Collaboration – Is the Key

When you are a technical writer or an instruction designer your key skill is collaboration. The extent of collaboration through the creation process is what makes these unique professions. The writer/designer has the software, technical and communication skills to create a final product, but it is their collaboration with the subject matter experts (or SMEs) that makes or breaks the quality of the final product.

Software developers and business people know their jobs and what they do, the writer/designer depends on these subject matter experts (SMEs) for the content that needs to be “translated” from technical jargon to something the layperson can understand. 

When collaborating on any size project(from a single document or a set for an entire release) communication is a skill every member of the team need to use. When working with co-workers or team members, it is important to remembercollaboration is about creating a final product. 

Collaboration is not about competition. Even though a writer/designer may be brought in as a consultant to create the document or training, they work as a team, with the company and keep the good of the project (and of the company) a priority. Being part of this team team allows you to learn from as well as to teach others. Collaborating on a project yields many benefits as well as challenges to the writing/designing process.

Collaboration also produces well rounded and effective products and it allows the participants to learn about other people in the organization that can contribute their expertise in future projects that may not even relate to the subject at hand. 

Good writers or designers become great writers through collaboration and discovering new ways to
improve their writing process. In addition, by collaborating with subject matter experts, designers, and publicists, technical writers quickly learn about other fields and the ways writing impacts various disciplines.

Collaborating on a project with a team provides many benefits not only to the success of the deliverable, but it aids the team members to grow professionally.

Great Info Graphic on Change Initiatives and Training

I was reading some of the blogs I follow, and this infographic from Training Folks really resonated with me having been involved in a number of change initiatives.  
This infographic shows some of the facts and best practices in implementing and supporting training for important change initiatives.

Technical Writing and Instructional Design

Recently, I have been asked, "I have been more involved in Instructional Design in the last year, though in both contracts it was in relation to software and teaching people about how the software is used in the organization. An employer thought I was too involved in Instructional Design to be considered for a Technical Writing position. Is having too much Instructional Design in my resume going to affect how employers will think about my Technical Writing skills? "

Technical Writing and Instructional Designing are never considered one and the same. If you go for a job interview, the hiring manager asks you for relevant experience in Instructional Designing or Technical Writing.

• If you are applying for the post of a Technical Writer, only your experience in technical writing is considered.
• If you are applying for the post of an Instructional Designers, your experience on paper is considered and salary is fixed accordingly.

I have never felt Technical Writing and Instructional Designing are different  professions. I have been involved in both throughout my career. And I have often wondered the following:

• Why is Instructional Designing and Technical Writing treated separately?
• Do these job functions require completely different skill sets?
• Is it really difficult for a Technical Writer to get into Instructional Designing or vice versa?

This table shows the differences between the two:

	Instructional Designer	Technical Writer
The Work/Job	Design and develop  training solutions (classes, documents, manuals) for a variety of problems/ initiatives. Can include software/hardware	Develop documentation or manuals for software/hardware/products
Industry	Varied	Software/hardware
Products	E-learning training and reference materials, Instructor Led training, Blended Learning programs,  Presentations, Guides, Workbooks and Manuals	Manuals: Help, installation, API Guides: Troubleshooting, Installation, Quick reference Other: FAQs, Whitepapers, brochures, marketing, presentations, etc
Tools	Word, Visio, Excel, FrameMaker, Captivate, Articulate, Camptasia, Photoshop, Illustrator, Power Point, Adobe Acrobat, LMS, Snagit, DreamWeaver, Blogs, SharePoint	RoboHelp, Word, Visio, Excel, FrameMaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, Power Point, Adobe Acrobat, LMS, Snagit, DreamWeaver, Blogs, SharePoint
Skills	Knowledge of Instructional design concepts, Language, Storyboarding, creative, Visualization and research skills, Exceptional ability to relate to people. Skills to take complex information and translate it into language appropriate for the situation	Language, technical  and research skills, technical writing tools Skill in understanding and translating highly technical material into the level of language appropriate for the situation

The table shows the basic skills, and to some extent, the tasks comparable for both these professions. So, why these two professions are considered different?

