10
Pixels or Paper?: How to Build the Content and Deliverables

When you get to the last step of the 4 × 8 Proficiency Design Model, you are ready to create the content for your training class. The reason for putting content at the end of your curriculum design process is to ensure that you construct it correctly. Effective training must have accurate content. If this is the first time you’ve used the 4 × 8 Proficiency Design Model, it is best to create your content from scratch. Any materials you created or used before may be useful, but starting the process from the beginning will guarantee that your new deliverables match the goals, audience, objectives, and exercises you chose for this course.

Ask the Questions Again

When I refer to building the content, I’m referring to the gathering of all the steps together into one cohesive curriculum. Start with your objectives, and then look at the outline you determined would help you meet those objectives. The outline is your guide, but perhaps not in the way you are used to. Don’t just fill in each point with a new PowerPoint slide. Instead, start by asking a few questions. If you’ve followed the process properly, you will find that many of them have already been answered.

  1. How can a student demonstrate that they have met my learning objective? This should be easy, since your objective is already a measurable and observable action verb.
  2. How can they learn by doing?
    1. How can they practice it in the classroom or eLearning module? Hopefully some of this was already captured when you created the constructive activities in step 5. Remember step 5 is not merely about demonstrating an understanding of a topic you previously covered in a lecture. Step 5 is about actually building the learning through an activity. It is perfectly fine to have no lecture at all and teach the entire concept through the activity.
    2. Related to this question, how can they demonstrate this in the classroom or eLearning module?

      While learning by doing is important, it is also important to capture success. Assessing a student’s ability to do certain activities may be a requirement and should have been captured in step 7.

  3. What assumptions am I making?

    This question may take a little more time to answer. We all make assumptions. Experts tend to make the wrong ones. Make sure you get some typical students to help answer this question. What do you expect them to be familiar with or already proficient in? This is a critical question to get right, since it will help fill in many of the learning gaps for your students. As you get the answers and see the gaps, fill those into your outline. Where should they be taught and how?

  4. What must I tell them?

    The very last question you should ask is, “What do I need to tell them before they begin the learning activities?” List only the information required. Get to the activities as soon as possible. Let your students learn while they are doing.

Asking the questions again will make sure your content is tied together with the work you’ve already done. Then, you can start putting the content into a tangible form that can be delivered to your students. If you have curriculum designers, technical writers, or others that specialize in this function, get their help. This book is not written to be a complete reference for instructional design, nor is it written for instructional designers. As the technical and product expert, you have a vested interest in delivering the training in the best possible format. You want people to remember what you taught them well after the event. Asking the questions again can help.

Create a Student Guide

After you have asked the questions again, you can start creating a student guide.

Wait … before the PowerPoint?

Yes, before the PowerPoint.

If your class is more than a couple of hours long, you need to give something to your students to take with them—something that was designed specifically for that, not just a printout of your slides.

The ability to quickly and easily show content on a screen to all of your students at once is a wonderful technological marvel and an amazing teaching tool. But it is just a tool, and you shouldn’t use a hammer to tighten a screw.

Create the student guide first, because you are more interested in what your students learn than what you teach. Handing them a simple printout of your own notes signals that your primary interest is in delivering the content. Providing them a learning guide designed to help them learn in ways other than your lecture tells them that your primary concern is that they learn.

A learning guide is part tourist guide and part scrapbook. It is a map with highlights and extra information of what you will be seeing and a place to hold reflections and pictures of what you visited. It is both a syllabus and a workbook. I will use the terms student guide and workbook interchangeably. Here are some key elements that are important to include in a student guide:

  1. Whitespace

    Space for writing is number one for a reason. If students are going to take notes in your workbook, it must be created for that. In addition, whitespace will make the workbook look neat and professional and give credibility to your class.

  2. The objectives

    Always state the class objectives at the beginning of the student guide. Instead of a bullet point or numbers, I like to use a little box next to them. At the end of every class I go back to the objectives and ask the students to check the box if they felt that objective was met. This gives them a reference six months from now when they need that reminder.

  3. The outline

    This may seem obvious, but always include the outline of the subject matter being taught, even if the format is different. You don’t have to have the numbers and letters, but you do need to have the headers.

  4. Questions or exercises

    The student workbook is another way to engage your students. Feel free to insert questions, even some that you may not ask in class. The point is to augment their knowledge, not to examine them or create busy work for them.

