One of the biggest obstacles in providing quality training for people is overcoming learning barriers that may exist.
For example, my seven-year-old son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. When he was first diagnosed at the age of three, he was completely non-verbal. Not only was I unable to communicate with him, he was unable to communicate with me. That communication and learning barrier caused confusion and stress.
I needed to find a way to communicate using an alternative method. He couldn’t read at the time, so our next option was to find a way to communicate using pictures. I was then introduced to the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) which promotes communication via exchange of images. By using the pictures, I was able to introduce new concepts and ideas in a manner that was understandable and inviting.
As trainers and educators we run into the same type of barriers, just on a different scale. We are often tasked with introducing a process or concept to a large audience. The group of learners may not all be able to understand the process or concept the same way. It is our responsibility to introduce different modalities of learning to ensure the concepts we introduce are absorbed by the majority of our learners, regardless of personal learning style preferences.
Training in the business world can at times become routine. In order to keep training fun, exciting and understandable, it is important to utilize a strong mix of written, visual, and hands-on exercises.
What are you doing to effectively transmit knowledge to your learners? Have you explored tools for making your training more clear and interactive? The opportunities for delivering a dynamite and memorable training session are endless, especially with the help of technology.
Documentation and Training with Adobe Technical Communication Suite:
Programs like FrameMaker, Acrobat, RoboHelp and Captivate can change the way you teach and change the way your training is received by others.
• FrameMaker allows technical writers and trainers to exercise the best practice of topic-based authoring by organizing content by topic and easily outputting the content to multiple formats.
• Acrobat will allow you to take your existing FrameMaker content, and make it easily accessible by creating PDF files, rich with navigation previously established in FrameMaker.
• RoboHelp provides an attractive alternative to the traditional paper training material. Using the information from FrameMaker, RoboHelp will create a web-based version of your training material. You can then make your training more interactive by adding pop-out screens, simulations and training scenarios created in Captivate.
• Captivate makes creating training demonstrations and simulations a snap. The screen capture technology allows trainers to develop rich training material which is used to reaffirm the content created in FrameMaker. These training scenarios can be linked to the training documentation using Adobe RoboHelp.
Knowing the capabilities of these tools and how you can best incorporate them into your training will benefit you and your learners. By using technology, you can reach a greater number of learners, regardless of their learning style.
You can learn about these programs as well as get a look at Adobe Creative Suite 4 at MindSurf. MindSurf is a one-day business skill conference on Oct. 28. You can find out more at www.mindsurfmn.com.