Some points to support the difference would be:

Technical Writing

• Is a support function
• Requires familiarity with technology
• Requires working with technology
• Has got to do with information architecture and design
• Industry – software, telecom, anything that deals with applications, tools

Instructional Designing

• Is a main stream job that requires superb people and change management skills 
• Requires more of creative and visual skills
• Has got to do with course architecture and design
• Industry – varied

These differences are not convincing enough to makes these two professions poles apart. In my opinion, what differentiates these two professions is:

• The kind of solution you come up with
• How you  implement it

I believe these two professions are not considered same can be attributed to the following beliefs:

Technical Writing

• You don't need to be creative
• You don't need to be creative innovative
• You don't need to know how people learn new things

Instructional Designing

• You don't need to understand technology
• You don't need to learn any graphic design or authoring tools

In today's business, I do not believe any writing professional can avoid using or knowing about technology. You need to be creative in any profession. Creative skills set you apart from others, no matter what you do. If you ask me if  Technical Writing is better than Instructional Designing or vice versa.

I have worked on e-learning courses and user manuals and combined to two for "Just In Time" Learning (or Help).  Both Instructional Design and Technical Writing are are not that different a solution and the skills required is almost the same. And I believe instructional design is a much bigger umbrella under which technical writing also falls. 

If you think there are differences, please comment. 

Video Sample

I have created a short promo video. It is still in draft as my audio equipment is in Calgary and I am in BC, but I am uploading it so I can get some constructive criticism.

If you can't see the video, here is a direct link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVXCrOUuh0c

Please let me know what you think.

What Makes an Online Course?

In the late 90’s and the online early days of online course development, most online courses were created by a cadre of educators who believed information technology could transform learning. These people were willing and able to master the skills, including programing, HTML and Java and the intricacies of vectors. Often they recreated an existing course and each course offering had an individualistic structure and those creating it might not have uses good instructional design.

Those individuals figured out things on their own and their results were put together with whatever resources the creator had. In the late 90s, a number of groups of course developers began to share their thoughts, methods and skills.

The ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate) Model of instructional design, developed at the University of Florida, became a common method for workplace and computer based training. However, developing and delivering an effective online course contained elements that required pedagogy and technology expertise only a few instructional developers considered. For example - pedagogy. This implies that the instructor can develop targeted learning objectives. Online instruction is more than converting a PowerPoint to a video. Planned instructional design demands linking learning objectives to learning activities and measurable outcomes.

Few trainers or online training developers have had formal education or training in instructional design or learning theory. Expecting them to master the instructional design and technological skills needed to put a well-designed course online could be improbable. . The best case scenario is to pair an instructional/training designer with someone with the computer and graphic skills. This way, each of them can bring skills to the course-creation process.

Next...What is a course and why put it online.

Is "Technical" is now more important than the "Writing"?

I have been writing technical white papers, training documents and on-line help for over 25 years now. At the beginning, I was a programmer who had a facility for writing and telling people, in words they could understand, how to use the software they were expected to learn. What I want to know is, “How the market shifted from an emphasis on communication and letting people how to do what they need to do, to an emphasis on technical knowledge?”
One of the major trends I have I have noticed over the years, is that writing is a commodity that is not valued. I don’t know how things got to be this way, but I have some guesses.

1.      Self Publishing on the internet can be done by anyone. This leads people to believe if I create it, I can tell people about it “anyone can write.” If anyone can write, value shifts from writing skills to technical knowledge. While many people can fake or claim writing ability, they can’t do so with technical knowledge.

2.      We’re so used to seeing poor writing—especially on the internet, in everything from blogs to magazines to help manuals and more….the general standard for what passes as publishable has dipped far enough that now anyone who can type, can write. Again, the Internet here is a reason for the transformation. Taking this into consideration, many educational institutions have added a technical writing course for their technical graduates (just as in the past, where one had to have a basic Writing course in in other subjects). Just because one has taken a technical writing course, does not mean, they know how to communicate a complex subject.

3.      A third reason why people have come to value the technical more is because the world has become much more technical, and the level of knowledge has become highly specialized. One doesn’t merely know how to program. Today there are more than a dozen programming languages to know — PHP, C#, C++, Fortran, Java, .NET, Ruby, Python, Perl, Javascript, and more. And it’s not just programming, but every IT field has followed similar trends.

4.      Proliferation of Technical Writing/Training Degrees/Educational Institution Designations. Those in mainstream post-secondary education are going to disagree with me on this. Colleges and Universities have come from a system where rapid change does not happen. Because curriculum takes so long to develop and the amount of money invested in developing it is significant, they cannot keep up to rapid changes that happen in the writing and teaching about Computer Software industry. Instructors can only teach the basics of how people learn, how they assimilate knowledge. The tools the students learn to use and the software and programming languages they learn to write about change significantly each year.

