We have had the good fortune to develop many training materials for our clients over the years. Regardless of the training topic, there’s always something especially rewarding about developing training content. I think one of the reasons we enjoy it so much is the fact that multimedia is often involved and the delivery platform can vary from print materials to the Web. Compared to technical documentation that only exists on a shelf somewhere (yes, we still work on those projects too!), training programs often represent an opportunity to be creative while flexing our design and programming muscles at the same time.

Recently, we were talking to a client about transitioning their legacy printed training materials into a more robust program that would be both easier to maintain and reach more of their employees and customers.

Their situation was not at all unusual or uncommon by any means. I’m sure many of us are familiar with a scenario like this one:

-The training curriculum is developed in-house using Microsoft Word or a similar word processing application.
-The curriculum is distributed electonically via e-mail and manually via printing and mailing.
-The curriculum is delivered by multiple instructors, who are responsible for not only the delivery of the training, but for the management of the trainee information and testing results as well. Consequently, there are no real standards behind the delivery of the training and no knowledge retention metrics for the trainees.
-The travel requirements for instructors and customers alike were becoming a greater and greater burden.
-No clear path for remediation. If a trainee can’t keep up with the instructor, oh well, at least he or she attended, right?
-Multiple revisions of the training content exist internally; one or two internal experts might know which is current.
-Internal training rarely keeps pace with the needs of the ever changing organization, and external (customer) training can’t keep up with the speed of product release and revision.

The client was unsure of their direction and was pretty overwhlemed by what seemed like a long, difficult, and expensive path to achieve their goals. Our team evaluated their current situation along with their requirements and came up with the following recommendations.

*Starting at the source of the training content, transition out of Microsoft Word and into an XML-capable authoring program, like Adobe Frame Maker. The cost to obtain a couple of licenses for Frame Maker plus the time to learn how to use it in a structured environment is relatively small compared to the inefficiencies and risk of a poorly managed training program. (Incidentally, this client took us up on our offer to teach their training personnel how to use their new software.) There are of course other good quality and robust XML-capable authoring platforms; the point is simply that the first step should be to ensure you can create content that can be easily reused within other applications and locations. This alone opens up a world of opportunity to improve your curriculum management and delivery processes. Now all of the training content that was once shackled within the stuffy confines of Word can be reused almost anywhere.

*Leverage the now XML-rich content into a Web-based delivery platform. Web-based delivery of curriculum has a number of nice advantages. The curriculum content and method of delivery is always the same (standardization), its available to anyone with access to the web and proper log-in credentials (accessibility) and trainee/student management can be automated. Also, the travel once required to deliver the training can be all but eliminated (reduced cost). What we recommended was to convert the legacy print curriculum into smaller computer based training (CBT) modules. Granted, “custom CBT module” and “inexpensive” typically aren’t used together in the same sentence, but because a large portion of the actual training content now existed (and will continue to exist) in an XML format, the overall development costs for the CBT modules were minimized. Using another Adobe product, Captivate, content generated in Frame Maker can be directly reused within the CBT modules.

*Take full advantage of the CBT environment. Using a good CBT development tool like Captivate or similar, we were able to show our client how to take full advantage of this type of platform. What was once simply text and line drawings, can now be enhanced with Flash animation and digital images. The pace of the curriculum delivery is now dictated by the trainee instead of the instructor. Exams to measure subject matter retention can be built in, with direct paths to remediation built in. If a trainee misses a particular question or answers one incorrectly, the CBT can be programmed to immediately redirect the trainee to review the relevant material and try the answering the question again. Once a CBT is completed, results containing the trainee can be directly e-mailed to any address or addresses, or if there is an learning management system in place, the results can be directly integrated into most any database, allowing trends to be identified and reviewed. Internal training and testing can be turned into customer training by simply removing any portions that are not applicable to the customer side of the training.

*Implement revision control and execute revisions. The clients’ training curriculum is dynamic and must be updated from time to time to reflect product revisions and procedural changes. However, not all changes are equally critical. In order to contain what would otherwise be a continuous stream of updates, we helped the client implement a “major” and “minor” revision control structure. While simplistic, this really helped them get a handle on revision control. “Major” revisions are classified as those revisions that have to do with personnel or customer safety, as well as those things that may cause damage to the product. These major revisions are executed immediately. “Minor” revisions are classified as those revisions that describe a non-critical update in the product or procedures, and do not have an immediate impact on safety. These are collected by the training group and pushed out in a new revision on a regular basis, perhaps every two, four, or six months. In either case, revisions are made at the source document level, and then pushed out via XML to the CBT modules. This way, if there are revisions required to the CBT content beyond the shared XML content, (exam questions or anything unique to the CBT), the updates can be planned for and done all at one time making for a much more controlled and efficient process.

Ultimately, we were able to help our client achieve their goals of a training program that is more easily maintained, better controlled, and far more accessible to both their own personnel as well as their customer base. See what I mean? Training is fun.