It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Your Tech Comm Team!

Maybe they aren’t faster than a speeding bullet (although that would be nice) or more powerful than a locomotive. Maybe they can’t burst into flames, turn invisible, walk through walls, fly, or read your mind (that would be nice, too). But that doesn’t mean that your technical communications team can’t save the day.

As a business, you have a product or service to offer, and to let the world know how, when, where, and why to use it, you need an expert technical communications team.

“I work alone.”
Wolverine was cool, but without the X-Men, he could never have accomplished the things he did.

A team is made up of individuals, so it stands to reason that an effective team is made up of effective individuals. The Justice League needed the best of the best. They needed members who were able to fly, live under water, wield a golden lasso, or run faster than the speed of light. You need the best of the best, too—a tech comm team that can write, design, edit, and work together to accomplish every project you send its way.

In developing documentation, writers and designers need to gather information, identify project requirements, become familiar with the subject, and most importantly write and design effectively. Editors need to be grammar, syntax, and style guides experts as well as observant, careful, and patient in order to improve writing for publication.

A talented, dedicated, and experienced staff of writers, designers, editors is essential to the success of all documentation projects.

“Set phasers to stun.”
Okay, so Captain Kirk and Spock weren’t superheroes, but what would they have been without their weapons? (Plus, the phrase was catchy.)

An effective tech comm team needs to be familiar with leading technology in the communications field. Companies develop new software daily that simplify processes from designing an illustration to creating a rapid eLearning environment.

Thirty years ago, the latest and greatest asset to technical communications was a copying machine that allowed an instructional designer to draw an illustration on paper, tape it to the document, and then copy it to produce a completed page. What then took half of a day’s work to accomplish now takes minutes with software like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.

Tired of sitting in the conference room of yore and listening to a long-winded instructor explain your new training policies and procedures? Imagine sitting at a computer viewing an interactive learning environment with audio, visual, video, and assessment features allowing you to control the pace! If your tech comm team is familiar with Articulate Rapid eLearning Studio or similar software, then such a scenario could be a reality.

Using the up-to-date, industry-leading software can make all the difference in efficiency and presentation quality.

“With great power comes great responsibility.”
Peter Parker had to learn this lesson the hard way, but the writers, editors, and designers on your payroll should know this from the start.

Once research and development are through, the tech comm team is in control of your project. It is their responsibility not only to meet deadlines and budgets, but to ensure that they meet every objective to produce a product you will be proud of. While the writers are busy writing, the designers are busy designing, and editors are busy editing, who has time to coordinate all the details of project cohesion?

Projects need managers. Someone needs to oversee all areas of documentation development in order to meet every objective. Because managers are accountable for what they oversee, they push their teams to go beyond the status quo, creating products that clients can be proud of.

If you do not have a documentation department on site, there are companies who have super technical communications teams, ready and willing to save the day for your project.

Written by: Johnathan Cunningham, ProEdit


Need help with a project?  Contact ProEdit for a free quote or give us a call at 1-888-776-3348.

Consider eLearning

One of the latest trends grabbing headlines is eLearning. But is it all just hype? Hype without substances ends up in wasted time and resources. In this economy, that kind of mistake can be fatal. Is eLearning all that it is cracked up to be? Could it work for you? Is there substance behind the hype?

These are common questions, so here’s some information to help you decide if eLearning is the right choice for you.

Cost

Making the switch from instructor-led training (ILT) to eLearning really can cut your costs. For one thing, eLearning cuts the time needed for people to go through the data in half. But there are other cost savings, too—travel, facilities, breaks, fees, and printouts. For those of you who like the details and numbers, you can click here to peruse the nuts and bolts of eLearning.

Flexibility

Flexibility is a huge advantage of the eLearning environment. Anywhere, anytime is hard to beat! Of course, eLearning is confined to the limitations of your LMS and Web access, but the options are expounded. Your people can choose times that are convenient for them. This cuts down on juggling and rearranging of meetings and schedules. With modules that can be broken down into bite-sized chunks of information, the training easily slides into the free spaces of their day. Also, entire days out of the office aren’t needed. This makes your customers very happy.

