9

Troubleshooting:
Challenges and Solutions

 

By now you have made your way through almost this entire book; however, that does not mean that your future as a perfect technical training developer is certain. Technical training development is not an easy job. Technical training is a field that is fraught with challenges, some of which you may never anticipate.

Challenges are not impossibilities, though. They are opportunities: chances to display your perseverance, your creativity, and your ability to troubleshoot; to face issues, analyze them, and work through them. This chapter discusses potential technical training challenges and gives examples of potential solutions. Note that the solutions offered are not exhaustive. This chapter is designed to get you started. You should be able to continue to come up with more solutions that meet your needs.

Challenge: Technical Content Is Too Complicated

Most every technical training developer has had the experience of feeling completely clueless when listening to a room full of subject matter experts (SMEs). It is normal for a new developer to not fully understand the jargon and complex concepts involved in a new technical topic. Most technical topics have their own language: distinct names, acronyms, principles, and so on. Learning this technical language can take time.

Potential solutions for this quite common challenge include the following:

Learn as much as you can. This sounds obvious, but asking as many questions as you can, and reading as much information as you can find, will eventually help. By no means are you to become an expert (that’s why we have SMEs), but learning enough that you can speak somewhat intelligently about the subject with your SME makes for a much easier project.

Make your own dictionary. One thing you can do to help keep yourself organized (and sane) is to keep a list of relevant technical terms and acronyms you have learned. This way you will have a quick reference sheet as you go through the development process.

Try it out. Don’t underestimate the power of seeing for yourself. See if you can try out the task or touch the product yourself. If you are able to go out to the lab, the shop, the field, the operating room, and so on, you can get a firsthand look at your technical topic. This experience can be invaluable as you gather information and develop your course.

Tie the topic to a job or a task whenever possible. Sometimes discussing a highly technical topic within the context of the job or the “real world” can make it seem more approachable and understandable. Even with complicated topics, a good SME should be able to walk you through the basic process of the job and pinpoint major portions that should be clarified and emphasized.

Ask for analogies. Ask your SME if he or she can rephrase complex technical descriptions or give you an analogy. This solution comes from the old television show Star Trek. Often in the show, the crew of the Enterprise faces some bizarre space anomaly too complex to put into words suitable for a standard television audience, so the writers simplify the anomaly into something that people can visualize. For example, consider which statement is easier to visualize: “The Enterprise is to travel at precisely warp 4.3 on the specific trajectory equidistant from all boundaries of a globular cluster’s outer rim” or “It’s like threading a needle in space.”

Similarly, if your SME can give you an analogy or rephrase complex issues into something more easily recognizable for you, this can demystify the “technobabble” and make it easier to grasp the complicated stuff.

Challenge: You Can’t Tell What Content Is “Nice to Know” and What Is “Need to Know”

If you are not deeply familiar with the topic at hand, it can be difficult to determine what technical content is “nice to know” and what content is “need to know.” As a developer, though, you will have to function as a filter and ensure that the material included really is related to the objectives of the course.

Sometimes there is a relative scarcity in text regarding technical products or tasks. When a developer does find a hidden cache of content, there is the temptation to use it, even if it diverts the learners too far away from the main objective of the module.

Solutions for this challenge include the following:

Stay disciplined. An overarching solution to this challenge is that you must always stay disciplined with your content. If you fill your classes with filler, you will lose your participants’ attention. It sometimes happens that you will find a bit of training that is clearly understandable and fun to teach, but if it diverts you from your objectives, you must refrain from including it. You must have the discipline to stay on your prescribed task and not be self-indulgent with your topics. In technical training, brevity is a virture. Keep the self-control to get rid of content that is not related to the objectives of the section.

Question your SME. If you suspect your SME is veering off in a wayward direction with the course content (a direction that does not match previously agreed-on objectives) quiz him or her about it. Asking “How does this help meet our course objectives?” is a simple way for you to figure out how the information fits. If the information does not fit nicely, ask why. Course objectives were set at the beginning of the project for a reason: The objectives were labeled as priorities. Don’t be afraid to question why course content differs from objectives.

