When you have to train a large number of people, perhaps geographically dispersed, a video is the perfect training tool. Trying to get a group of people together in the same place at the same time can be difficult. With a video, your audience can watch and learn at their convenience - at home, at their desk, even on the train using their iPod. Video is also a very cost-effective training device: it is reusable and cheaper than sending trainers into the field or transporting people to a training location. For applications like health and safety, showing someone how to perform a task, for example lifting a heavy box, is often more effective than a written document. Who's doing it? - Vendors, Manufacturers and Software Developers who want to create reusable training modules that can be used as a value add.
- Departments wanting an effective way to train or induct staff cost effectively, perhaps to supplement other training methods.
- Any organisation wanting to reduce customer support demands by creating short training videos to be streamed from a website.
| vIT in Action | | New Look: 'Love Your HHT' | | New Look is a major UK fashion retailer, with around 600 stores nationwide. It aims to exploit technology to provide outstanding customer service and to improve efficiencies. The brief, created jointly by the Operations Department and the IT Department, was to create a short (under 10 minutes) video to introduce their 10,000 store staff to new hand held terminals being brought into the business. On site training was ruled out for time, cost and logistical reasons. vIT was commissioned to produce the video at very short notice and within a tight budget. Of paramount importance was that the video did not patronize the staff while remaining easy to understand and attractive to the viewer (the majority being females aged between 17 and 22). The New Look brand was to be carried through the piece, as was New Look’s sense of fun. One day of planning and storyboarding at New Look’s head office, followed by one day of filming on location at a New Look store was followed by four days of editing and graphics compositing (two days with the client and two days at vIT’s studio). The resulting piece was duplicated for distribution to every store location and the whole project was completed within two weeks of the initial enquiry, saving tens of thousands of pounds in on site training costs. The video is now also being used by the handheld terminal software developers as a promotional piece. | |
vIT in Action | | Anglia Co-op: 'Introducing ABSIT' | | Anglia Co-Op commissioned vIT to produce educational materials to enable rapid training of large numbers of remote users of their new ABSIT on-line ordering system. Key requirements were for the materials to be easily understood by people for whom English was a second language; for it to easily be distributed through the corporate intranet; and for the production to merge video, still images, PowerPoint slides and HTML seamlessly into a coherent piece. vIT employed Microsoft Producer software (now sadly discontinued) as the shell for the project. Microsoft Producer allows content of different types and from multiple sources to be synchronised and displayed through a browser, without the need for special back end server software. The ability to make the training non-linear was also a key factor in the decision to use Producer. Live action footage, shot in a store in Ely, was captured over a period of two days and showed typical user scenarios. This was then edited and synchronised with the PowerPoint slides and other images to produce the structured piece. An HTML scene navigator was included to allow users to jump between training sections. Animations were created using Adobe After Effects compositing software. The training was also made available on CD which was distributed to all stores. | |
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Training Materials
