Developing Effective Materials T rain the Trainer Series Day Three An Infopeople Workshop

1. Developing Effective MaterialsTrain the Trainer SeriesDay ThreeAn Infopeople Workshop Cheryl Gould gouldc@infopeople.org November 19, 2004

2. Review • ADDIE • SMART objectives • What do you need to know BEFORE you start designing training? • What kinds of things do you determine in the design phase?

3. Design Versus Develop • Design training • Organize • Determine materials • Develop materials • Word, PowerPoint, images • readability/usability for audience • graphic design • grammar, spelling • instructional writing

4. Agenda • Review Design Phase • Process of Developing Materials • Types of Materials to Develop • PowerPoint Practice • Formatting training materials in Word

5. Process for Materials Development Add MeaningfulGraphics Use Materials What is the Purpose of the Materials? Review Create Exercises What Type of Materials are Needed? Evaluate Materials Requirements Review Who is the Audience? Create Job Aids Review Review Spice Up Materials Outline, Chunk and Sequence Review Final Review

6. Why Create Training Materials? • Support instructor • keep on track • consistency • Support student • during and after training • reduce note taking • As a job aid

7. Plan! For every hour of class, expect from eight to twelve hours of training design, development, and materials preparation.

8. Developing Materials Considerations • Time • Cost • Number being trained • Developing for own use • Approval required Might be more cost effective to purchase training or training material.

9. Skills Versus Behavior Change • Behavior change: • requires practice, some say up to 16 times • “Telling ain’t training” • Skills: • need to demonstrate, then allow practice time • If complicated software: • learn to learn the software, be comfortable with it, how to get help • show off any big pitfalls you know people might run into • Don’t teach “click here, click there!”

10. Design Guidelines(for just about anything ;) • Easy to see • Easy to navigate • Quick to scan • Accurate • Relevant • Clear • Complete (in relation to task)

11. Four Basic Design Principles • Contrast • it’s what gets attention • Repetition • design elements throughout • strengthens unity • Alignment • align with something! • Proximity • group items to show relationship

12. Creating Contrast When you want something to berememberedyou should make it STAND OUTin some way. We notice and rememberdifferences We can use color, highlight, intonation, volume, emotion - anything to “CREATE a CONTRAST”

13. Teach Visually “It’s a kind of glass with a long thin stem that gets slightly wider at the top, something like a wine glass but instead of the wine glass shape at the top of the stem it’s sort of like an inverted cone and it’s made of slightly thicker glass than…”

14. Plan a Visual Aid for Your Training • Diagram • Chart • Graphic • Model • Prop

15. Cheat Sheets • Concise • Give users permission to forget • Contain large amounts of infrequently used detail for a task AKA Job Aids - Performance Aids Quick Guides - Tip Sheets

16. Formatting Cheat Sheets • Ideally one-sided • Plenty of white space • Number things that are in sequence • Stick to one font • Times New Roman for readability in print • No smaller than 12 pt • NO ALL CAPS • Use pictures, diagrams or screen shots • Use color and bolding to mean something

17. Exercises Should Reflect Learners Tasks • Skills training • practice skills - hands-on • Knowledge training • Test understanding and recall • Attitude training • Role playing and discussion

18. Thinking vs Following Steps • Click on File > Open • Select abc.doc from the list of files • Go to the end of the document by pressing <Ctrl><End> OR • Open the Word document abc • Move to the end of the document by using a shortcut key

19. White space is g o o d • Use Outline numbering • Bullet things NOT in sequence • Consistently use, or don’t use, punctuation. • Say what will be accomplished, then give steps • Chunk on page to show relationship

20. “The better the training goes, the less chance there is that anyone will appreciate the effort that went into it.”Chuck Hodell