Believe your SME. As you are not the expert on the content, there will be times that you need to bite your tongue and simply take your SME’s word for it. It is possible that seemingly “wayward” course content is applicable to the course objectives, but you just can’t see it because of your own lack of understanding of the concept. While you should strive to keep to your previously agreed-on objectives, you also shouldn’t be a slave to them—it is possible that objectives may change slightly as you get deeper into the material and your SME realizes that certain facts were originally overlooked. If this is the case, you will just have to trust your SME.

Challenge: Your SME Has a Full-time Job Outside of the Training Department

In a perfect world, the sole priority of your SME would be to finish your training course. Unfortunately, there will be times that you will be paired with an SME who already has a full-time job outside of developing your course.

In these instances, obviously, your SME will have other things competing for his or her time. This can result in strained communication between you and your SME, slow progression on your project, and even missed deadlines.

There are a few solutions for this challenge:

Ask for management support. If your SME has many things competing for his or her attention, an obvious solution is to ask for management support for your SME to make your project his or her number-one priority.

Set realistic timelines. Always keep in mind that your SME has another job— probably one that he or she enjoys. Be sure that you honor your SME’s obligations and set reasonable timelines that work for both of you.

Spread the work around. In the event that your SME simply cannot provide you with enough time, you must arrange for a few other SMEs to share the burden. Often, management will be happy to point you in the direction of other specialists who can help. This way, your needs are fulfilled, and the burden is not placed on any one person.

Challenge: The Course You Have Been Asked to Redesign Has Already Been Taught for Years

Being tasked to redesign a course that’s been in place for a while can be a positive or a negative thing. The good news about this challenge is that content is likely to be available and easily accessible for your technical subject. The bad news is that if the content is bad, sometimes it can be especially hard to convince your SME to abandon that content completely. After an SME/instructor has been teaching the same class for a long time, materials tend to become “cemented,” and it can be harder to go back and change. Your SME/instructor may think: “Hey, my class works fine. I did this for years. I like it.” In this situation, you might have a more challenging time “selling” a different course structure because something else is already established.

If bad news is the case for you, you might try the following solutions:

Sit through the existing class. If you are able, it can be very helpful to sit through the old class before you start your redesign. The benefit is that you can get a feel for the subject matter and learn about it as you observe. You can see firsthand what works and what doesn’t. As you observe, you can start to piece together the objectives of the current material and use them as a starting point for the “formal” development of the redesign. In addition, if a total overhaul of the entire course structure is necessary, you will have built some credibility for your case by at least seeing what the old structure was like.

Don’t appear overly critical or judgmental. Someone spent a great deal of time putting this course together initially, which means someone is probably going to be attached to all—or parts—of the course. Tread carefully so that you don’t offend or alienate someone who could possibly provide updated, good information for the redesigned class.

Challenge: The Course That Never Gets Finished

At one time or another, most of us have experienced the bane of the developer’s existence: The Course That Never Gets Finished. The Course That Never Gets Finished is that class that you seem to be endlessly working on—and off—and on— for what seems like an eternity. It is disruptive, and it is maddening.

There could be multiple reasons that a perfectly good course turns into The Course That Never Gets Finished. These reasons might include

• unclear expectations
• unavailable information
• overzealous objectives
• poor project management
• changing priorities by the organization.

Here are some solutions to this exceptionally annoying challenge:

Correctly pinpoint the issues. You can create all the solutions in the world, but if you do not take a good hard look at why a perfectly good course has turned into The Course That Never Gets Finished, you will end up spinning your wheels. You need to be able to pinpoint correctly the issues involved: Is this an “information” problem? Is this an SME issue? Does the SME understand what is asked of him or her? Was the project never that critical to the organization? Does the project just need to be scrapped? Does the project need to be reworked so that it is critical? Does the project have proper stakeholders identified, and does it have the management support needed to push it along?

Get organized. Document exactly what on the project is complete, and what still needs to be completed. In addition, assign responsibilities for who is to complete each unfinished task. Place a date on this document and store it in an easily accessible location.

