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.

Remember the Days

Are you a calendar watcher? If so, you’ll note that we have two important national holidays coming up: Memorial Day and Independence Day.

Unlike many holidays that may have worldwide religious significance or are based on an ancient heritage, these two are uniquely American days of remembrance. We set aside time each year to remember those who have died to keep our country safe and free.

It’s an honor to recount their deeds and sacrifices.

But without discounting the efforts of those fine men and women, the days leading up to those holidays could serve as a time for other victories (smaller victories, I’ll grant you, but victories nonetheless).

Why not use the days leading up to Memorial Day to form an alliance with champion project managers to make you a lean, mean, fighting machine through your projects?

Why not seize the days between Memorial Day and Independence Day to gain freedom from the verbose jargon and common errors that have crept into your communication?

Fighting the good fight

Sure, you’d like to beat back the enemies of disorganization and win the war against improper grammar and usage, but how? There are two key methods: assistance and training. ProEdit can help you with both.

Assistance is easy, whatever it is you need. Our in-house team excels in making your projects be the best they can be. Our services include:

• Editing
• Technical writing
• Marcom writing
• Proposal writing
• Instructional design
• Project management
• Graphic design
• Proofreading
• Web content writing

Our hard-working staff has extensive industry experience to put to work for you. For more information about our staff and referrals from former and current clients, go here to learn more about ProEdit's talented staff.

If you prefer to have on-site workers under your direct management, our staffing service can help you put the right people on your team. ProEdit is the largest and most experienced staffing firm in the writing and editing industry. Whether you are looking for a temporary contract worker or a permanent hire, we have more than 50,000 qualified candidates in our stable of trained professionals.

As for training, keep your eyes glued to this blog as our staff shares wisdom gained from years of experience to bring you helpful hints and practical tidbits, whether you’re a professional editor or not. We’ll be sure to cover frequent grammatical errors and various ways to improve your copy, as well as guidelines for everything from instructional design to technical writing.

Another less obvious way of retraining your editorial eye is simply to pay attention to the tracked changes in the documents you receive from your editors. Just watching the types of errors that are being corrected and what kind of word choices are being tweaked can help you create far better drafts for the next project. Just think of it as an independent study (even if you don’t get the course credit). 

Celebrate your independence

Prior to leaving the office for your multiple family reunions and cookouts during the upcoming holidays, make a mental note to celebrate your freedom of speech that our forebearers fought so hard to preserve by making your spoken and written communication as good and as correct as it can possible be.

When you’re ready to make that step, just let us know. We’ll have your back.  

Written by: Sean Taylor, ProEdit

For more information about ProEdit's services, contact us via the web or call 1-888-776-3348.  Need to add creative talent to your team?  Check out our nationwide candidate profiles.

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

Learn more about ProEdit's services.

Friday the 13th: The Revenge of Project Killers

What’s worse than Friday the 13th? The sequels.

Okay, that was a cheap shot, but now that I have your attention, what’s really worse than Friday the 13th—even worse than having a black cat cross your path under a ladder? Falling prey to superstitious assumptions when we should know better.

Before you think we’re talking about tossing salt over your shoulder or staying away from cracked mirrors, we’re not. We’re talking about the assumptions that affect your writing.

Sure, they may not be fully recognized superstitions yet, but they’re definitely myths that sneak into attitudes about the communication process for many writers, editors, presenters and instructors. They lurk around the corners of our minds and are always looking for ways to creep in and kill our effectiveness when it comes to communication projects.

So, what are some of these “Friday the 13th” project killers we need to look out for?

Project Killer #1 – I’ve done this course dozens of times. I don’t really need an instructional designer to fix it. It’s fine like it is.

There’s a lot of truth to the cliché “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But in many cases, something that “ain’t broke” can be made more effective with tweaking, especially when it’s going from one format (i.e., PowerPoint slides and a live presenter) to another (computer-based training). Think of it this way—even a best-selling novel has to be changed into a script before it can dominate the box office as a movie. So why shouldn’t your already successful course be adapted into an eLearning format so it can further engage the minds of your learners?

Project Killer #2 – Project managers are just an unnecessary step to slow us down. I can oversee this project just fine.

You’re already in charge of so much. Do you really want to add another hoop to jump through? A project manager can take care of the day-to-day details of keeping a project on track without the distractions that already take up so much of your time. Then you get to come in and deal with content when it’s ready to be seen instead of being bombarded by the trifling minutiae that can bog you and the project down.

Project Killer #3 – Why should I send this out to an editor? I ran it through spelling and grammar check.

Spell check is only as good as its dictionary. (Spell check actually flagged “its” as incorrect in the previous sentence in favor of the conjunction “it’s.”) It only recognizes misspellings, so words that can be spelled different ways (i.e., they’re, there, their) don’t get any help from spell check. Neither do words that are commonly mistyped (such as “up” for “us” or “of” for "off”). Furthermore, neither spell check nor grammar check helps you communicate better by tightening your writing, making better word choices, shifting from passive to active sentences, or replacing jargon with regular human speech.

Why is it so important to be careful with these project killers lurking about in the shadows? Well, unlike summer blockbusters or the latest action thriller, not all of your projects get a sequel. If you don’t get them right the first time, there might not be a handy black cat or convenient Friday the 13th to blame.

Written by: Sean Taylor, ProEdit

Avoid these Project Killers - learn more about ProEdit's services or give us a call at 1-888-776-3348.

ProEdit Awarded Technical Writing Contract

ProEdit has been awarded a contract with the U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina. ProEdit will perform technical writing, instructional design, graphic design, and publishing services for the Jury Evidence Recording System.