Harbinger at the Training 2012 Conference & Expo

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 1

- An account by Mona Sharma, DGM – Projects, and Exhibitor at the Conference

Date: February 13-15, 2012

Venue: Atlanta, GA, at the Georgia World Congress Center

Visitor’s Profile: Professional trainers, consultants, and academics, HRD professionals and senior executives, Instructional designers & other related professionals.

Exhibitor’s Profile: Business Development Services, Training and Talent Development Services, Authoring and Publishing Platforms, Custom Content and Communication Services, Learning and Performance Services, Digital Literacy and Desktop Productivity Assessment Services, Train the Trainer Workshop and Consulting Services, Distance Learning, Employee Selection & Orientation, Ethics, Leadership Training, Motivation, Presentation Skills, Problem Solving, Project Management, Team Building & Performance, Videoconferencing, Writing Skills, Translation services, Training Documents Development Services.

The training 2012 conference & expo was an event designed for learning, training and performance professionals. It was a midsized conference with approximately 700 - 800 attendees. There were around 65-70 vendors exhibiting in the expo hall, a varied mix of vendors, providing content development services, transcription and translation services, technology solutions, train the trainer services, corporate training and corporate entertainment services too! It was very encouraging to witness that people worldwide were taking learning and training so seriously.

With the assurance that we were at the right place at the right time, we got busy with setting up the booth, the fun and creative part of the exhibition booth preparations, where we presented our eLearning Products and Custom Content Development Services.

We exhibited Raptivity, our interactivity building tool which allows you to quickly and easily create elearning interactions such as games, simulations, brainteasers etc. and embed them directly into your online courses. There are around 170+ interaction templates to choose from to make your elearning courses interactive.

Along with our products, Harbinger also presented its Custom Content services offerings. Visitors showed keen interest in experiencing our expertise in content development using Flash, HTML5, Lectora, Articulate, ToolBook and our own tools Elicitus and Raptivity. All our learning solutions got an overwhelming response.

 

Edumercials: One of our unique offerings was development of ‘Edumercials’- short for Educational Commercials, which are 5-6 minute self playing animations that are either story or scenario-based and put across a concept in an interactive way. Edumercials can be used as standalone just-in-time learning pieces or they can also be integrated within elearning courses to make the courses more engaging. Quite a few visitors signed up for the raffle to win a 5-minute free edumercial.

Single Source Solution for Mobile Learning: Our mobile learning conversations led us to discussions about the platform independent ‘Single Source’ solutions being offered for mobiles and laptops. The iPad demos and especially the interactive e-Book, was well appreciated by everyone. Many were surprised to see Flash based animations, video and audio integrated in an eBook developed in HTML5.

Interactive ILT: Some visitors who engaged in virtual classrooms or face to face training were interested in our Instructor Led Training services where in we offered to instructionally and visually enhance their presentations and develop facilitator and student notes for them.

We had an exclusive range of elearning samples for both desktop/laptop and mobile tablets ranging from Product, Process, Soft skill and Leadership and Management training to K-12 training. All these samples were also made available on our showcase so that they could be viewed at leisure. (https://showcase.harbingerknowledge.com/ ; Username: training2012-visitor; Password: password1!)

Visits by the Industry Expert: Well known speakers and thought leaders from the industry visited our booth and were impressed with our instructional approach and the apt use of interactivity in our courses.

The expo ended after two full days of meeting new people, interesting conversations and demos and assurances of exploring a new relationship with Harbinger! Through Harbinger I have attended other International Conferences in North America and visited customer sites for project discussions, however this was the first time I experienced being a presenter in the conference booth.

I would say I experienced a very different Valentine Day’s eve by connecting with many new people and prospects! I look forward to meet with them again in the next upcoming conferences!! Till then bye and enjoy the new ways of Learning!!!

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Harbinger Makes an Impact with “Single Source” Mobile Learning Solution @ the Learning 3.0 Conference

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

In October 2011, Harbinger attended the Training Magazine’s Learning 3.0 conference in Chicago. Harbinger was a sponsor-partner in this event. Bijoy Banerjee, Associate Vice President – Business Development presented on Mobile Learning.

In a post conference debriefing, Deepali Tharkude, Associate Vice President – Content Development spoke with Bijoy about his take on the conference, state of Mobile Learning, trends, challenges and finally, how the audience perceived Harbinger’s emerging leadership role in Mobile Learning and its pioneering “single source” solution.