Make things as clear as possible for your SME. If you find yourself in a situation in which an SME never completes his or her tasks on time, you will need to take a closer look at the situation. Sometimes, SMEs do not get things done in a timely fashion—or on our time schedules—because they are unclear about what we are really asking of them. They simply don’t have a full understanding of what we are seeking or how to do what we are asking. Remember, as foreign as the technical content is to you, often course development is just as foreign to an SME. Show the SME examples of past work so it is very clear what you are asking. And finally, it never hurts to show the SME understanding and patience.

Get help. Try to secure additional SMEs or developers to finish compiling material and develop the course. Sometimes if a project has been sitting vacant for a while it is because the tasks associated with completing it are too daunting. Spreading the work around can help.

Consider scaling back the objectives. A project sitting unfinished can also indicate that perhaps your original course objectives were overzealous. You may need to return to your initial needs analysis and reanalyze. If the missing information is still necessary, you might consider modularizing the course. This way, the “finished material” can still be taught and used as long as the unfinished material continues to be “unfinished.”

Redefine timetables. As so much of what we do is dependent on other people, it is difficult to estimate how long things will take. When projecting completion dates for technical training, if possible, forecast your estimates to reflect the amount of time it will take you to finish after you get the last item of requested information.

For example, Kristine, the boss, asks Technical Developer Will when the course will be finished. Will, who is still waiting on information from Subject Matter Expert Marty, wisely responds, “It will be done exactly five days after Marty gets me that last bit of information.”

You may have little control over when your SMEs will give you information, so if you base your estimate on what you think your SMEs should do, when they don’t do it, you are suddenly the one who cannot meet deadlines. Therefore, if possible, try to word and structure your deadlines so that you are estimating just the things you have direct control over: the content after you receive it in full.

Hold a pilot course. Sometimes actually going ahead and setting a pilot course date can speed things along and force the technical training project to become a higher priority. Of course, if you go this route, you should be prepared to hold the course even if you are not fully ready. (The previous chapter in this book offers additional information about pilot courses.)

Get management buy-in. This is short and simple: Either get management buy-in or lose the class for good.

Challenge: The Course That Needs to Be Finished Yesterday

Most all developers have been there. A training request comes in. You look it over; it seems reasonable and doable. So far, so good, but then comes the bomb: The course must be finished in exactly three days or else! I introduce . . . The Course That Needs to Be Finished Yesterday. Whether this particular challenge arises from rapidly changing technology or unrealistic development expectations from the organization, a course that needs to be developed without adequate development time allotted can cause major headaches.

In situations in which you are faced with unrealistic time constraints, there are a few solutions from which you can choose:

Educate the organization. When dealt an unpractical course development deadline, it is necessary to explain adequately to the organization the course development process and, most specifically, the benefits of each step of the process. Point out to the organization the long-term risks of not spending adequate development time on a technical training project. Use this discussion to redefine timetables into something more doable for you.

Get help. If management has designated this course as a high priority and it is necessary that the course be finished immediately, get help to finish the project. Leverage the importance of the course in order to secure additional SMEs and developers to finish it.

Focus on the most important objective. If a project needs to be rolled out immediately, take a critical look at the most important objective, and spend the bulk of your available time making sure that it is covered well. Most people would agree: It is better to do one thing well than a dozen things terribly.

Use the pilot course. If you are pressed for time and technical content but the show must go on, use the pilot course as one of your information-gathering strategies. After you have created a solid design document, task the participants in the pilot with supplying the needed information from the design document as part of the requirements of the first course. This will mean that the participants in the pilot are getting a slightly different transfer of information and means of instruction, but at least the material is being taught and the course is moving forward. The first pilot course will essentially function as your “soft opening,” but from there, as you gather information, each class should become more and more complete.

Challenge: The Organization Doesn’t Understand Active Training

It is no secret that active learning is necessary to achieve acceptable adult learning and retention levels. Yet many organizations fail to use these principles in their technical classroom training. One reason may be that people are not aware of existing research and have been content with the status quo of just “telling” the learners what they need to know through a lecture. Another reason may be that it is simply more challenging to develop interactive technical training based on the complexity of the subject matter.

If all the organization expects from you is a PowerPoint presentation and a final exam, you have a dilemma: Do you give the organization “just a PowerPoint,” or do you actually provide the organization with a quality product—a training course that takes into account instructional design and adult learning principles?

