The Reluctant Trainer:
Technical Training Resources

In past columns I’ve questioned a lot of traditions associated with technical training, I've talked about some easy and inexpensive ways to make standup training more interesting — and ways to avoid standup training altogether.

In this article I’d like to provide some Internet resources that are relevant to technical training. Like any other field, training has its full share of acronyms, and they can be really tiring when you’re not up on the latest lingo. I have tried to spell out some of them here.

I have also tried to choose sites that have some stability, in hopes that these links will continue to work, but you never know.

General Training and Instructional Design

Overview of Training and Development
http://www.mapnp.org/library/trng_dev/trng_dev.htm

In case you are new to training, this page is a great place to get an overview of the field.

Cognitive Approaches to Instructional Design
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/training.html

This page contains a good discussion of important aspects of ID (instructional design). Instructional design has some overlap with information design, especially when it takes a systems approach to user needs assessment and task analysis. If you don’t have much time to assess needs and plan your training, use the rapid prototyping model described here.

Out-of-the-Box Instructional Design
http://www.astd.org/CMS/templates/index.html?template_id=1&articleid=11475

Diane Gayeski has written extensively on retooling instructional design to follow a less linear procedure. Hard-core instructional designers would tell you that ID has always had this capability, but it is helpful to get away from linear presentations of models and think about the issues. For other articles by Diane Gayeski, see http://www.omnicomassociates.com/omnpub.html.

The American Society for Training and Development
http://www.astd.org

This is the Web site of ASTD, a professional society that has traditionally focused on soft skills standup training but has branched into other areas. The Learning Communities section of their site (http://www.astd.org/virtual_community/interact/) has readings and resources that are available to nonmembers.

International Society of Performance Improvement
http://www.ispi.org

Traditionally, ISPI has focused more on instructional design, and more recently, on human performance technology (HPT). Their “HPT Education” menu item from the home page contains an overview of HPT, as well as articles, short member contributions, and other resources.

Online Training

Web–based Training portal
http://www.breakthebarriers.com

This site contains a great collection of resources related to Web-based training (WBT). It is sponsored by Mentorware (http://www.mentorware.com) and the High-Technology Media for Learning Special Interest Group (HTML-SIG) of the Silicon Valley chapter of ASTD. The Break the Barriers site includes the following information:

• Various tutorials and checklists for implementing WBT
• Links to other content articles about WBT
• Links to professional societies and e-mail lists that support WBT
• A form allowing you to submit your own examples

The free course “Avoid the Barriers to Successful WBT” is worth the effort to register. Not only is the course excellent, it is a good chance to experience the Mentorware Learning Management System (LMS). A good LMS has the following advantages:

• It provides a standard user interface that becomes familiar to learners when you offer a number of courses.
• It provides support for authoring and showing students feedback on tests.
• It tracks course registration and test scores.

e-learning Magazine
http://www.elearningmag.com/

This is the Web site for the magazine e-learning, and the magazine content is available online. The magazine tends to showcase new e-learning products, but it contains a number of informative articles, and the Web site has a number of resources beyond that. There is a feature article format called e-LearningLab that provides reviews of products actually used by the reviewer.

The Masie Center
http://www.masie.com/

Elliott Masie is one of the leaders in the field of e-learning, he likes to write, and his mission is to demystify technology when it is used as an aid to learning. This site contains research, articles, and other resources.

Technical Training

Tech Republic
http://www.techrepublic.com

This site is for IT professionals, but it includes a channel with quite a few relevant articles on technical training. To get a complete list of articles, click the IT Manager tab on the main page, then click the Channels link, then under the Training section click the Show All link. To view specific articles, you must register for a free membership, but you do not have to be an IT professional to join. Some relevant recent article titles:

• “Combine options to develop the best training program”
• “Commonsense steps when managing an online training program”
• “Avoid these mistakes when moving from in-class to online”

From this site you can also download a file of technical training tips from Bruce Maples: http://www.techrepublic.com/download_item.jhtml?id=dr00620000612com01.htm

Loretta's Training Resource Center
http://www.quicktrainingtips.com/

Loretta Weiss-Morris maintains a Web site with technical training tips and information about her newsletter and book. It emphasizes computer training but is highly applicable to other domains.

Technical Training Tips
http://pages.prodigy.net/pblair/ttthome.htm

Pete Blair and Associates maintain a page of tips for technical training. They fall into the following categories:

• General
• Lecture and self-paced courses
• WBT and CBT
• Structured on-the-job training (OJT)

Knowledge Transfer Center
http://www.t2ed.com/index.html

As the Welcome page states, “The materials found on this site provide U.S. taxpayers with maximum return on investment for assessment tools, training courses, manuals, and other materials funded by the Carlsbad Field Office of the U.S. Department of Energy. It includes several documents relative to developing and evaluating technical training and training departments.” You must register (first time only) in order to download documents, and although it is not clearly stated at the site, in order to be approved you probably need to reside in the U.S.

E-mail Discussion Lists

Sometimes you have an itching question that only a real person can scratch. Or, you may want to rely on the expertise of others before you spend big bucks on the latest Learning Management System. Or, you may feel that you want to be part of a community of professionals with more intimate and immediate interaction than a professional society can offer. If so, one of these e-mail discussion lists may be just right for you.

STC Instructional Design and Learning Special Interest Group
http://www.stcsig.org/idl/resources.html

The Instructional Design and Learning SIG of the Society for Technical Communication (the society that supports this column in this newsletter of this SIG) has its own e-mail list. You must complete an online registration to the SIG in order to subscribe to the list, but I have not been able to determine whether you must be an STC member to do this.

General Training
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/trdev

This is a general list for discussion of training and development. Warning: list traffic is heavy!

Web-based Training/Online Learning
http://www.trainingplace.com/source/thelist.html

This list discusses issues relevant to online learning. Frequent requests to the list include questions on cost-effectiveness of training and requests for experience with particular products.

Conclusion

The sites listed in this article are not comprehensive or even representative of the training resources that are available on the Internet. (If you want an exhaustive list, use a search engine.) My hope is that the hours invested in gathering the information will be hours that you save in seeking your own resources. If you use these sites to explore links to still other sites, you will soon have more information than you wanted.

If you have a favorite site of your own, I would appreciate hearing about it. Send me a line at the e-mail address below.