Here is an excerpt:

Deepali: So Bijoy, how was the conference and your sessions?

Bijoy: The conference was very good, Deepali. All got ample opportunity to exchange knowledge and network. I presented twice – 4th and 5th Oct. The session details can be viewed here.

On 4th Oct I spoke on: Single Source Content strategy – eliminating the eLearning / Mobile Learning divide.

On 5th Oct I presented: How to choose native app or browser based delivery for mobile learning – A hands on guide.

The audience turnaround in the sessions was highly encouraging on both days. In fact, combining both days, the turnaround was about 30% of the entire conference audience and that’s a lot!

Deepali: Wow! That’s a great turnaround, Bijoy. What were the reasons, you think?

Bijoy: I realized this high level of interest and turnaround for the sessions was due to the following reasons:

  1. Mobile Learning has grown from the exploratory phase to the actual implementation phase in many organizations. As a result, there is natural drive to learn ways, means and the innovations for successfully implementing mobile learning.
  2. There is a huge demand for the “right” knowledge about implementing mobile learning in the most efficient, scalable and risk-mitigated way. People are looking for expert guidance and support in the design and development of quality mobile learning solutions and delivery mechanisms.
  3. Solutions to: (1) running the same content across all mobile devices as well as desktop/laptop (i.e. platform agnostic content) and (2) decide when and how to go for WebApp or Native App.

Taking clue from the post-session followup chats, I realized that the sessions addressed these expectations.

Deepali: Excellent! Would you please share a bit on the “single source” topic you presented?

Bijoy: Yes, sure. With the exploding growth and acceptance of mobile devices for learning and education, new set of challenges have surfaced; most significantly, developing content to run on all mobile platforms, as well as desktop/laptop.

Creating content separately for each device, operating system and browser is not a viable option, as you can understand. Instead, the content should be developed once, and then push from the LMS, website or Apps, playable online or offline, should be track able, and finally, must be accessible by multiple devices and their browsers – a content that can meet all these is “single source”, also known as, platform agnostic content.

The audience was particularly impressed when I did a quick demo of an interactive on-boarding course we developed, purely in HTML5.

HTML5 content having visual richness and instructionally sound interactivities is not a very common knowledge, so the audience was pleasantly surprised to see example of a course that was seamlessly accessed from LMS and iPad, followed SCORM compliance and used variety of interactivities and multimedia assets.

Deepali: Yes, Bijoy. In fact, I hear the same ‘WOW’ from our customers! Now, for our reader’s benefit, would you please describe how Harbinger is positioned in single source?

Bijoy: Actually, Harbinger is one of the pioneers in the design and development services of single source content and today, Harbinger commands a leadership position in this domain.

Back in early 2010, when Flash-based development was still the de-facto trend, Harbinger envisioned rapid growth in platform agnostic content and the role HTML5 would play.

Though it was new back then, but Harbinger invested heavily in R&D and developed cutting edge competencies in HTML5 based content development. Soon pilot projects followed for various customers, and by the end of 2010, Harbinger had several success stories of HTML5 based interactive content that were accessible from the LMS, App, desktop, laptop, tablets, smart phones, online, offline and were track able as well.

Till date Harbinger has executed several large scale “single source” projects and continues to find great traction from customers. I realized that Harbinger stands distinctly differentiated in the single source domain due to the following:

  1. Early knowledge and R&D: Harbinger got on the boat much earlier and had spent considerable time in R&D and pilot process. As a result, Harbinger has passed through the learning curve, has first-hand knowledge of the challenges in HTML5 based content development and has found solutions.
  2. Demonstrated success: Success talks! After developing hundreds of courses as single source on variety of topics and interactivity levels, Harbinger has mastered the HTML5 technology and its effective use in interactive content development.
  3. Quality like Flash, but no Flash: Many a times you must have heard that HTML5 has limitations in creating the visual richness and interactivity compared to Flash; that’s not entirely wrong actually, but through rigorous R&D and project experiences, Harbinger has been able to explore HTML5 to the extent that unless you are told, you will not be able to make out whether the content is developed in Flash or HTML5!

So yes, Harbinger indeed has a great early mover advantage and has already acquired concrete experience in cutting edge HTML5 based single source / platform agnostic content development.

Deepali: Can our readers access your presentations and review the HTML5 examples? 

