Training Hundreds of Users in Many Different Sites?

A Very Anonymous Coward asks: "I work as a technical writer for a web-based, highly secure, collaborative software program. My company has been growing at a huge rate and we now are faced with the task of training 300+ new users at 80 different sites across the country. We can travel to the sites but this is costly and our human resources are fixed so we want to avoid this. My question is what is the best way to do this type of large-scale training, especially when it is not possible to get everyone together in one room?"

I already have a comprehensive help system (created with WebHelp from Ehelp.com) complete with a "How to" section. I am thinking of creating a "Product University", a modular set of documentation where each module teaches about a different area of our product. Ideally, this material would be multimedia rather than text based. I have used a great product by Qarbon.com and it will probably play a good part of this multimedia help. This material would be the same as what we currently provide in live trainings but would be made available online 24/7. We have in the past and want to continue using WebEx for some training. We have found that the ideal size of a WebEx training is 4-5 people. Are there any alternatives to training large numbers in a group?"

Comments

Online lectures

[mnordstr]

How about online lectures? You could have a video feed sent to everyone, and perhaps let the students send questions in real time, which would be answered to everyone over the video feed. The video could also be stored for later retreival, meaning you only have to have the lectures once, newcomers can look at the old feeds.

Blatant GPL Product Plug

[b_pretender]

Lon-Capa

I seen a few other solutions, which consisted of providing documentation/multimedia in a *linear* course style flow. They, however, were far from a training course. I assume that in a training course, you want to evaluate the students/trainees. Lon-CAPA provides for this. They way that the courses are set up lends itself nicely to Multimedia/any content in small components, which build up a section. Small sections, which build up a course, and small courses that build up a curriculum. Actually, it's abstract, so you can build up whatever you want, from whatever you want.

It's been used at many Universities for a few years and is very mature, despite being in constant development.

It's also GPLed software. It doesn't just rival most commercial software packages, it does much more than *any* commercial software packages. The entire philosophy of Lon-CAPA is different than that of the other packages. Lon-CAPA is based around the student/admin/instructor, whereas other packages are based around the course material. This significant difference provides for a much easier and more intuitive experience.