Control of Content

Not that you have to be a control freak, but it is helpful when everyone is on the same page. With ILT, sometimes different points are highlighted and others fade to the background. With standardized modules, everyone gets the same message.

You also have the freedom to target a specific group. Let’s say IT needs more data points. Your HR people would be off counting ceiling tiles if this topic were covered in an all-encompassing meeting. With modules geared to specific groups, people get what they need without the non-essentials.

Greater Retention

Not everyone is an auditory learner. And for these people, sitting through a lecture can be very painful. But give them videos and interactive media, and they’ll pick things up very quickly. One of the great things about eLearning is you can target different learning styles. Each group will spend time in the arena that appeals to them. Users can also move at their own pace. And because technology doesn’t care how often you press “rewind” and “play,” it is easy to go back and review as needed. This is especially helpful for complicated processes or new information. Quizzes and interactive data also help to assimilate the data.

Ease of Use

More and more programs are making it easier and less expensive to create top-notch training modules. One program ProEdit uses is Articulate Studio. With programs like this, a talented instructional designer can create effects that keep the content engaging and interactive. Updates and changes are also easily managed. This keeps your people up to speed and better equipped to handle the changes.
 
Think eLearning is just sitting in front of a computer listening to lectures?  Not at all!  It is so much more…well, entertaining.  And engaged people learn.  When you consider the cost savings and other advantages, it just makes sense.

Receive a free price quote on your instructional design needs, or give us a call at 1-888-776-3348 to discuss your project.

I've Got that Yearning for eLearning

With gas at $4+ per gallon, commuting to school and work is becoming a burden.  But you have to do it.  Or so you think. What if you could wake up in the morning, drink a cup of coffee, and learn all of your company’s new policies and procedures while never changing out of your Lone Ranger footy pajamas?  What if you could go home from work and simply turn on the computer rather than fight another round of traffic to get to a college campus?

You can, thanks to the development of eLearning – the most innovative tool in education.  With the software available today, you can create interactive user manuals, seminars, and classroom simulations.

New Learning Experiences

The goal of eLearning software is to simulate a physical learning experience through the use of images, video, audio, and interactive tools and assessments through an electronic course.  A typical eLearning experience might consist of a slideshow of written information paired with pictures and video.  While reading and viewing the information, you hear the sound of narration synced to the slideshow.  The narrator enlightens you to ideas that are not expressed in the writing and expounds upon existing text and images.  Sounds like last week’s seminar, right?  Not quite. 

What makes eLearning so unique is that it offers a hands-on approach to learning experiences.  As you click through a course, you can discover embedded windows that contain additional information that is specific to the subject you are studying.

Imagine you are learning how to repair a washing machine.  You see the washing machine as a whole, but you need to know what the timing unit looks like.  You click on a button over the timing unit, and a secondary window pops up with a detailed image of the timing unit complete with a definition and other vital information.  The designer might even include a video of a technician explaining the wiring of a timing unit in the secondary window—all without leaving the page.

Simplified Evaluation Processes  

One of the greatest features of eLearning is the ability to assess users’ comprehension.  When creating an eLearning course, the designer can include a variety of interactive assessments.  When users complete an assessment, they can view their own scores, but if a designer includes the course in a Learning Management System (LMS), then administrators or instructors can also view users’ scores. 

An LMS can contain entire curricula for universities, seminars, and tutorials for businesses, or even user manuals for individual distributors.  The days of distance restraints keeping students from learning or businesses from reaching customers are over!

Cost-Effective Solutions

Typical seminars and workshops can be costly and time-consuming.  First, you have to hire an expert. Then, you have to cut production time in order to bring everyone together so you don’t have to pay the expert for multiple sessions.  Not only does that decrease efficiency, but that missed time has to be made up somewhere. And if you were to conduct a comprehension assessment, you would have to pay extra for supplies and the added time.