  5. Extra insight

    You can never teach everything. Use the student guide to encourage learning beyond the classroom. Adding extra information to your student guide increases the value of your class. Highlight it with an indicator so students know it is information that will not be covered in the objectives.

  6. Keys and place indicators

    It is a good practice to include visual indicators of some sort for the student. Only include a key if the visuals aren’t obvious. You aren’t writing a technical manual, but a glorified note‐taking workbook. Use page or slide indicators to help students keep up, since you aren’t giving them the actual slides.

  7. Graphics

    The graphics you use should match what you use on your slides. Make sure you have the appropriate permissions to use them. You don’t need to use all of them, of course. One of the benefits of a student guide is that it frees the instructor up to use even more graphics in their presentation.

  8. Copyright information and indemnification

    Lastly, always include the copyright information in the student guide. Make sure you don’t put anything in the document that you don’t have permission to use. Include a notice that the document is intended for use by students only. You may want to include a statement of indemnification, depending on what you are training on. For these items, I would seek help from your technical writing department and legal office.

Create Your Visual Aids

Now you can make those PowerPoint slides. At least, that is what most people think of when they think of facilitation visual aids.

Creating Presentation Slides

A quick disclaimer. This is not a book about creating good presentations. There are many great resources for that and I encourage you to check them out.

Here are a few tips that will help to facilitate effective learning.

Use the Software Correctly

Although there are other sources of presentation software, such as Keynote and Prezi, I will refer to PowerPoint, since it is the most widely used tool. If you use something different, replace PowerPoint with whatever tool you use. They are all merely tools to help communicate and create engagement. When the tool you are using starts to decrease engagement, it is being overused.

Someone has said that PowerPoint is the worst thing that ever happened to training. I understand what they mean. You cannot, however, blame the tool for poor training. Someone very well could have said that about the chalkboard at one time. Use the right tool for the right reasons and in the right way.

  1. PowerPoint is not a book

    Don’t write it like one. You don’t need full paragraphs of text, or even full sentences. Keep your text size large enough to be read by everyone and short enough to be read at a glance. If you need longer explanations, quotations, formulas, or charts, put them into the student guide or print them as a handout.

  2. Use less text, more graphics

    Most technical experts put way too much text on the screen. There are several reasons why they do this, but the most obvious is convenience. They feel they can create one document that will serve as a presentation tool and technical manual. It doesn’t work well for either.

    Too often, instructors who watch videos of themselves are surprised to see how much they face the screen while teaching. Many times, that is because they’ve written such a long sentence on the screen, they have to look at it to read it. Help yourself out by putting less on the screen. This is one case where less truly is more.

  3. Use presenter notes

    If you really need to put more text in the slide, put it in the notes.

  4. Use presenter mode, or something similar

    Using this mode doesn’t show just a duplicate of your screen. It allows you to see the next slide and your speaker notes as well.

  5. Learn the shortcuts

    All software programs have shortcuts. Learn how to use them to blank the screen (“b” while in presenter mode in PowerPoint), white out the screen (“w” while in presenter mode in PowerPoint), and so on.

Don’t Rely on a Presentation

If you rely too heavily on your slides, losing them due to technical reasons can ruin your training. That is another benefit of a student guide. No slides? No problem. Here are some ways to keep a technology glitch from ruining your training class.

  1. Save a copy to a portable drive

    If your computer chooses the worst possible time to update or crash, you can borrow another. Also, many newer projectors have a USB input that allows one to connect a flash drive and present directly from the projector.

  2. Always have a backup plan

    You never know when the bulb will go out, or your computer will decide to quit. Have a plan B. Generally, your student guide or textbook is your backup plan. However, you may have equipment that you need to gather around, pictures you may need to distribute, or other ways to teach without a projector and screen.

Don’t Let the Presentation Tie You Down

In a similar way to the above statement, instructors often rely too much on the order of slides and forget that they are teaching individuals with individual needs.

  1. Use hidden slides to increase flexibility

    One nice feature in PowerPoint and Keynote is the ability to hide slides. Your presentation will skip hidden slides unless you click on them directly. You can put in some coffee break slides, but keep them hidden. When you see that the class needs a short break, click on the slide and will look like it was planned all along. This keeps the student that yawned from getting embarrassed!