Bijoy: Absolutely! The presentations are available in the below links:

  1. Single Source Content Strategy: Eliminating eLearning / Mobile Learning Divide – http://tinyurl.com/Single-Source-Mobile-Learning
  2. Native App or Browser-Based Delivery for Mobile Learning – A hands-on Guide – http://tinyurl.com/Native-or-WebApp

And for examples, readers are welcome to reach me at bijoy@harbingergroup.com. I would also encourage readers to visit the mobile learning page in Harbinger website.

Deepali: Excellent, Bijoy! Thank you very much. Look forward to more on single source.

Bijoy: Thank you, Deepali. Yes, I will keep the readers posted.

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How to Make Simulation Based Courses Engaging

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

It can be a real challenge to “engage” your learners in a simulation-based course. Traditional “Show me” and “Let me try” simulations, which are supposed to be guided learning methods are more like spoon-feeding rather than guidance. At the same time, you can’t really do away with the simulations, can you? So how do you make them more engaging and retain learners’ attention so they don’t just click-click-click through the course and get their completion certificates?

However I do believe that the same basics apply to all types of courses as far as “engagement” and “involvement” of the learners is concerned – and that is that one of the best ways to engage learners is to use context.

A typical simulation-based elearning course will have “show me” and “let me try” simulations with guidance at every step. However, once you have shown learners how to complete different tasks in the application, you could try including scenario based exercises instead of step-by-step ‘let me try’ simulations. Give the learner a scenario that they can relate to from their regular work-life, give them a task to complete and all the information they would need to complete that task in the application and then ask them to actually perform the steps to compete the task in the simulated environment. This will be much more engaging than giving them a step-list and asking them to perform the steps one by one!

Another way of engaging the learners is to have them do the “let me try” exercises within a game. So, once you present the learner with the information they need, and tasks they have to complete using that information, get them to use the “shortest possible route” within the application to complete the tasks. The more tasks they complete using the shortest route, the more the points!

For the “show me” demonstrations, try to use edumercials instead of just “Show me” simulations. Edumercials are 5-6 minute self playing animations that are either story or scenario-based and demonstrate the use of different features within an application. The demonstration is woven into the story or scenario to make it engaging.

So just a simple trick, like adding context to the simulations can make them more engaging. Does anyone have any more ideas on this?

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Instructional Design for Mobile Learning

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

Ever since it made its presence felt, instructional designers have been coming up with innovative ideas to create effective mobile learning. Is it sufficient to just convert existing online courseware to a mobile platform or does the real challenge lie in designing courseware from scratch for the mobile platform? With smart phones and tablet PCs also entering the mobile learning foray, and thanks to the new possibilities that come with these gadgets, these questions have risen anew: what makes for good design when developing mobile learning courseware? How do we use the mobile platform so that it plays a meatier role in mobile learning than just a display device?

Let’s take a look at some strategies that are being used in mobile learning:

1. Keep it short and just in time: One of the catch phrases going around eLearning vendor workplaces especially is ‘just-in-time learning’, which involves learning modules that you can access just when you want them. For example, viewing important information on new product updates while you’re on your way to an important sales meeting; receiving the right information at just the right time can help you clinch that deal! Does that mean learners are willing to spend an hour going through a course on their smart phones? Not necessarily! Learners prefer accessing courseware over their mobiles in short bursts. Shorter learning modules that deliver key messages in a short time span work better for consumers of mobile learning. So, tell your learners exactly what they need to know and give them only important information they can use.

2. The mobile’s part in learning: When planning the high level design for a mobile learning venture, think about how you would want your learners to use their mobile devices. Do you just want them passively browsing through your course pages or could their mobile devices be used more interactively? For example, your learners could click photographs or shoot short video clips or audio interviews, which could then be used as part of responses to online group discussions or even to initiate discussions with other participants. Essentially, get your participants to do more with their mobile devices than just viewing text on the screens.

3. Make interactivity more meaningful: To make interactivity more fun and meaningful, it should leverage the inherent features of the mobile medium. I recently came across this TED talk, wherein Mike Matas demonstrates an interactive eBook created for the iPad and iPhone. Not to come across as biased toward the iPhone and iPad, but what really grabbed me during this talk were the different possibilities for making content interactive. At one point Mike Matas interacts with a conceptual animation of how a windmill works by blowing across the screen of the iPad to make the windmill turn! That’s interactivity at its engaging best!

