Best Method for training end users on new software program

Jul 15, 2020

Good day! I built a course last year on a software program that we were rolling out to the end users. Within this course are 10 "chapters" that take the employee through a different feature in each branching scenario. Within some of those chapters are "mini" chapters that gives the employee the opportunity to learn the feature either by (1) hands on, (2) step by step or (3) a video of the process.

Move forward 8 months and the application has been updated so my course needs some tweaks (I knew this going in). Here are my questions to the Community:

Should I break this course out into 10 smaller, self-contained courses? This way the employee only has to watch the one in lieu of navigating the entire course?
Should I remove the three methods of learning for one type? My original thought on this was that everyone learns differently, so let's give them 3 ways to do it.
Continuing with #2, if I narrow this to one learning type, what do you recommend as the best approach from your experience?

I look forward to hearing from the Community on this and thank you.

7 Replies

Tom Kuhlmann
Staff

almost 4 years ago07/15/20 at 10:36 pm (UTC)

Personally, I'd break the training into tasks they need to be able to do rather than a focus on the feature. Build out mini scenarios of how they'd use the software.
I'd go with just video. The show/try/test modes are a bit dated for software training and since they're mostly click and reveal, I think, a bit frustrating to go through.

Allison LaMotte
Staff

almost 4 years ago07/16/20 at 11:40 am (UTC)

Hi Sharon,

1. I agree with Tom, try organizing your content by task and then doing 1 mini-course per task.

2. I think that you should definitely stick to 1 method here instead of offering 3. It's nice that you want to give learners options, but it's going to take you so much more time to create and I'm not sure it's worth it. I personally like mixing video and hands-on, like I did in this example. If you decide to go with full video, I would be very mindful of how long each video is so people don't start to tune out.

I hope that's helpful! I'm curious to see what others have to say about this.

Sharon Plunk
Author

almost 4 years ago07/16/20 at 3:18 pm (UTC)

Thank you Tom and Allison for your input. I knew I was going a bit overboard but once you get started....

And thank you Allison for directing me to your example. It is exactly how I should approach this application. Simple and to the point.

Appreciate the input.

almost 4 years ago07/20/20 at 12:48 pm (UTC)

You're welcome! Happy to help :)

Nancy Woinoski
Hero

almost 4 years ago07/21/20 at 11:16 pm (UTC)

I agree with Tom about the video option, but I also like to include a text version of the steps below the video so that people don’t have to view the entire thing if they are looking for how to do one specific step. You often see this in YouTube videos where creators put the steps in the comments. For me personally, I almost always read the steps and skip the video.

almost 4 years ago07/22/20 at 9:22 am (UTC)

I love that idea, Nancy! It's great to be able to just quickly glance at a list of steps if you're pretty sure you know how to do it, but are just missing one step.

almost 4 years ago08/13/20 at 2:03 pm (UTC)

I love that example. How do you set the screencast as the entire screen?

Best Method for training end users on new software program

7 Replies

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