Designing a Training Course

The first thing we need to do is get organized

Design is an important stage in training development that is often downplayed or even overlooked. Training design by technical staff is frequently nothing more than a few pages outlining what the course will cover.

Like your product or service, your training course should be designed. It need not be elaborate or excessively time consuming, but a good design will save a lot of in development rework, and bad press from your confused students.

Even the “simplest” training course can benefit from time spent in design.

Here’s what we at Teragon believe the design phase should accomplish:

1. It should provide a road map of exactly what is to be taught and how it is to be presented.
2. It should state, in measurable terms, the objectives of the training.
3. It should concisely define the format of your course materials, the presentation method, and the equipment and facilities needed for any hands-on training.

So what design products can you expect from Teragon?

• An audience analysis that correctly answers, “What skills and knowledge must the students possess before starting the course?”
  • For example, if your product incorporates UNIX, do you expect the students to already have a working knowledge of UNIX commands?

• A task-and-skill analysis report that accurately addresses, “What skills and relevant knowledge should the student expect to master?”
  • This cuts to the heart of why the training is being conducted in the first place. Certainly two good reasons for training on any product are 1) you want your customers to like (indeed love) your product and 2) the better trained your customers are, the less technical support they will need. A question answered in a classroom of 20 students is much more cost effective than 20 separate calls to your tech support department.

• A course design guide that answers in detail:
  • What topics need to be covered?
  • How should these topics be organized?
  • What topics are lecture appropriate and what are hands-on appropriate?
  • What applications will be used to develop and deliver the training content?

If we still have your attention, have a look at how Teragon approaches training development.

Training Development

Where the rubber meets the road

With a good design, we can begin the actual development of the training materials.
While specialized training content can vary widely, the typical training course consists of five items:

1. An instructor guide that assists the instructor in presenting the material. In addition to covering the presentation material, a good instructor guide includes “side bar” information, key points to emphasize, and oral questions to test the students’ comprehension. The instructor guide may also cover hands-on (lab) setup, expected results, and equipment restoration after a lab has been completed.
   We have developed a number of training courses where the complexity of the material required the instructor guide to span several books.
2. A student guide that is a hard copy of the presentation material. The student guide should provide adequate space for note taking and be comprehensive enough to act as reference material with real worth after the course is complete. The guide should also contain specific instruction for hands-on (lab) exercises.
   As with the instructor guide, a complex course may have several student guides covering each lecture and lab.
3. Training handouts of useful tables and diagrams from the technical manuals for ready reference during the lectures and labs.
4. Reference materials such as the product’s technical manuals, OEM manuals, and other materials that support the instruction materials.
5. A criterion exam that test each student’s comprehension of the material at the end of the course.

If you feel our approach to training is what you are looking for, contact us to discuss your particular needs.