4. Apps for Learning: Apps are becoming an increasingly important part of the learning experience on tablets and smart phones. This is especially true of a growing number of iPad owners who define their iPad experience by the apps they use. An example here is the app created by the American Museum of Natural History, which provides visitors with additional information on over 140 displays in the museum. And this is in addition to offering visitors customizable tours, directions to different exhibitions, theaters, restaurants, shops, and restrooms in the building! Another example is NASA’s Visualization Explorer app, which is available for the iPad. This app provides users with high-resolution movies and stills and written stories about advanced space-based research.
When designing mobile learning courseware, instructional designers could look at how best to weave apps into the design strategy. Rather than designing courseware to be deployed in the traditional course interface, the design strategy could revolve around using apps that give learners more opportunity to learn through practice.

5. Mobile and Social Learning: Needless to say, mobile learning and social collaboration go well together! I experienced this first hand at a blended learning program conducted for mid-level management in Harbinger. The blended learning design included twitter feeds that participants could access over their mobiles. These feeds played an important role in the learning design because they contained information that the participants would need to successfully complete a mobile assessment at the end of the session. If you hadn’t been accessing these tweets, not only would you miss out on an important modality in the blended learning program but you would also find it difficult to get a good score on your assessment.

Both the apps described in point 4 (the American Museum of Natural History and NASA’s Visualization Explorer) allow users to connect to and share information on social networking websites.

These are just five different ways of ensuring engaging and effective learning design in mobile learning courseware. I’m sure there are a lot more out there, but these five should get instructional designers thinking and looking out for more creative ways to make learning mobile.

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Is mobile learning expensive?

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

The cost of mobile learning depends obviously on the cost of its development.

There are essentially two ways to develop mobile learning courseware – you can either author it in HTML5 or develop it using the native apps of each device OS. Let’s consider each of these…

Development using Native apps

  1. This would be a great choice because it means that there is hardly any restriction on what you can do in terms of course engagement – interactivities, videos, audio, practice exercises, games…the works!
  2. However, a course developed using say the iOS native apps, will not play on a BlackBerry or an Android. So, the same course will have to be developed separately for each OS/device you need it to run on – one version using the iOS native apps, another using BlackBerry’s, a third using Android’s and so on. That could be expensive!
  3. You could of course choose to develop for just one operating system and keep the cost under control.  But in most cases, you won’t know which mobile devices your employees are using. So, your course is at risk of not reaching the learners at all.
  4. Also, with the number of tablets and phones out there in the market, it would be very difficult to decide which specific operating system to develop the mlearning course for.

So, the development of a mobile learning course using native apps would give you complete freedom in design but it may be restrictive in its reach.

Development using HTML 5

  1. HTML5 is completely device or rather browser and operating system-independent. It is supported by all the browsers and operating systems running on the more popular mobile devices today – Apple’s iOS, BlackBerry OS and Google’s Android.
  2. However, it is still not entirely supported by IE9, but reports say IE 10 will make that leap.
  3. So, a course developed using HTML5 will play on just about any browser which means a one-time development for multiple devices. And if you are not sure about the devices your learners use, this would be more cost-effective than using native apps.
  4. HTML5 obviously won’t allow you as much freedom in design as native apps would. But you can get most simple interactivities, animations, videos, audio and some basic games done using HTML5.

In summary, a course developed in HTML5 may not support complex design, but it could be just as effective and reach a wider target audience.

And so, in both development methods – HTML5 or native apps- there are several factors that will determine the final cost and you can weigh these to select the method you want to go with.

So now that you know that you can create effective mobile learning courses cost effectively, don’t let cost stop you from moving to mobile learning!

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Should my eLearning Go Mobile?

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

Everyone’s talking about mlearning – it seems to be the topmost trend in the learning industry today. Companies want to build their mlearning library, quickly and effectively to keep up with this trend. But, since mlearning is still relatively in the nascent stage and since there are so many devices to consider, here are some questions going through the minds of decision makers.

  1. Is it as effective as elearning?
  2. Would it be more expensive?
  3. What are the ups…and the downs?
  4. Which devices should we create mlearning for?
  5. Should we create using native apps or HTML5?
  6. What are the best practices/FAQs/tips and tricks?

Based on our experience in developing mlearning courseware, let me try to answer these questions over this and a few more posts coming up. So, let’s start…

Is mobile learning as effective as web-based learning (or elearning)?