  2. Use a remote presentation tool

    A remote presentation tool frees you up to concentrate on your students. Learn how to use it well. It does more than just advance the slides. Become familiar with the other functions as well.

    A good example is the “mute screen” button (most remote presenters have one), which blanks out the slide. You’ll find that whenever the slide disappears, students’ eyes immediately go from the screen to you, the instructor. I use this frequently. One way for you to use this is when you have asked a question and want to make sure you have the students’ attention. Blank the screen. When a student asks a question, you can also blank the screen out of respect for them. It will pull the attention away from the screen and toward the student asking the question, signaling that you take questions seriously and want the entire class to learn from them.

    In order to learn how to use your tool, you will need to practice using it. Students should hardly know it is in your hand. Modern remotes don’t require that you point it at the screen or computer, and giving it a good shake when you change the slide doesn’t help, either! You may chuckle, but I see that all the time.

Know Your Material

  1. Know what is coming next

    The more you practice, the more comfortable you will be. You don’t have to know every word, but you do need to know the flow of your material.

    You don’t need to use line‐by‐line animation. Often, the text is in the student guide anyway, so you are not surprising them in any way. If the order is not important, you don’t want to be forced into a particular order by having the text appear point by point.

  2. Don’t make excuses

    One of the most uncomfortable feelings as a student is to watch an instructor struggle. Most of the time, however, students wouldn’t have known the instructor was struggling if he or she hadn’t informed them that they were. The fear of a few seconds of silence has forced many new instructors to make excuses they didn’t need to make.

    Never say “I’ve never seen this before” or “these aren’t my slides.” If you must, explain that to the students one time, at the beginning, but not when you don’t understand the slide. Instead, take a few seconds to absorb the slide yourself. Those few seconds may feel like a long time to you, but they will not to your students. Most of the time, you’ll be able to collect your thoughts and continue, without making an excuse.

Creating Handouts

I like handouts. Handouts can be anything from a chart or graph, an exercise, or anything that you don’t want to include in the student guide that students get at the beginning of class. Here are some reasons to use handouts and things to consider when you do.

Use a handout…

  1. If you have a worksheet or other material you want to collect.
  2. When you don’t want them looking at it prior to covering the material.

    Students will look over the student guide right away. Usually, that is a good thing. When they know what is coming, they won’t waste your time asking about it, and adults learn better when they are prepared in advance, even if that just means seeing it in the outline.

    There are times, however, when you don’t want to divulge certain things before it is time. Use a handout instead.

  3. When the detail is too long or large to fit in your workbook.

    I don’t like to use multiple paragraphs, even in my workbook. If one requires that, I create it separately. Formatting and continuity is important to me.

  4. When it is from a third‐party source.

    Get permission to copy it, but keep it separate from your learning guide.

  5. When it is part of an exercise.
  6. When it is supplemental material.

Statement of Indemnification

It is a good idea on any training material to include a statement of indemnification. Seek the advice of your legal team. Let them write a statement, or give them one to modify. The statement is not a foolproof guarantee against lawsuits, but it can help to protect you if someone takes your training and then has a failure that leads to any sort of loss. All of your documentation should include a statement similar to the one in Figure 10.1.

No alt text required.

Figure 10.1 Example indemnification statement.

Create an Instructor’s Guide

This step may be optional, depending on the type of training you are giving. If more than one instructor will be teaching the class, an instructor’s guide is advisable. You may also be able to use the speaker notes in your presentation software.

If you do choose to create an instructor’s guide, here are some things to consider:

  1. Keep it as similar to the student guide as possible

    The key here is to be able to tell exactly where the students should be. It gets frustrating to students when you say, “I’m on page 13, what page are you on?”

  2. Don’t give verbatim statements

    Too many instructor guides tell the instructor exactly what to say. Give ideas, but not exact wording. Giving too much implies that the instructor can just read their guide as they “teach” it for the first time. Not much will actually be taught.

  3. As much as possible, make the instructor’s guide a live document

    Every time you teach your class you should make it better than the last one. A good instructor’s guide provides a place to keep those notes and ideas, both for you and for others that may teach the class. It should constantly be added to and revised, even if the curriculum itself is not.

An instructor’s guide does not make a good instructor. Having an instructor’s guide is optional, but having a pilot class is not.

Running a Pilot Class

There are two types of pilot classes. In one class, you are piloting the curriculum, and in another you are piloting the instructor. Occasionally, both will occur at the same time. Hopefully, that doesn’t happen often.

