Wednesday October 1, 2008 | 8:30AM - 12:15PM Pacific Standard Time
Registration for this event is now closed.
An important way to enhance our skills and techniques is the sharing of ideas between groups with similar goals, yet different perspectives. This webinar is designed to expose the eLearning community to the world of software user assistance. User Assistance is all about creating a better experience for software users by providing information and instruction about features and capabilities. Whether that software is designed by an organization to be sold or for internal use, a comprehensive approach to improving the user experience should include UA. Because of this, UA offers a number of useful lessons in the areas of information creation and delivery. This webinar is designed to offer the eLearning community a look at some of the important development areas of UA.
Attending this webinar will provide you with an introduction to UA skills and technologies that may improve the developing of your eLearning deliverables. For those involved in software development, the webinar should provide you with insights on ways to improve your own UA or better liason with your organization’s UA team.
Speakers
Joe Welinkse
Joe Welinske is president of WritersUA (formerly WinWriters), a company that provides training and information for user assistance professionals. The WritersUA/WinWriters Conference draws hundreds of attendees each year to share the latest in user assistance design and implementation. Joe has been involved with software documentation development since 1984. He co-authored two editions of the popular and pioneering book Developing Online Help for Windows, and taught online Help courses at the University of Washington and U.C. Santa Cruz. Joe holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, and a M.S. in Adult Instructional Management from Loyola University.
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Alan Houser
Alan Houser is president of Group Wellesley, Inc., a firm that provides consulting, training, and application development services to support single-source publishing, electronic publishing, and XML-based publishing. Alan is an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, and a member of the OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Technical Committee. He is a popular conference presenter, and has delivered seminars in structured authoring, XML, and DITA around the globe. |
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Rob Houser
Rob Houser is Senior Manager of the Customer-Connected Design team at Sage Software in Atlanta, Georgia. For the past 12 years, Rob has worked as a consultant helping his clients develop more user-centered products. Over the 18 years of his career, Rob designed and created embedded user assistance, online help, show-me demos, Web-based training, instructor-led training, Websites, and wizards - anything it takes to ensure a successful user experience. Rob is a certified instructor for Adobe RoboHelp, Adobe Captivate, and Madcap Flare, an Associate Fellow of STC, and a Certified Performance Technologist through ISPI. |
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Session Descriptions
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Overview of the Convergence of UA and e-Learning
Wednesday October 1, 2008 | 8:30AM - 9:00AM Pacific Time | Joe Welinske
UA skills include writing, task analysis, and subject matter expert interviewing. Since the user assistance profession is directly involved with software development, the discipline often requires an understanding of UI design, usability testing, instructional design, scripting/programming, and accessibility.
The first session begins with an overview of today’s user assistance community – highlighting the important trends, skills, and technologies. You’ll learn what many UA professionals value the most and hear about what emerging trends are providing the most excitement and high expectations. With at least a twenty-year history of development, the UA community has had a chance to look back and see what has worked and what hasn’t. And as technologies and consumer desires continue to change, so must the methods we use in our support efforts. This session describes lessons learned about where we may want to go in the future in supporting the people who rely on our work.
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Structured Authoring and DITA
Wednesday October 1, 2008 | 9:15AM - 10:00AM Pacific Time | Alan Houser
Structured authoring is a methodology for developing content that conforms to a predictable information architecture. Structured authoring can improve the efficiency of the content development process and also improve content consistency and quality. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) was designed for creating, managing, and delivering structured topic-oriented information. While DITA is appropriate for many different types of content, the next formal version of DITA is expected to include an information model that is specifically designed for learning- and training-oriented content.
In this session you will learn...
- How structured authoring differs from conventional authoring
- Overview of DITA and its benefits
- Components and features of the DITA information model for learning and training
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User Assistance Content that Improves Performance
Wednesday October 1, 2008 | 10:15AM - 11:00AM Pacific Time | Rob Houser
Embedded user assistance is on the front line of the user experience. It’s the information that users interact with on the screen while they are doing their work. In fact, users often don’t realize that they are consuming user assistance when they read it—they just think they’re using the application.
In this session, you’ll learn about the type of content that users need in the user interface and where to put it. You’ll learn about motivating users to get started, guiding user tasks, and modeling expert behavior—all inside the user interface. By putting user assistance in the place where users need it and by making it easy to consume quickly, you can activate the learning process while users accomplish real work. Ultimately, you can drive users to your eLearning content by building the first layer of learning into the user interface and by connecting the product to your other learning resources such as show me demos, web-based training, and user communities.
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How UA Tools May Fit into e-Learning Development
Wednesday October 1, 2008 | 11:15AM - 12:00AM Pacific Time | Panel Discussion
Many projects demand the development of robust content. This often includes large amounts of conceptual, procedural, and reference information. Writing, designing, storing, retrieving, and assembling this content for various types of deliverables can often be very challenging. The authoring tools used in software user assistance can assist in this area.
Authoring tools are an important aspect of successful software user assistance and can offer relatively inexpensive, yet practical, solutions for eLearning development. Many user assistance authoring tools are designed specifically for working with large volumes of content that need to be used in multiple output targets. These tools also facilitate the integration of audio-visual elements and simulations, automatically generate indexes and other navigational components, and offer collaborative production and version control. This session will report on the most significant recent developments on key UA tools and their associated technologies and discuss their application to eLearning.
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