Hopefully you will be able to prevail with an active classroom. Here are a few things you can do to help convince the organization:

Reference the research. Scientific minds respect scientific research. There exists valid scientifically tested learning and memory research. Do your homework and present this information to your organization, whether verbally, in a PowerPoint, in a formal course, or as a handout.

Show a previous project. Sometimes it is helpful to show a finished product before you begin. Previous courses you designed, as well as positive comments from participants who went through previous courses you developed, can help the tentative organization see that active training can be beneficial and successful.

Keep it simple. When in doubt, keep the exercises simple. Take baby steps incorporating interactivity. Include transition slides from the lecture to the activity so that the instructor can more easily make a smooth transition from passive to active learning. Do not design highly involved exercises that are complicated to administer. Make the exercises straightforward and simple. Then, as the organization gets used to the idea of basic activities and interactivity, you can get more daring with your exercises.

Challenge: You Don’t Know How to Make the Content Interactive

For whatever reason, when subjects are highly technical, it can be more challenging to build interactivity into a classroom course.

Solutions to this problem include the following:

Enlist your SME. It is extremely helpful if you can enlist your SME to help think up ways to make a particular section interactive. If you can get your SME to understand what you are after, the SME’s intimate knowledge of the topic can add ingenuity, as well as breadth and depth, to the exercises that you might not have been able to generate on your own.

Again, keep it simple. There are a variety of Category A training exercises that can be used for most classes. You do not have to develop intricate games and exercises for all of your training courses. You can still be effective with simple worksheets and learner discussions.

Challenge: SMEs Disagree on Content

It is no fun being in the middle of disagreeing SMEs. Besides holding up the project, disagreeing SMEs can make you uncomfortable on a personal level if you are forced to choose sides and pick one SME’s content over another’s.

This challenge can be tricky, but possible solutions include the following:

Bring’em in. Gather all of the disagreeing SMEs, put them in a room together, and let them figure out what the final content should be. This takes your personal preferences out of the situation, and it lets the experts decide.

Ask management. If your SMEs have reached an impasse, you can enlist management to make the final call on content.

Include multiple perspectives in the content. If your topic truly has no absolute right or wrong answers, your SMEs have agreed to disagree, and management doesn’t want to make the call, it is OK to include multiple perspectives in the content. If handled correctly, these sometimes contentious areas can make good group discussions and exercises. For example, you might assign each group a different perspective and ask the groups to come up with an argument for their assigned perspective. Then you can let the groups debate with each other. This encourages dialogue and lets learners know that multiple perspectives exist in a particular area.

Challenge: Equipment Is Unavailable for Training

In an ideal world, we would have all of the necessary equipment and infrastructure to make the training environment perfectly mimic the job. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. For various reasons, sometimes equipment is simply not available for training. You are left essentially “trying to teach someone to swim without a swimming pool.”

If this is the case, there are a few things you can do:

Talk to management. Explain the issue to management and see if you can gain some support for providing the equipment for training courses. Have a plan ready for exactly what you want, why it is necessary, and how much it will cost. And then . . . be persuasive.

Use media. If equipment is not available, media can be the next best thing. Use as many pictures, videos, and animations as you can get your hands on.

Create on-the-job training. If course-essential equipment is not available, you may need to rethink whether a classroom course is really the best choice for the situation. Consider whether the classroom course could be converted to on-the-job training if you were to simply provide some formalized resources. If aspects of the technical content require a classroom course, but you still absolutely need the equipment as well, you might consider holding the classroom portion for theory and then creating an on-the-job follow-up self-study as an accompaniment for the classroom course.

Challenge: Concrete Answers Do Not Exist

It can be a challenge if your technical topic is not an exact science and concrete answers do not exist for your content.

In these situations, you can do the following:

Assess the situation. It is very important that you determine whether concrete answers truly do not exist or simply that your SME does not know what the correct answer is.

In addition, there are some safety-and health-related items that require absolute concrete answers. If this is the case for your technical topic, it is extremely important that you be diligent and find the correct and complete answers to your questions.

Beware of using absolutes. You need to make sure that when you write your materials you are careful about what you claim through your wording. Instead of using absolutes such as “always” and “never,” you should default to using “often” and “sometimes” unless an absolute is specifically requested by the SME.