The effectiveness of learning depends more on sound instructional design than on its mode of delivery, don’t you think? An appropriate design approach with contextual scenarios, good visual design and a course structure that’s easy to navigate are all ingredients for developing effective courseware. And these have nothing to do with the mode of learning delivery. However, remember that mobile learning is really “learning on the go”. So, you may want to keep a few points in mind

  • Keep it short and simple – A 15 minute chunk of learning on the mobile is probably ideal. You can cover enough information in that time and learners don’t really have to go out of their way to take out 15 minutes.
  • Use this mode for “just in time” learning – Quick references, tips and tricks, important notes, short “how-to” videos are all great for mobile learning.
  • Don’t compromise on learner “engagement” – Learners will probably be taking this outside their office hours, so make it fun for them! Use all the features you find in most smart phones these days, including podcasts, social interaction, games and many more to make your mobile learning more fun and engaging.
  • Select your topics judiciously – You may not enjoy learning the intricate and complex assembly of a product on your mobile. But you won’t mind learning about the Leave Policy of your organization as a new employee or even how to handle a difficult customer as a Sales support executive! So, choose your topics judiciously when deciding on which courses should go mobile.

As long as you apply sound practices of learning design, you won’t have to worry about the modality.

Look out for my next post that answers the second most important question – Is mobile learning more expensive than elearning?

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eLearning Effectiveness Enhanced Through Social Learning

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

I was recently reviewing some eLearning conferences planned for 2011; Learning Technologies, ASTD International, Masie’s Learning, Learning Solutions Conference & Expo and a few others, and the one thing that kept popping out at me was “Social Learning”. There were several tracks in each conference that addressed the “What, Why, How, Who” of social learning.

It looks like social learning has been claimed to be one of the two top focuses of learning today (the other being mobile learning, which I’ll cover in another blog).

So let’s look at learning in general and the three main modalities through which it can be imparted. There’s the traditional classroom training, online elearning and now social learning. We all know the advantages of elearning over classroom training, but most students of elearning courses find that even with the best courses, there is a missing element that could have further enhanced the learning effectiveness. What they miss in elearning courses is social interaction with other students and the teacher. Hence the key to enhancing learning effectiveness is to blend social interaction with elearning.

From eLearning to social interaction enabled elearning

Enhancing eLearning Effectivess Through Social Interaction

And now, with the latest technologies, social interaction within elearning courseware is easily achievable. Elearning can now include online discussions, polls and debates through blogs and other online forums. The Course Administrator can use Twitter feeds for course updates. The course itself can have links to various podcasts, videos and even online multiplayer games to enhance learning. However, like with elearning in general, the key rule for creating meaningful social interaction within a course is setting the learning “context”. Without the context being set, it is difficult to keep the interaction focused on the topic. Some other tips to keep in mind when integrating social interaction with elearning are:

  1. Ensure that the social interaction is moderated – The role of the Course Administrator is critical so that the interactions are supplemented with more information, answers and clarifications.
  2. Keep debates and discussion simple and don’t link them with further learning topics in your elearning course.
  3. Encourage blogs, comments on blogs, RSS feeds from the blog.
  4. Keep the instructor’s blog posts short and ask students to comment on them.
  5. Link to podcasts, videos, articles or other online reading material from the blog post as well as from the course.
  6. Avoid integrating chat with social interaction – like I said, social learning can be effective only when it is in context with the learning material and online chats will only take learners away from the context and thus away from learning.
  7. Try to use only free social interaction tools – Blogs, networking sites and other forums where learners don’t have to “download” or “install” anything. They can just log on and start interacting!

So go ahead, fill in the missing element in your elearning courses and tell me what your learners say!

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The Customizable Product Training Framework

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

I spoke about this framework in my earlier blog and thought I would detail it out at this point.

A quick recap – Training people about any product and its features is an integral part of the product life cycle, be it at product development stage, its introduction in the market or its growth. At each phase of the product life cycle, there are various people to train – sales and marketing, technical support staff, customer support staff, the consumers, resellers, solution consultants, to name a few. You also need to update the courseware with every product update and upgrade.
All this training can be quite expensive!
With our many years of experience in product training design and development for customers all over the world, we at Harbinger have formulated a unique solution that gives a rare blend of easy customizability, production expertise and a templatized approach that helps crunch the training cost!
We call this the Customizable Product Training Framework and devised it in three steps.

Step 1: The Product Training Taxonomy

Product Training Taxonomy - Extract

Product Training Taxonomy - Extract

We studied and put together the integral requirements for product training which

  • identifies various training audiences
  • describes the training objective for each
  • lists what the training should cover
  • identifies the effective training modality for the content

We call this the “Product Training Taxonomy” and an excerpt from the complete taxonomy is given here.

