Written by Dick CarlsonFor some time now, lots of training developers have been experimenting with the idea of creating small “chunks” of learning that can give the learner exactly what they need in a tasty snack size. (YouTube is a great example of this. Go there and search for “how to” and you’ll see some great little videos.)
It looks like the release of Microsoft Silverlight has also spawned acceptance of the concept by the folks who mainly work in one-hour webcasts with lots of PowerPoint slides. They’ve released an entire page of little snack videos, covering basic tasks and processes. Some of the titles are “Basic Keyboard Input”, “Building Video Overlays”, and “Animating and Clipping Video”. (Only a couple miss the mark of “How-To” learning — for example, Digging Deeper Into Animation and XAML which is 36-mind-numbing minutes long.)
So how do you employ these little chunklets of knowledge for your audience? Here are my five steps:
Build A Task-Based List
What do your learners need to DO? (Avoid the error of deciding what they need to know — that’s the road to ruin.)
Create A Flow Chart
Determine at what point these chunks should come. Information on creating a new document needs to come before how to publish. Create a flow chart of what goes where — and share it out with learners as a clickable map.
Focus On Needs — Delete Fluff
Keep reviewing your outline or storyboard, cutting out extraneous stuff. Provide a link at the bottom of the screen for more info on your web.
Test, Test, Test
Show your rough cut to a variety of users. Revise. Repeat.
Track Usage and Feedback
Make sure you collect stats on launches, completions, and customer feedback (you do allow ranking and text feedback, right?)
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Try a couple of the MS how-to videos and tell me what you think.
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