Here are some examples:

Absolute: Widgets are always used in these situations.

Indirectly Absolute: Widgets are used in these situations.

Better: Widgets are often used in these situations.

Better: Widgets are sometimes used in these situations.

Use an educated guess. And then recognize that other alternatives exist. Sometimes you just need to make your best guess on which answer to feature, and then formally recognize within the course that other options exist. In other words, collect information that will help you make an educated guess on which content is most likely to be "officially" designated in the future. Choose the most promising content to feature, but still include multiple perspectives and solutions within your formal course content.

Challenge: You Have a Global Training Audience

There are a few things that can be a challenge if you have a global training audience. The most obvious, of course, is language difficulties. You may have learners and instructors who speak different languages. With a global audience you have different cultures and norms that you will need to take into account. In addition, with an global audience there can be different tools, work standards, and operational processes in different locations. Developing a course that taps into all these and is still relevant to the entire target audience can be a challenge.

In these situations, you can do the following:

Gain a broad perspective. It is very easy when developing training to get caught up in the best practices of one person or one location. While it can be helpful to work closely with one or two SMEs, it is important that you still gain a broad perspective by talking to multiple people. Find out what employees face in all locations, not just one. Try to secure a list of the products used and the tasks or job operations performed in different locations. Allow for review of material from many different SMEs with different perspectives and situations. Remember that different locations and countries have different norms, rules, and laws regarding the way that work gets done.

Modularize your training. Consider offering a solid baseline training module with additional add-on modules that can be given or not given depending on the location. This will allow you to provide a consistent base module, with location-specific fit-for-purpose add-ons.

Assist nonnative speakers. When you have nonnative speakers in your class, you can do the following things:

• Spell out acronyms.
• Recognize that language learning happens over time.
• Advise the instructor to be available to the participants.
• Be aware of cultural norms that may prevent learners from fully participating. If you are breaking cultural norms within a class, make sure that the instructor explicitly has a conversation about this with the learners.
• Keep a list of vocabulary words that nonnative speakers are likely to have trouble with and clarify those words at the beginning and throughout the class.
• Provide written materials to the learners.
• Allow participants who speak the same language to work in groups together.
• Create inclusive and culturally sensitive course materials. Build exercises into the class that help you reach all learners. For example, if you are dealing with a culture in which a participant would feel rude raising his or her hand, instead of just asking for comments, ask participants to write down questions or answers on a piece of paper first and then go over all of these questions together.

Challenge: Technology Keeps Changing

I once slaved to put together a course that, upon completion, was promptly obsoleted. The company I was working for decided it was no longer going to offer the main tool covered in the training course. Numerous hours and resources were spent developing courseware that was not going to be used. This was not good.

By its nature, technology will continue to change. This is not a bad thing for the organization. But it can be a challenge when we are trying to keep our training courses up-to-date.

In these situations, you can do the following:

Ask questions. You won’t always know if a product is going to go away, but you can at least protect yourself by asking as many questions as you can about the future of the product line. In this rapidly changing marketplace, it is important that training be clued in to which tools or services the business plans to emphasize and which ones it plans to obsolete. Sending out an email to management, engineering, operations, and so forth asking about these things can clue you in to the future of that product line and save you time, resources, and money in the long run.

Be organized. Make sure you are organized and that you know where your sources are. Document what information you received, from whom, and when so that you will have this information available in the event that questions arise about the course content.

Create flexible materials. Design your materials so that they can be easily updated. Create a permanent core of the class that is unchanging technology, and then have add-on modules or handouts that can be given to cover new, constantly changing technology.

Use general exercises. Consider using Category A exercises that ask general questions that are likely to remain relevant as technology evolves. That way you can at least keep the same learner materials as the technology changes. With general exercises in the learner’s manual, the only course material that changes with the changing technology will be the instructor’s answer key.

Refer learners to “living” locations. Instead of providing the material in hard copy in the class, refer learners to electronic locations where the “living” information resides. This is good because rather than participating in the constant rat race of updating your materials, you are instead leading the learners to the places they can find information on their own.