To help mitigate all this complexity, programmers created  some writing tools that are what they call “Single Sourcing”. Single Sourcing are  content management systems created to allow the same source content to be used multiple ways to create better documentation. The benefits of single source publishing are better for the editor rather than the user, If the editor is not skilled, the content is most often virtually useless to an unskilled end user. However, technical users, those familiar with what is to be done (and often the testers of the documentation) do not notice this! What may seem inherently obvious (to the skilled user) is totally neglected.
Further, In the field of technical help authoring, writing is not the only skill. There are more than  dozen tools and technologies to know — Flare, RoboHelp, Author-it, DITA, SharePoint, XMetal, Captivate, Camtasia, XML, CSS, HTML, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, and so on. Each year, there are more and more entries. When I started there were 4 main softwares, NONE of which are still being used (except Snagit).
When you combine the ability to use the writing/authoring tools with the technical software creation tools, with technical programming (or usage) skills, with an ability to communicate the “how” to the end user--you can easily see the basic law of supply and demand causes the market to place higher value on technical knowledge.
No wonder so many people don’t like using complex software!

e-Learning

Creating successful e-Learning takes a whole lot more than putting content on-screen. Here are some things to consider:

• What do your end-users really need?
• Where does the balance lie between features and functionality, technical complexity, and budget and schedule?
• How can your eLearning application be defined and developed so that it can grow and change with your business needs?
• Which combination of technologies is appropriate?

 The e-Learning Development Process

 Analysis

The first step is a Needs Analysis. You use a Need Analysis to aggregate the information telling you how to serve your business' goals and objectives for the e-Learning. The Needs Analysis also determines who is the Target Audience for this learning. The kind of e-Learning is influenced by the characteristics of the learner, for example, is the learning directed those unfamiliar with the topic, a refresher for an infrequent task, or add  identifies the knowledge and skills that need to be developed or reinforced. Finally a Task & Topic Analysis defines the content that will be required. 

Design

The next stage is the design of the e-Learning project and generally includes:

1. Defining the learning objectives to achieve the course objective,
2. Determining the order of the objectives (sequencing), and
3. Choosing instructional, media, evaluation and delivery strategies.

The Design outcome is the game plan used to develop the course. The game plan illustrates:

• The instructional design (e.g. its configuration in courses, units, lessons, activities),
• The learning objectives coupled with each unit; and
• The delivery methods and formats (e.g. interactive self‑paced materials, synchronous and/or asynchronous activities) to deliver each unit.
• The evaluations to determine if the learning objectives have been met.

Development

In the Development Stage, the e-Learning content is created. The content can vary depending on the available resources. For example, content may consist of simple materials (e.g. those with little or no interactivity or multimedia, such as structured PDF documents) which can be combined with other materials (e.g. audio or video files), assignments and tests.  For the more simple materials, storyboard development and the development of media and electronic interactions would not need to be be initiated.
Multimedia interactive e-Learning content development is comprised of three stages:

1. Content development - The writing and collecting the required knowledge and information;
2. Storyboard development - The storyboard isa document that describes the components of the final interactive products, including images, text, interactions, assessment tests in the order for the e-Learning product. They make up the instructional methods (pedagogical elements needed to support the learning process) and media elements.
3. Courseware development - By developing the media and interactive components, you can the course in different formats for web (and CD) delivery, Courseware also integrates the content elements into a learning platform that learners can access.

Implementation

Implementation is when the course is delivered to the learners. The courseware may be installed on a server or is made accessible for learners, or can be instructor or a facilitated course. This stage also includes managing and facilitating learners’ activities.

Evaluation

The evaluation stage is necessary to understand what worked and what didn’t This helps you to improve the attainment of your learning objectives. The e-Learning project can be evaluated for specific evaluation results including:

• Accomplishment of the learning objectives,
• Assessment of  learners’ behaviour,
• Transfer of leaning to job‑related knowledge and skills, and
• Impact of the project on your organization.

Maintenance

Change is inevitable. To keep e-Learning viable to your organization, it needs to be maintained and updated. This can start the whole process over again, or you may only need to update specific portions. But part of good e-Leaning is regular maintenance.