As a technical instructor in the field of telecommunications, my target audience during instruction is often adult learners, and while the courses often start with a bit of old school style lectures, we quickly get into hands on exercises during the week because that is how they learn best. I am starting to notice a trend whereby nearly everyone starts getting tripped up throughout the lab exercises. It takes me running around the room to 24 different work stations and walking through the exercise with each of them, and, yanno....reading the instructions to them! On each lab exercise!!
To prove this out, on the last day, I added a blurb at the top of the day 5 quiz that said:
"Please read all the instructions carefully before beginning these exercises. You need to read the instructions carefully because there is a lot that we covered this week. The world of telephony is filled with acronyms and there is no reasonable way anyone could expect you to memorize or remember everything we talked about this week. So, do not complete any of the quiz questions individually as we will work through them as a class. So, put my name at the top of this page, but do nothing else until we begin as a class. When you finish these instructions, don't forget to put my name at the top of the page."
I then told the students they would have five minutes to complete the quiz - but not to panic or stress because it's not a graded quiz, it's just to kind of gauge how much they picked up over the week. Nothing would be reported anywhere, this was just for internal training development purposes, and to please not rush through it and make sure to read the instructions. Then, I said,
GO!
They all flipped over the page, saw a list of about 50 acronyms in telecommunications and a blank spot next to each, presumed that they had to spell out the acronyms, and started filling it in. Except one student....
I walk back to his desk, and he had his name on the top of the page (habit), then a line through it and my name in its place. He smiled knowingly and leaned back. At the 60 second mark, everyone is still writing furiously. Continuing to walk around the room, most are trying to get as many acronyms down as possible.
At the 2 minute mark, I call out - 1 minute left! (My point had already been made, even though the reveal hadn't happened yet)...Nearly everyone is getting to the bottom of the page anyway, so finally, at the 150 second mark (2:30 seconds in), I called time. A few whispered curses from those who didn't finish. I then had the student at Position 1 (each work station is numbered incrementally) read the first sentence of the instructions out loud. I heard a curse...
The second student read the next line out loud. Then a few more curses.
By the time we finished, everyone was cringing at their total failure to read the instructions! It was quite enlightening for everyone, and we all had a good laugh over it. I sent the quiz off to my team, and said that every single student but one failed. My boss replied 5 minutes later and said he got all but one of the questions right without looking it up.
I replied back and told my boss he failed too: read the instructions!
Of course this has created an idea in my head about writing technical training materials as it seems techie types (myself included), tend not to read instructions all that well...how do you create technical content that keeps readers engaged?
To prove this out, on the last day, I added a blurb at the top of the day 5 quiz that said:
"Please read all the instructions carefully before beginning these exercises. You need to read the instructions carefully because there is a lot that we covered this week. The world of telephony is filled with acronyms and there is no reasonable way anyone could expect you to memorize or remember everything we talked about this week. So, do not complete any of the quiz questions individually as we will work through them as a class. So, put my name at the top of this page, but do nothing else until we begin as a class. When you finish these instructions, don't forget to put my name at the top of the page."
I then told the students they would have five minutes to complete the quiz - but not to panic or stress because it's not a graded quiz, it's just to kind of gauge how much they picked up over the week. Nothing would be reported anywhere, this was just for internal training development purposes, and to please not rush through it and make sure to read the instructions. Then, I said,
GO!
They all flipped over the page, saw a list of about 50 acronyms in telecommunications and a blank spot next to each, presumed that they had to spell out the acronyms, and started filling it in. Except one student....
I walk back to his desk, and he had his name on the top of the page (habit), then a line through it and my name in its place. He smiled knowingly and leaned back. At the 60 second mark, everyone is still writing furiously. Continuing to walk around the room, most are trying to get as many acronyms down as possible.
At the 2 minute mark, I call out - 1 minute left! (My point had already been made, even though the reveal hadn't happened yet)...Nearly everyone is getting to the bottom of the page anyway, so finally, at the 150 second mark (2:30 seconds in), I called time. A few whispered curses from those who didn't finish. I then had the student at Position 1 (each work station is numbered incrementally) read the first sentence of the instructions out loud. I heard a curse...
The second student read the next line out loud. Then a few more curses.
By the time we finished, everyone was cringing at their total failure to read the instructions! It was quite enlightening for everyone, and we all had a good laugh over it. I sent the quiz off to my team, and said that every single student but one failed. My boss replied 5 minutes later and said he got all but one of the questions right without looking it up.
I replied back and told my boss he failed too: read the instructions!
Of course this has created an idea in my head about writing technical training materials as it seems techie types (myself included), tend not to read instructions all that well...how do you create technical content that keeps readers engaged?