1 Technical & Business Writing (ENG-715) Muhammad Bilal Bashir UIIT, Rawalpindi

Outline 1. Guidelines for Designing Tutorials 4. Present Skills in a Logical Cumulative Structure 5. Offer Highly Specific Instructions 6. Give Practice and Feedback at Each Skill Level Build a Pattern of Exposition Pace the Tutorial 7. Test Your Tutorial 2. Summary 2

Writing to Teach - Tutorials Lecture: 7 3

4. Present Skills in Logical Cumulative Structure Earlier you saw how to organize program features and how to tie these to relevant user actions You would need to assemble the lessons in a logical order and structure. Order and structure should follow typical-use scenario. Example of typical-use scenario: student typing a paper, clerk calling up a record to check for payment of a bill, a salesperson checking the computer for the availability of an inventory item etc. 4

Present Skills in Logical Cumulative Structure (Continue…) Examples of logical and cumulative structure: beginning to advanced, simple to complex, generalized to specialized, starting to ending a session etc. 5

5. Offer Highly Specific Instructions Your instructions or lessons should focus on a specific scenario the user would recognize The examples or scenarios should include details such as what data to plot, or what names and addresses to type in or look for  Enter “Bilal” or enter “11574” is better than just saying Enter “Any Person” or enter “12345” Often learners of software program may feel insecure about the new program they are learning  They may think they lose some data or they have less time to learn a lot of stuff 6

Offer Highly Specific Instructions (Continue…) To reduce readers’ anxiety about learning or remembering features in a new program for example, you need to help readers maintain focus To keep the readers’ focused use:  Specific data: numbers, names, words, variables, protocols etc.  Tools: Mouse buttons, icons, check boxes, radio buttons, hypertext links etc.  Screens: Displays, highlighted areas, data fields, menu selections.  Commands: Control commands, keyboard shortcuts, function keys etc. 7

6. Give Practice and Feedback at Each Skill Level Like all good teaching, the completion of lesson by the student should result in praise and reward State goals positively and avoid controversial jargons Remind the user of the reward for understanding and correct performance (a new skill or job capacity)  “The advantage of this method is that it lets you create objects you know about (and that’s your job, right?) so you can get started managing them right away”. A quote from User’s Guide of Sectra Management System for Windows 8

Give Practice and Feedback at Each Skill Level (Continue…) Establishing a feeling of goodwill by concluding the lesson  “This is the end of the Console program guided tour. Thanks for coming in and we hope you enjoy the rest of your trip A quote from User’s Guide of Sectra Management System for Windows 9

Build a Pattern of Exposition Build a pattern of exposition whereby you repeat the following rhythm 1. Give action to take: “Select Open….from the file menu.” 2. Explain the result: “The program will display an empty file.” Spend your time explaining the result, and avoid giving alternative advice as it can distract the user from task  “You could have also used the keyboard to….” For practice you can include a real world exercise in your lesson that gives software user freedom of experiment, which most of the users like 10

Build a Pattern of Exposition (Continue…) For feedback, you might try including a quiz or question-and-answer list that reinforces the application of the lesson 11

Pace the Tutorial Consider you don’t want to waste your users’ time neither do you want to waste yours Try not to take the user away from the job for more than an hour at a time  Keeping the lesson down to 10 to 12 minutes each enables the user to maintain concentration Consider that busy professionals may get called away during a training session or may have limited time to devote  So give them a chance to quit during the tutorial and show them how to quit the program without losing data 12

7. Test User Tutorial Your tutorial, like other documentation products, should get a thorough session in the testing lab You should base the testing on the objectives of the tutorial Keep testing in mind during planning stages and watch out for the points you will want to verify through testing Chapter 8: “Conducting Usability Tests,” has information on specific ways to design your test 13

Recap (Guidelines for Designing Tutorials) 1. Identify the skills you need to teach 2. State objectives as real-world performance 3. Choose the right type of tutorial 4. Presents skills in a logical, cumulative structure 5. Offer highly specific instructions 6. Give practice and feedback at each skill level 7. Test your tutorial 14

15 Summary Any Questions?