Training and Wikis - how do you use them together?

Sep 05, 2012

Hello! My department is looking at using a wiki for all of our job aids/work instruction documents. I'm wondering how many of you have experience with that, how it's worked for you, and how you've incorporated training into the wiki. We have some full eLearning modules and a lot of PowerPoint files that were created for classroom-based training and then released as training in an online document repository.

I'm envisioning a wiki page with the process name and info, then links to whatever flash or PowerPoints training is applicable, but I'd love to know what other people are doing and how it's working.  Thanks very much!

6 Replies
Natalia Mueller

Hi Aimee! Welcome to E-Learning Heroes! 

I don't know if my experience lines up with the scope of what you're talking about but I have done this a few different ways. I found it especially useful when a project rolled out with a big training component, including  a lot of resource materials beyond the eLearning courses (job aids, guides, on-demand videos etc).The wiki allowed us to create a training website just for the project and include FAQs, comments and communication along with the help resources.

A couple of things to consider- it was far more effective to keep the communication and the actual training materials in separate tabs of the wiki. For example, have a HOME or ABOUT  tab/page with introduction, explanation, benefits, etc. Then the page for training resources was just for the resources - and a well organized, streamlined page was a must.  It's easy to clog it up with a lot of introductions and instructions or create too long of a clicking trail. I organized it with a landing page that acted as a menu. Each menu item was a topic that linked to it's own page where I then divided  the resources by format - creating a section for job aids, another for videos, etc.

Do you also have a company intranet? Keep in mind the implications if there is another place employees are used to going for help resources outside of the LMS. If they go there to search for your job aids will the wiki resources be included in the search? 

I hope this helps! 

Aimee McEnerney

Thanks, Natalie - that is helpful. We do have a company intranet site and the wiki would be a part of the refresh of that site. We have a separate system that acts as a document repository and we're leaving the documents house there (corporate request) and will continue to point to it form the Wiki. We've moving to Sharepoint and will try to set up the Sharepoint search to crawl both places, but we're not yet sure if we can do that.

David Anderson

Using a wiki as a live document or learning portal that links to knowledge chunks is a great idea.

In a former role, I used wikis to manage the QA process. We wrote our storyboards in the wiki and asked instructors to comment and edit as freely as they liked. This was the "open" period where conflicting perspectives were captured and reviewed. Ultimately, we had to select a "preferred method" for the course, but valid alternatives were available in the wiki.

Here's one way you could blend wikis with the QA process:

Elizabeth Israel

David - I love this wiki/course together.  I'm with David-  how did you actually create that?  I would like to use something like this.  As far as the original question - I agree that you need to make things clean.  Having a lot of external documents, .pdfs, presentations, etc. can easily confuse the learner.  Chunking like things together as an extension of the learning seems to work best.  I've created toolkits that link to the company intranet/product specs etc. so that my materials are always updated rather than always having to track links to tools that the participant can use.

JESSICA LONG

If more information can be provided on this was done it would be fantastic. I'm trying to convert our live virtual training of how to use the wiki into a storyline module. Ideally, I'd like to have the storyline module in the wiki (as shown above) and allow trainees to practice items in the wiki at the same time. Does this seem like a possibility? 

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