Developing Training Materials

[Madeline]

hi,

Any developers of training material here? I've recently moved our docs over to Madcap and Capture. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do when we develop training. Currently it's Powerpoint for classroom based training which involves a whole lot of copying and pasting and we can't leverage any of our previously translated content from Lingo. But I'm not sure quite sure if I should be aiming to produce some sort of HTML5 output from Flare that can be used to support the training. Or using Mimic to produce training. Would love to hear if others use Madcap to produce training materials? If so, in what and what output format? If not, what do you use instead?

Thanks
Madeline

[Tex Righter]

Greetings ...

I would like to echo Madeline's questions.

Also, does MadCap have any webinars or blogs on the topic of using Flare as a basis or companion in the development of training materials and strategies? I understand that Flare is essentially a HAT. I have had much success in creating PDF/HTML user guides and reference manuals, but perhaps there are some creative folks out there that can share some insight into the way Flare can be used as a simple and effective multimedia training tool.

Avoiding the tasks of moving Flare content to PowerPoint would be great!

Regards,
Andy

[ChoccieMuffin]

Don't have any answers as my team isn't responsible for producing the training materials, but in any event, WELCOME to these very helpful forums.

[BedfordWriter]

I do this, but I don't try to emulate PowerPoint. I give my students a workbook (paper!) and teach directly within our program, not from pictures of our program. Might be different if I had to teach policies and procedures instead of software.

What I've found does work in a classroom, is to keep a pdf of the workbook open and flip back to that between each topic to show them that they do in fact have the resource material and that we're following the curriculum. After I started doing that, I've gotten comments from the students saying that they felt they were in a course rather than a presentation.

If you're addicted to flipping through static screens, perhaps build your project as a Flare slideshow?

[Siegle]

What you do with the PDF actually sounds quite interesting, BedfordWriter. It almost feels like it ties everything together in a way.

[Psider]

I noticed in the latest newsletter that there's a webinar coming up for an interactive wizard, which might be useful for your purposes.

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/resource ... inars.aspx

[chrisj]

I'm actually developing a training portal in Flare right now that I'm launching in January. It has both our help documentation and training documentation, interactive virtual training modules, etc. The idea is that this will eventually eliminate the need for an LMS.

One of the most powerful things that I've found is using TOCs and menu proxies to build out learning paths. Of course you can always give the option for a PDF also, but, depending on your needs, an online only solution might be more sustainable. Our software products change rapidly, so as soon as someone prints off a PDF it's outdated anyway.

[BedfordWriter]

Chris, I hope that you'll post a link when your portal goes online.

[chrisj]

Chris, I hope that you'll post a link when your portal goes online.

I will. It won't be hidden behind a log in page, so it should be easy. What I'll be launching is phase 1 of a much larger initiative, so not everything I want will be live next month.

One thing I integrated into my current help system earlier this year was an interactive course catalog (for in-person training offerings). You can look at that here. Maybe it will help spark some ideas. http://solutionsonline.teamsoftware.com ... g_Home.htm?#

I'm improving on this particular concept and working with trainers to implement auto booking through Microsoft Bookings. Eventually the catalog will house all of the virtual training we have hidden behind an LMS log in right now as well.

[cdschroeder]

I'm actually developing a training portal in Flare right now that I'm launching in January. It has both our help documentation and training documentation, interactive virtual training modules, etc. The idea is that this will eventually eliminate the need for an LMS.

We are also trying to eliminate our LMS (at least, as it relates to customer-facing content) so I'm excited to see your progress. Please keep us updated!

One thing I integrated into my current help system earlier this year was an interactive course catalog (for in-person training offerings). You can look at that here. Maybe it will help spark some ideas. http://solutionsonline.teamsoftware.com ... g_Home.htm?#

Also, this looks a lot like our current proof of concept, which is encouraging. Thank you for sharing!

[TheGreatAndPowerfulOz]

Our training team has created a series of videos and other materials for users to view as part of their overall training, and we're planning on providing links to these in the training area of the Help system. We would also like to include a form of some kind to allow users to be quizzed/certified on the information they've ingested.

Has anyone had any success doing that sort of thing? We considered just putting together a series of Google forms (one per training video) and embedding or providing links to them, however several of our client sites block access to all things Google. Another idea we considered was somehow using MadCap Pulse to create an integrated form, but it doesn't seem like Pulse is designed for that sort of thing at all.

Any ideas along these lines anyone is willing to share?

Thank you!

[cdschroeder]

Our training team has created a series of videos and other materials for users to view as part of their overall training, and we're planning on providing links to these in the training area of the Help system. We would also like to include a form of some kind to allow users to be quizzed/certified on the information they've ingested.

We embed SurveyMonkey quizzes - no issues yet. Our IT also blocks Google forms/drive/anything of the sort so that was not an option for us.

Our learning paths consist of a series of pages - each page has a video or other relevant content (kind of like a module) and then the last page in the path contains the quiz. This allows us to track user progress for the most part, and then when the user completes the quiz, we get a notification on whether they've passed (and can then issue a certificate).

Overall, we're still in the VERY early stages, but so far, so good!

[TheGreatAndPowerfulOz]

We embed SurveyMonkey quizzes ... the last page in the path contains the quiz. This allows us to track user progress for the most part, and then when the user completes the quiz, we get a notification on whether they've passed (and can then issue a certificate).

Thanks for this look into how you're doing things, Casey; sounds a lot like the path we're heading down.

We've talked about SurveyMonkey as an alternative to Google Forms, as well as JotForm (https://www.jotform.com) or Microsoft Forms (https://forms.office.com). We just need to settle on something that our clients wont block!

[SandraWitte]

Chris, I hope that you'll post a link when your portal goes online.

I will. It won't be hidden behind a log in page, so it should be easy. What I'll be launching is phase 1 of a much larger initiative, so not everything I want will be live next month.

One thing I integrated into my current help system earlier this year was an interactive course catalog (for in-person training offerings). You can look at that here. Maybe it will help spark some ideas. http://solutionsonline.teamsoftware.com ... g_Home.htm?#

I'm improving on this particular concept and working with trainers to implement auto booking through Microsoft Bookings. Eventually the catalog will house all of the virtual training we have hidden behind an LMS log in right now as well.

Hi all!
We want to establish some kind of an LMS based in Moodle or maybe ILIAS which is developed by the University of Lucerne in Switzerland. Do you or anybody have an idea, how to integrate content from Flare into those LMS?
What about your portal? Any News?

[chrisj]

Integrating Flare content into an existing LMS (like Moodle) can be done, I'm sure, but you would need some custom dev to automate it. I'd start with looking at the Clean XHTML output type as a starting point.