TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Re: More Training Discussion: Task-based lecture vs. Systems-based lecture
Subject:Re: More Training Discussion: Task-based lecture vs. Systems-based lecture From:jsokohl -at- mac -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 16 Apr 2004 09:20:09 -0600
> First, if it's training, it shouldn't be a lecture. People learn by doing.
> Yes, it's a good idea for an instructor to first demonstrate a complicated
> procedure, than walk the students through doing it themselves. But lectures
> by themselves do not make training.
Thanks. I agree, but I'm looking for references right now.
> Second, basing it on the system is like reading a reference manual aloud.
> Not an effective method, especially for tasks that go across menus and
> multi-step tasks. And people will tune out after a few minutes, because
> there is no way to readily justify (see my post from yesterday) why they
> need to know what's in the File menu. What they need to know is how to get
> their job done the right way using the new version.
Once again, I do appreciate the sentiment (I agree). But I can't find
specific references in stuff like "Developing Quality Technical
Information," "The Professional Writer," "How to Communicate Technical
Information," "Read Me First!" and other documents on my desk. In
addition, these books are focused on documentation,not training.
> ...try www.langevin.com.
> They are a respected name in the business of training trainers, and their
> information is good. You might also try
>http://www.mapnp.org/library/trng_dev/trng_dev.htm and www.astd.org, where
> they have a conference called "Telling Ain't Training".
Thanks. ASTD unfortunately hides a lot of possibly interesting info behind
its membership wall (sorry, as a member of AIFIA, ACM, and STC, my
membership budget's broken beyond repair). So I was looking for citations
that y'all might have.
Have you tried the latest in Help Authoring from RoboHelp?
Try ROBOHELP X5 for Free - Now with Word 2003 support, Content
Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more!
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
