Material Development
For an online course, typical training materials include online content developed with tools such as Captivate or Articulate. For facilitator-led courses, training materials include instructor and participant guides, slide-show presentations, handouts and activities.
Developing training materials should be viewed as a process. Characteristics of a good ID processes and templates are:
- Easy to create
- Easy to edit
- Ensure consistent outcome
- Reduce re-work
- Automates common tasks
- Enables re-use of existing content
Process Starting Point
The process starts when an Instructional Designer receives an Instructional Design Specification (usually supported by face-to-face meetings). The old carpenter’s axiom of measure twice, cut once applies here. Additional time spent planning, clarifying and documenting this specification will be rewarded later through shorter development times and higher quality outcomes.
Process Ending Point
At the end of the process, all course-ware is complete and ready for pilot delivery. Documents are stored using consistent file names and folder names. A course hand-over document is created that lists files, printing instructions, and any other information required to use the documents.
The facilitator’s juggling act
A facilitator running an unfamiliar course must juggle a range of different mediums. At the start of the design process it is important to determine the nature of these materials. For example, will the facilitator guide need to be heavily scripted with lots of support – or should the participants receive most of the information in their guide with only brief notes for the facilitator?
Integrated Participant and Instructor Guides
For many courses, it is common for some content to be the same in both the facilitator guide and participant guide. This can be a major source of inefficiency since from the time the second document is created any changes will require modifications to two documents. This is not only time-consuming but it also is a major source of error.
Claricom has developed advanced Word templates that allows the facilitator and participant guides to be developed from a single document. This is known as single-sourcing and this technique can dramatically reduce the required development effort.
Office Automation
Claricom can provide templates and macros to automate common Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook). Macros allow the designer to spend more of their thinking time on the content and the training solution (which is what you are paying them for) and less of their thinking time on the mechanics of constructing the document. The following are some examples of macros and functions we have provided for our clients.
| Macro | Description |
| Excel outline to Word | Create a course outline in Excel and press a button. The macro creates a Word shell document for the course facilitator guide. |
| Create Participant GuideCreate Instructor Guide | Develop an integrated participant guide and instructor guide (instructor notes are shown in a different colour). Press a button to produce the instructor guide (or participant guide). |
| Create Running Sheet | Click on a button and enter the topic time for a specified topic (for example you might specify the Icebreaker activity to be 20 mins).Click another button to export all topic headings and the timings to an Excel spreadsheet. Enter the start, end and break times and you have an instant course running sheet. |
| Table Auto format | Create a basic table and concentrate on the content. Click a button to automatically format the borders, shading, styles, and indenting that your training template requires. |
How much time would macros like these save your design teams? These are just a few examples. Please contact us if you would like a free demonstration of how automated design templates and macros can save you time and improve quality. Although we are based in Melbourne, we can conduct online presentations for small groups at your workplace.
Style Guides
A style guide includes the rules and specifications for the template, styles, and macros. While this is important, we believe that you should not rely on a style guide to drive consistency and performance. It is one thing to write a comprehensive 50 page standards document – but quite another to get all your designers to follow it! A better approach is to make it easier for people to do the right thing – through well designed templates and processes.
Template Deployment and Training
We can provide assistance on the best way to deploy new instructional design templates and processes. We can also develop and manage the associated training that may be required such as generic Word training and/or advanced instructional design topics.