.
Tip 25: When applicable, display the screen's relative
location in the learning event so the learner has an idea of "how much more
before I'm finished with this section?" Not having a restart built into learning events mean that learners must essentially "start over" when the learning event is interrupted regardless of the cause of that interruption. While lost time is an obvious result, there also can be a degradation of attitude and a subsequent loss in learning.
Tip 27: Don't let the aesthetics of screen design compete
with the message of the learning event.
Tip 28: Be cautious of humor.
Tip 29: Provide easy access to a glossary throughout the
learning event where applicable.
Tip 30: Tip 30: Consider using Brainshark for web based training. Quickly and cost-effectively educate geographically-dispersed audiences with multimedia presentations and courses that can be experienced anytime, on demand. Save travel costs and time, increase productivity of learners and experts, and expand your ability to meet time-critical training needs. Brainshark enables you to leverage subject matter experts across your organization to easily create interactive eLearning content, quickly deliver it to your audiences, and track completion. Using Brainshark to deliver rapid training, you can accomplish more in your learning and training initiatives than was ever before possible. Sales TrainingRamp up new sales hires quickly and keep them consistently informed. Deliver product training, roll out new processes, and share competitive and market knowledge when it's most timely. When used as part of a blended approach, Brainshark can help you increase the productivity of your classroom or live web conference sessions and reduce time out of the field so you can gain back valuable selling time. Use Brainshark to level-set knowledge prior to your next live session and optimize scheduled time with experts to apply learning. Employee TrainingMany customers have reduced new hire on-boarding time by 50% or more. Start training employees from day one with company policies and benefits information, job-specific skills and processes, and business and product knowledge. Customer Training & Channel CertificationWhen training external audiences such as customers and channel partners, its even tougher to ask individuals to take time out of their day for training - it has to be as painless as possible. Use Brainshark to deliver convenient training that is easy and enjoyable to view. Delivering training is as easy as sending an email. Invite and enroll your important audiences to view presentations and courses, and reward their progress with certificates of completion. Compliance TrainingQuickly complete mandated training and demonstrate completion with Brainshark's detailed reporting. Deliver consistent messages from your best topic expert, and use questions to reinforce key points and test comprehension. Whether you need to train 20,000 employees or the next 2 new hires; you can create compliance training topics once and deliver them to as many people you need to reach, on demand. Click here to go to the Brainshark web site for more information. We are trained, experienced, and ready to help you get off the ground with Brainshark.Click here to view our certification credentials.
Summary of Tips for CBT and WBT Click Tip (below) to review entire tip.
Tip 20: Strive for stand-alone content, screen by
screen. End of Tips for CBT and WBT
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