Why not skip all the hassle and implement eLearning solutions instead?  It’s efficient, affordable, and most importantly, effective. 

Written by: Johnathan Cunningham, ProEdit

Contact us and let ProEdit's experts help implement an eLearning solution for your company.

School’s Out (Of the Classroom): The Rise of Informal and Social Learning

Ah, those last days of the school year when kids of any era go running down the halls singing one of Alice Cooper’s classic lines: “School’s out for summer!” (Don’t even pretend you didn’t. We know better.)

Perhaps though, Vincent Damon Furnier (Alice Cooper’s real name) was on to something. In many ways, particularly in business and corporate learning, school is out. While some formal classroom learning is still needed, estimates now say that 70 percent of learning is self-guided and informal (http://derekstockley.com.au/articles/informal-learning.html).

The learning needs of organizations have changed. Gone are the days of requiring a one-time event to prepare employees or students for a job or new tasks. Instead, the focus has shifted to ongoing, continuous training, with employees and clients being regularly updated with new learning and additional modules of knowledge.

As those needs have changed and grown, so have the methods for meeting them. 

What is Informal and Social Learning?

For starters, informal learning doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to dress for it in a “casual Friday” sort of way. Nor does it mean you should organize a get-together at the local sports bar with your friends in order to prepare for it.

Some proponents of informal learning have described it as anything that doesn’t involve classrooms or curriculum, and for a broad-stroke definition, that’s not a bad place to start.

But at its heart, informal learning primarily has to do with who controls the delivery of information. If formal learning is defined by having an instructor and a curriculum that is delivered the same way at the same place to each learner, then informal learning can be described as being controlled by the student and delivered at his or her pace through a variety of means—ranging from on-the-job training to audio and video to eLearning.

Why the informality?

The simple answer is just this—because it works. Informal learning works for learners, and it works for organizations. But let’s dig deeper to examine why it works.

For learners, it works because it puts them in control of the learning environment and pace. A survey at the University of Pittsburgh found that the top three reasons learners would rather learn on their own include:

• Desire to set my own learning pace
• Desire to use my own style of learning
• Desire to keep the learning strategy flexible and easy-to-change http://www.knowledgejump.com/learning/characteristics.html) 

In short, it feels more natural to them. It meets them where they are and in the way they learn. To draw from the cliché, it doesn’t force a bunch of square pegs into round holes.

For organizations, the benefits are primarily driven by the bottom line—especially in regard to time and money. Putting together major training events is expensive when you have to get a large group of people together, house them, feed them, and manage them. Even if you cut much of the costs by arranging virtual events, getting a large group to free up the same set of hours is about as easy as catching water in a net.

Informal options, such as eLearning courses, offer a cheaper and more adaptable option that enables each member of that large group to get the same training when it fits his or her schedule and without the expense of having a live, flesh-and-blood classroom meeting.

But it goes beyond that.

Today’s companies move faster than ever before and face changes on a day-in and day-out (and often hour-by-hour) time frame. It’s just not practical to constantly bring people back in every day or every week for updates as goals, tasks, or deliverables change. However, a quick update to an online interactive course followed by a targeted email, and poof, everyone who needs to be updated can be in a quick time frame and at minimal expense.

Old school, new school, e-school, your school

Learning still happens in a variety of ways. There’s still an occasional need for formal, classroom learning, but more and more there’s a growing need for informal delivery methods that enable your learners to work in a way that is most effective for them.

As the world becomes more electronically connected, such learning will continue to become e-focused and delivered through intranets and the Internet. But what will help you more than anything else is this—think of your learners first and what will make the knowledge you want to teach them move from their heads and into practice, even if it requires you to consider alternatives you may never have before.

Written by:  Sean Taylor, ProEdit

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