At this point, most books on training would instruct you to develop a detailed course outline. After you have an outline that is two or three levels deep, the course almost writes itself. This book will make no such recommendation, for two reasons.
First, because the organization and content of the course are based upon the exercises, it makes sense to start writing with the exercises.
Second, in today’s fast-paced, budget-conscious environment, very few course writers have time to lovingly craft a detailed course outline before producing actual course material.
Forget what your grade-school writing teacher told you about beginning a writing project with a detailed outline, and starting with the beginning. The exercises are central to the course, so that is where we will begin: in the middle, with the exercises.
Congratulations! You have a detailed plan for the course, and the buy-in on that plan from those who are depending upon you. At this point, you are almost unstoppable.
Your next task is gathering the data files and applications needed for the exercises. In our auto insurance processing example, you would need the following:
- The claims-processing application
- The correct configuration for the application with proper processing rules for whichever type of claims and locations will be used in the exercises
- Customers added to the applications database
- A user ID for the application, with the same access rights that your students will have
You need to compile a similar list of software requirements for your class.
After compiling your list of requirements for the training environment, install the software on the computer that you will use to develop the training exercises. Then, before you start developing the exercises, take a snapshot of the training system. That is, back up or copy the application’s data and settings files.
This system snapshot of your starting point is important because of the following reasons:
- If you find yourself going down the wrong path while developing the exercises, you can easily restore your system to its original starting point and start over.
- If development of the exercises goes well, you can use the snapshot as the starting point for the training computers.
At this point, you have developed:
- An audience analysis that tells you who needs to be trained
- The learning objectives, which consist mostly of tasks the students must master
- A business scenario that will give your clients a realistic experience in the classroom
- A short description of an exercise for each learning objective that will teach that objective
- Measurable criteria for success for each learning objective
- Consensus among the courses sponsors for all of the above