Crabby Office Lady

Some of us learn by reading, some by watching, some by doing. How about a way to take advantage of all three styles of learning? With an Office Online training course, that's exactly what you get.

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Each of you reading this column is special. Really. And you like to learn things your own way. Office Online knows all about you, and that's why its training programs have become so popular: They address many of your learning needs, no matter what those needs are. So no more whining that you're not getting the help you need, OK? It's all right there just waiting for you to explore. Now, let's strap on our helmets, screw on those training wheels, and hit the streets.

 Note    Before we begin, you must have one or more Office 2007 or Office 2003 programs installed to view training courses. Don't say I didn't tell you that.

Want information? Go to the source

I spent some time this week interviewing the people here at Microsoft who actually create all the training courses available on Office Online. Jessica Reading, Dave Ludwig, and Shellie Tucker are three of the nine folks on this team of expert writers and editors, and they agreed to talk to me once I plied them with snacks and falsely promised them fame and recognition (something I, myself, am still awaiting).

Jessica Reading, Group Content Publishing Manager, used to be the site manager for Office Online Training, and has been at Microsoft since 1990.

Dave Ludwig creates Visio and FrontPage training courses. His office is across the hall from mine and we like to talk about why certain reality shows are so annoying and pointless and why we can't stop watching them.

Shellie Tucker creates PowerPoint, InfoPath, and Word training courses. She has been my PowerPoint guru since I came on board with the Office team all those years ago. She is one of the more prolific Office Hours columnists, too.

Keep reading to get the lowdown on Office Online training from the the experts who know it best.

What IS online training?

Before I get to the in-depth interview portion of this column (where I tried to make someone cry à la Barbara Walters and didn't succeed), let me take a moment to explain the topic at hand.

We're talking about short, online training courses that cover anything from how to send text messages to a mobile phone from Outlook to learning how to create a flowchart in PowerPoint. They're self-paced, and they actually help you get your hands dirty by using all your favorite (and maybe not-so-favorite) Office applications as part of the course. If, for example, you're taking a course about a feature in Excel, a practice session will open in Excel, along with instructions to help you as you work.

There's also a short test at the end of each lesson (for Mom's refrigerator, natch), and each course has a Quick Reference Card that you can print to take away from the course in case your memory fades. (Trust me: it will.) At the end of a course, you can give us feedback about the course if you'd like to. Your feedback will be used to make that course better for future trainees, and will help us make new courses fit your particular learning style. Most courses take anywhere from 15 to 50 minutes to complete.

In the beginning: Who is your audience?

Crabby Office Lady: So, Jessica, how did the idea of creating online training courses come about, and who is your audience?

Jessica: The people who built Office knew that there were customers out there who needed more information about how to use more of the product. Our goal from the beginning was to help people discover those things that they didn't know how to do — and that's different for every individual. We developed our mission of helping customers discover how to use the programs, and then we created our own team strategy about how to teach them to use them in the most optimal way.

Shellie: Jessica is right — and part of our goal now is to be selective as to how much information we're going to give. We try and focus on what someone is trying to do rather than give exhaustive information about every feature.

Jessica: Look, at Microsoft we're putting more and more powerful programs and tools into people's hands. When we were just starting out, we knew we were just going to have to adapt the courses depending on the customer feedback.

We're not designed to be locked into "here's the beginning course, here's the intermediate course, and here's the advanced course." Customers' perception of what's beginning, intermediate, and advanced may not match ours, and it will be different for each product as well. We're trying to give people the information, to teach them how to get done what they want to get done.

Crabby: Give the people what they want, eh? Radical idea, Jess.

Jessica: Right you are, Crab. Here's an example: FrontPage courses, as a whole, may be a bit more advanced. But people wanting to learn PowerPoint animation may just take the first introductory animation course because they just need to do one thing quickly. If we need to create some more introductory courses, we will.

Shellie: We wanted to create things that would be useful but also make it fun for people. Okay, we tried to be clever.

Dave: I was at this picnic and this woman said, "The language you use for assistance is so cryptic" and yeah, that can be the case with Help topics: they can't have a conversational style. Training tries to use real people words; logical words you would use to describe things. We even venture into slangy things. I mean, it's better to sound like a human than a robot.

Crabby: I'm sorry, Dave; I can't let you do that.

Dave: What?

Crabby: Oh, never mind.

Now you have the audience — what do you talk about?

Crabby: So, how do you decide what to include in a training session? Where do you get your ideas?

Shellie: One of the ways we get ideas for sessions is through something called the "partnership council," an official forum that meets regularly. It's a group of writers, editors, marketing folks, program managers, product planners, developers, and testers. Every group here in Office that is working on any one product gets together to talk about what sort of coverage is out there for the product and what isn't.

Crabby: Sounds like a real geek-fest, Shellie.

Shellie: (Graciously chooses to ignore comment.)