Step 2: The Product Training Courseware Model

Product Training Units

Product Training Units

We then detailed the content coverage that will meet each course objective for each audience and broke this down by audience type and content to be covered. An excerpt of this “Product training courseware model” is given here.

Step 3: The Product Training Courseware Templates
We then studied and identified the types of screens, interactivities, exercises and assessment question types which would be typically used in product training programs and built the various screen templates that could be used to teach these content units. The templates were built using the universally accepted and easy-to-update Flash-XML architecture. In this, we have put in all the “variable” elements of a course, like graphics, audio, on-screen text etc, in XML, which can be easily updated using simple XML editors like Notepad. The “constant” elements like the user interface have been designed in Flash.

The Result
The result of this extensive thought process was a framework that allows you to do all of the following – rapidly and cost effectively:
1. Build a single product training course for multiple audiences – from sales force to consumers
2. Build multiple courses for different products based on the first product training course
3. Update the courses with each product upgrade
4. Localize the courses into multiple languages for a global reach

Write to us at producttraining@contentservices.harbingergroup.com for more details!

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Avatars in eLearning

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

Okay, I’m not just trying to capitalize on James Cameron’s blockbuster being released in theatres once again with 9 minutes of earlier-unseen-footage! One question regarding the “use of Avatars in eLearning” that has reared its head often during discussions within the instructional design team at Harbinger is: How exactly do we define Avatars? So, what I’m trying to do is put forth our own conclusions here.

As instructional designers, we’ve often come across clients who’ve heard the latest buzz word, “Avatars”, in eLearning and obviously want courses developed using this concept. Avatars make learning fun and enable learners to get more out of their learning by really immersing themselves in the content. Our clients’ understanding of Avatars, however, seems to differ! Some would take the cute looking sales girl who pops up onscreen at regular intervals in a course and talks a learner through the content to be an Avatar. Others think she’s just an animated graphic whose main purpose in the course is to be a mentor! Confused?

In James Cameron’s film, Sam Worthington plays a former Marine who infiltrates the Na’vi population by controlling a genetically modified Avatar via mental link. In other words, he finds himself–quite enviably, in my opinion–immersed in the body of another being, able to control its actions, see things and react the way the other being would! Similarly, games that are truly immersive enjoy this distinction because they allow the player to ‘be someone else’ through the Avatar they control in the game. In my opinion, that’s what differentiates an Avatar from an animated character in an eLearning course as well.

In an eLearning context, Avatars should represent you, the learner, in an online learning environment. Now if you found yourself a new body in an online learning environment, you wouldn’t want content just fed to you, would you? No, you’d want to move around, explore, interact, get to the content that you want, make decisions and face consequences and, in the process, achieve your learning objectives! So, the extent to which you can immerse yourself in the role you are playing in the course is what defines the effective use of an Avatar. If you’re not doing that, chances are you’re just looking at an animated graphic of a character with moving lips and eyes, thanks to clever programming, talking you through content while you listen passively!

From the Instructional Designer's desk...

6 Product Training Courses – At The Cost and Speed of One!

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Deepali Tharkude | Permalink 0

You see new products being launched in the market everyday – mobile phones, drugs, insurance policies or new service offerings. Have you ever wondered what determines a product’s success? Is it the market research that went into identifying the right product? Its top of the class features, design, packaging, branding or effective selling? It’s probably the right mix of all these! But there is one more crucial factor – ensuring that the right information about these products is available to the right people at the right time. In other words – effective training!

To ensure product success, you need to ensure that your sales force, customer support and marketing teams, resellers, technical support teams and even your prospective and existing customers are well trained on the product throughout its lifecycle. However, design and development of courseware can be expensive, especially if you have to keep updating it with product updates and upgrades! So how do you get product training that’s cost effective, can be rapidly developed and made to reach a wide audience in a short time frame?

With our vast experience in building product training courseware over the past several years, our instructional designers and technical architects have put together a “framework” that:

  1. identifies the training objectives for each audience type
  2. details the course coverage to meet those objectives and
  3. identifies the training modality that would work most effectively for each

We then built a customizable course architecture and a set of templates that will be typically used to teach and present content in a product training course. These have been designed to show product features, product installation and configuration, product USPs and such information that you’d want to teach about your product.

So with your design all laid out and ready to use, your development becomes quicker, more cost effective and easier to manage – thus reducing your costs!

Sounds like what you wanted? Get in touch with us to know how we can make this framework work for you!

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