Summing It Up—A Final Word on Technical Training Basics

Technical training development is a complex, challenging, unique, misunderstood, and sometimes frustrating process. As a nontechnical course developer, you will sometimes find your job to be especially tricky: You must develop courseware using words and concepts you don’t fully understand.

The first step to successful development is ensuring that the necessary roles of the development team are covered: that is, making sure the team includes a developer, who is responsible for course structure, organization, and learning theory, and an SME, who is responsible for the technical content within that course structure. Whether the same person performs both roles or whether multiple people perform both roles isn’t important. What is important is that each role is given its due diligence. Both roles are necessary for success.

Because quality, health, safety, and the environment are integral factors in the business world, effective training is a must. Launching your technical training project in a comprehensive way helps to ensure that you are meeting the business goals of your organization and addressing the needs of your target audience. Asking the right questions in your initial course design meeting not only helps to accomplish this, but also helps you to create a plan, or a roadmap, of the course for both you and your SME.

Besides objectives, the target audience, and a working title, your course design document should contain a topical outline, organized appropriately. There are benefits and drawbacks to various organizational structures. You will need to look at your specific topic and course objectives in order to determine which structure is ideal.

Gathering information for your technical training project is another necessary, but challenging, aspect of technical course development. In general, you should first catalogue information you have, thinking about it in terms of the “types” of information (for example, categories, levels of information, definitions, components, relationships, analogies, and processes). You need to access as many internal and external sources of information as you can find. When you do find a valid source of information that helps to meet course objectives in some way, you should maximize this material and organize it in a logical manner.

The most important source you have is your SME. It cannot be emphasized enough that being able to work effectively with your SME is a critical skill for a nontechnical person designing a highly technical training course. In highly technical, highly specialized trades, there is not necessarily a library where you can go to find information or to find the answers to your questions. You are dependent on another person, an expert, to provide this information to you. Therefore, your relationship with this person and your communication with this person are very important. As such, when you are designing technical training classes, communication skills become just as important as knowing instructional design theory.

There are various tactics that can be utilized to draw information from and review material with your SME. You will find, however, that what works for one project and one SME does not always work for your next project and your next SME. It is through constant and effective communication with your SME that you are likely to find the right fit for both of you each time.

Sound instructional principles still apply even when a topic is highly technical. A complicated topic does not mean it is OK for the instruction to include only a PowerPoint lecture. There are a variety of exercises that can be included to break up the lecture and help further course objectives; basically, incorporating a variety of useful, relevant, and challenging exercises increases the value of technical training.

The final stage of technical training development is piloting the course and saying good-bye to the project. The pilot course is an opportunity to test your development project. As the pilot course proceeds, you should be analyzing objectives, content, areas for interactivity, participant reactions, questions, and extra things the instructor says. In addition, before you say good-bye to the project, you should put some steps in place so that your material can be more easily updated and kept relevant.

Technical training development is not for the faint of heart. Technical topics are complicated, and developing training for that content can be even more complex. Sometimes you can’t tell what content is “nice to know” and what is “need to know.” Sometimes your SME has a full-time job outside of the training department or disagrees with other SMEs. Sometimes a project lags or you are tasked with unrealistic deadlines. Sometimes the course you have been asked to redesign has already been taught for years, you have a global training audience, or you are faced with ever-changing technology. Sometimes the organization doesn’t understand active training or you don’t know how to make the content interactive. Sometimes equipment will be unavailable for training, and sometimes concrete answers do not exist.

Still, whether it be finding a reliable SME, making the course applicable to all locations, incorporating interactivity, keeping the main point of the course in focus, staying up-to-date with changes in the business, or even just learning the eccentric acronyms of the trade you are writing about, there are strategies available to assist you in development.

 

Getting It Done

As a nontechnical developer, you bring a fresh perspective to the material. Your role is essential to ensure that the structure of the training course meets both organizational and learner needs.

As mentioned earlier, technical training development is a complex, challenging, unique, misunderstood, and sometimes frustrating process. But it is also a process that is necessary and important to today’s technical organizations.

With a little focus and preparation, you can effectively develop your own technical training project. Go forth, create, and produce. You can do it.

 

Worksheet 9–1. Challenges and Solutions

List the challenges you have faced with technical training development. Then, brainstorm possible solutions you will try.

Challenges	Solutions