Dave: We have a whole process for it  — we talk to product support services, we examine usability studies, and we also go by our own hunches. I mean, if it's hard for us to use, let's write a course about it.

Jessica: And then there were historical areas that we knew we wanted to approach. For example, PivotTables in Excel. This area is really ripe for us to cover.

Crabby: (To self: Oh yeah, that's what I think of when I think of PivotTables: "Ripe.")

Jessica: We, on the team, have some product expertise  — we're expert writers and trainers but we're also part of the product team. This means we were able to talk to the people who actually built these products about the thinking that went into that process. A lot of those people are also asked to review drafts of courses before they go live.

Dave: We could have sat down and read some books, but in our case some of the most valuable resources were just down the hall.

Crabby: Ah! You mean me, Dave? I mean I am right across the hall from you ...

Dave: (Graciously chooses to ignore comment)

Crabby: Alrighty then ... How did you figure out how long to make these training sessions?

Jessica: It was a conscious decision to keep these short — 50 minutes at the most. This was based on research we did when we looked at other training resources. We wanted to deal with a human-sized chunk of information. We didn't want our customers to have to sit down and slog through four hours of something.

Now, the consequence of that is we had to develop this concept of a series course — some concepts can't be learned all in one course. So we try and break things up to make the information more manageable. You can follow your own learning plan. The other great thing about 50 minutes is that you can do it almost anytime.

Dave: Right, it won't take up your whole eight-hour workday. It's great for bosses and their employees because the employee can take just an hour to learn something rather than signing up for a week-long course at a community college. Once that's finished, you come back to the office and take another whole day just to get through all the e-mail that's piled up.

Crabby: Exactly my thought. Who has time to read all that nonsense when you have new skills to try out?

How do you measure success?

"Fantastic learning tool. Much better than reading a book. I'm just mesmerized by the accessibility of educational opportunities available through the Internet and Microsoft. Thank you VERY much!" (Real customer quote)

Crabby: So, why do you think these courses have become so popular?

Dave: For one thing, I really like our practice sessions. You get to practice in the actual program, not in a simulated environment that makes sure the scenario works. It's real, so that when you do go back to the program alone, you're not stuck — you've had the experience.

And when the practice session opens up, the Help window is right there with it. It's nice to not have to keep glancing back and forth between a book on your desk and the screen. No more neck aches.

Crabby: You do look nice and loose, Dave. So, we know that customers have the opportunity to not only rate each training course but also give specific feedback on it. How's that going?

Jessica: We love to get compliments; of course we do. But what we really need are specific requests.

Crabby: Can you give an example?

"This course would be enhanced by having the voice-over continue through the lesson instead of stopping after the introduction. " (Real customer quote)

Jessica: Well, first, there is lots of feedback from customers about how they want more self-assessment questions at the end of the course. Right now we have two or three, and we're in the process of seeing if we can add more. Second, on a few courses, people want audio narration throughout the entire course. We're working on a pilot and taking three or four existing courses and doing them as all audio.

You heard the lady, folks: If you're going to give feedback about a training course (or training in general) be as specific as possible. There are people out there listening.

Crabby: So you actually address customer issues? Fancy that.

Jessica: Oh yeah, and we have a mechanism for getting feedback to the product teams too, the people that create the programs. So be as specific as possible.

Some facts about training courses

While I truly enjoyed my time with the training team, they tended to go on a bit about this little detail and that little detail. And since the snacks had run out, I decided to abridge their answers a bit.

The team is made up of writers and editors. But a training course is much more than words on a page. Who else works on a training course?
The designer is the other principal person. Art takes up almost half the page so the writers put a lot of thought into what goes into that visual space. The team also works with program managers, developers, testers, and a production and publishing team who make sure all the pieces of the course get out there.

Each course writer works with a peer writer who will test things out  — they do exhaustive testing on all the courses.

Who does the audio portion of the courses?
There are two people, one man and one woman, who do all the audio work. I asked the team if certain topics or programs were deemed more suitable for a particular narrator. They told me that it's all random. (Heck, I may even audition: "Access Queries IV: Crabby teaches you to anger your customers with parameter queries.")

How long does it take to develop, write, test, and publish a course?
Six to eight weeks. And that's before the course is localized (translated) into several different languages, depending on the course.

What if you don't have any Office 2007 or Office 2003 programs, didn't read the important note at the top, but still want to see what all the hullabaloo is about?
You can experience the 2007 Microsoft Office system (by downloading a trial version or just testing it in your browser) and check out all that Office and Office Online have to offer before you decide to buy (which you will).

You heard the training team, folks. Now let's get out there and train, train, train!

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education." — Mark Twain

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About the author

Annik Stahl, the Crabby Office Lady columnist, takes all of your complaints, compliments, and knee-jerk reactions to heart. Therefore, she graciously asks that you let her know whether this column was useful to you — or not — by entering your feedback using the Was this information helpful? tool below. And remember: If you don't vote, you can't complain.

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