Udemy
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
Subscribe
Turn what you know into an opportunity and reach millions around the world.
Learn More
Your cart is empty.
Keep shopping
The New Trainer's Guide to Creating End User Documentation
Highest Rated
Rating: 4.6 out of 5(1,527 ratings)
4,832 students

The New Trainer's Guide to Creating End User Documentation

Learn quick, easy and practical technical writing skills to write great end user software documentation - FAST.
Highest Rated
Created byMichele Banks
Last updated 5/2021
English

What you'll learn

  • Best practices for writing clear, understandable and concise instructions
  • How to use a style guide to keep all documentation standardized, consistent and professional
  • Grammer, syntax, sentence structure used for software documentation
  • Easy techniques for improving end user software documentation
  • Software Interface conventions and formatting

Course content

7 sections • 43 lectures • 2h 52m total length

  • Introduction4:07

    Information regarding what to expect from the course, who will benefit from the course and what the course covers.

  • Your Users are Frustrated3:09

    This lecture helps you understand your end users point of view

  • Documentation Fundamentals6:09

    This lecture covers the three main concepts you should employ when beginning an end user documentation project.

  • Know your Audience's Level2:01

    You will understand the importance of writing documentation based on the user's skill level.

  • Recognize and Avoid Data Dumping7:35

    This lecture defines data dumping and mental clutter and how to recognize each.

  • Clearing Mental Clutter3:50

    This lectures covers strategies to avoid adding mental clutter to documentation.

  • Mental Clutter Examples3:49

    This lecture covers common examples of mental clutter to avoid.

Requirements

  • Desire to improve your instructional writing
  • No prior technical writing or Instructional Design training is needed

Description

This course is for anyone who is responsible for training or supporting end user software. Whether you are a new trainer, manager, support desk or a seasoned associate, this course will teach you techniques and skills to write end user documentation that gets used. You don’t need any prior technical writing or instructional design experience so you can jump right in and start using these techniques right now.

You will learn how to write clear, accurate steps that always ensure the user knows exactly what to do. You will explore techniques that keep documentation concise and simple so users aren’t overwhelmed and disregard training materials. We won’t spend time on lengthy explanations of theory but we will focus on real world, practical writing that you can use Today. This course is filled with real world examples of instructional writing that you can use to practice your new skills. Every exercise comes with a review session to help you understand how and why the revision and writing is needed.

In addition, you will be provided with a wealth of downloadable resources. Included in this course is a style guide which will cover software conventions and terminology. Also included are style guides that outline documentation structure, instructional techniques, syntax and key grammar techniques. You will have additional resources for techniques to reduce information overload and writing in plain language. You will have all the information at your fingertips as you begin writing your documents.

Who this course is for:

  • Managers and Trainers responsible for training department staff
  • Support Staff, Help Desk and Business Analysts
  • Instructional Designers and Technical Writers

Report abuse