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A Book Review
User Training for Busy Programmers, William Rice, PACKT Publishing
This short, concise book does an excellent job of covering the steps involved in training development. Mr. Rice covers the steps in a way that makes it an easy read, and the format and layout of the book makes you want to use it as a checklist. The book would be a good addition to anyone’s bookshelf who has to develop training sessions.
My only concern with the book is its title. The job of understanding the needs of the user is left to the designers and architects of applications, not programmers. From my experience, programmers do not write users’ documentation or end-users’ training. I am afraid that programmers might look at the book and reject it because it is not something they would do, and the people who need it will miss it because it seems to be addressed to programmers.
If you are new to training development, take a look at this book. It is well worth its price. Most of us non-professional course designers, of whom I am one, are never given the time to follow the full process presented in this text, but it is good to know the steps that you have skipped.
J. Mel Harris, MVP
Mel has 35+ years in the computer business and specializes in the development of business productivity applications and training of power-users and solutions innovators.
He develops and presents training sessions on a wide variety of technical and end-user topics.