When an Instructor Teaches This Class for the First Time

Everyone has to start somewhere. Don’t be afraid to state that, unless there is a good reason not to. Never teach the class alone the first time. If the class is long and has multiple modules, the best scenario is to co‐teach a few times before going solo. When you do, always seek feedback so that you can feel more comfortable the next time.

Teaching a pilot class does not mean that this is the first time you have ever taught. However, you should teach a pilot class whenever it is the first time to teach a new class or curriculum.

When This Class Is Being Taught for the First Time

Another type of pilot class is when the curriculum is being taught for the first time. In this case, what is being tested is whether the course does what it says it does and how long it will really take to do that. This is a chance to try out new exercises and delivery methods as well.

Regardless of whether the instructor is teaching the class for the first time, or the curriculum is being taught by anyone for the first time, there are a few things they should consider when running a pilot, or beta, class.

Handpick the Audience

Never open up a class to the general public without first running a pilot with an audience willing to provide feedback and insight. Be honest with everyone that this is a trial run and solicit their help to improve future classes. A pilot class should be comprised of the following:

  1. A notetaker

    Someone should be designated to take detailed notes about how things go. Everything from timing issues to questions to equipment issues should be noted. Both positive and negative aspects of the class should be noted. Don’t leave this up to the instructor. It is difficult to teach and take these types of notes at the same time.

  2. Some from the target audience

    If possible, get some “friendlies” from the target audience. This will help to make sure you are offering them what they need. Be very clear to them that the class is a pilot class and that you expect their feedback. Give them an incentive to help you make the class better, or they may feel like they got the raw end of the deal.

  3. At least one expert other than the instructor.
  4. At least one stakeholder.

Plan on Extra Time

If you think the class will take 2 days, schedule two and a half. This will allow for debriefing if there is extra time. Remember part of the reason for running a pilot class is to determine how much time it takes to teach your curriculum. Up until now, everything has been a guess. Give yourself more time than you think. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Be Aware of Too Many Auditors

I have run pilot classes in the past that had high visibility. I started getting multiple requests for visitors and auditors. They all promised, of course, to sit quietly in the back and be virtually unseen. Be careful about allowing too much of that. Too many opinions will change the class, no matter how “unseen” they think they are.

Debrief with Everyone

If students were willing to come to your pilot class, the least you can do is give them the courtesy of getting their feedback. This should include more than a standard survey. Find out what they liked and would keep and what they think could have been better. You don’t have to use all of their ideas, but you do need to listen to them. Some of the better ideas I have had for training classes have come during these sessions. Your notetaker should take notes during this as well to prepare for the real debriefing, which comes next.

Debrief with Your Core Team

A second level of debriefing is to go over the notes taken and make the necessary changes. You must put egos aside for this meeting. If the participants can’t be honest, the class won’t be its best. This can take some time. You may want to schedule a separate meeting for each objective just to make sure you are thorough. Spending time here will save time down the road. It also generates support, if the right people are involved.

Conclusion

Can you identify what content should be in a student guide and what should be shown on the screen? Can you use your visual aids effectively?

When you provide more than one way for your students to absorb your material, you are increasing the chances that they will retain it and use it after class. This doesn’t mean that student guides must be printed on paper, in spite of the catchy chapter title. Student guides can be created for digital tablets as well. The main thing is to make sure they are being used for their intended purpose. It is better to use the student guide as your teaching reference than to use slides as a student guide.

When you put some thought into the structure of your class and when you have run a pilot to make sure students can improve their proficiency in your class, you will be ready to deliver a professional training class.

Making It Practical

Creating both learning materials and presentation materials takes time and must be valuable. Take some time to reflect on what you can do differently in your training classes.

  1. What values, if any, do you see in providing students with a student guide?
  2. How might your presentation look differently if you change it from being a student guide to a visual aid?
  3. How will you teach your next class if there is no electrical power?

Review of Part Three: The Structure of Hands‐On Learning

  1. Consider the design of a product training course, including the creation of visual aids, student guides, and handouts, as laid out in Chapters 8–10. Is there anything about putting content last that makes designing the training easier? Is there anything that makes it harder for you?
  2. What is the main thing about the structure of your product training that you want to do differently as a result of reading Chapters 8–10?
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