Re: Is anyone involved in training? Ever used Moodle?

[Steve Schwarzman <steve -at- writersbookmall -dot- com>]

I'd say from personal experience that many organizations don't take
advantage of what online learning could really offer. For example, I'm
currently taking a course using Moodle that consists solely of a
talking-head video of the instructor and their PowerPoint slides. That's it.
No interaction with the instructor, no interaction with the students.

Now, back to the question of how to use online learning in a technical
training program. I actually wrote a chapter on technical training in my
book precisely because tech writers do sometimes get called upon to "put
together a quick course" on the material they document.

The basic rule for deciding whether to take training online is one of cost:
the more distributed the population of students and the more uniform the
material, the likelier it is that online will be cost-efficient. It can take
the place of flying people around to either deliver or take classes with all
the resulting costs. The reason you need a whole bunch of people taking the
same course in order to achieve cost savings is that development time is
considerably increased for online training. You only reap the savings if the
number of students is high enough to save on the delivery end.

Steve Schwarzman
-- 
*Technical Writing Management: A Practical
Guide*<http://www.amazon.com/Technical-Writing-Management-Practical-Guide/dp/1456534181?&tag=writersbookmall-20>
Now available at
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Technical-Writing-Management-Practical-Guide/dp/1456534181?&tag=writersbookmall-20>
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