Just One Thing

One of the areas of discussion that I had with Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) at TechEd this year was about courseware quality.  Aside from the obvious desire for high quality in instructional materials and experience, the better the courses are, the more time an educator can spend on training and less time on trouble-shooting during class.  One of the most significant ways that an MCT can have an impact outside of the classroon is by providing actionable feedback on a course.

Before the advent of Community Courses in the Microsoft Learning Courseware Library, MCTs could provide error logs that would be validated and then rolled up into a comprehensive error log for a course.  Sometimes the fixes and repairs would make it into the next revision (provided the course got revised...).  Once Community Courses and digital publishing arrived, it made reworking and revising a course easier: once an author had received specific feedback and prioritized it, she or he would be able to update or revise the course accordingly and publish a new version with greater agility.  Continuous publishing isn't realistic, as they do have day jobs, but the turn-around can take place more quickly.

Until recently, most feedback has been encouraged by way of technical reviews.  However, MCTs at TechEd have told me that writing a good, solid technical review is very time consuming and they understandably spend more time teaching than writing.

Fair enough. How about this: write up specific, actionable feedback on just one thing.  As trainers, you have certain courses you teach and there is always a "Top Five Things Wrong with This Course" list that you have written in your notes someplace.  Take the top one and go to that course's main page on the Microsoft Learning Courseware Library:

If you click on the Forum link, you can post that issue as a topic in that course's forum.  If you click on the Issue Trackinglink instead, you can create a New Item.  This is a proto-bug tracking system for the author.  You can choose the Type of Issue it is (e.g. Change Request, Suggestion, Issue, etc.) and the Component it involves (e.g. Set-up Guide, Instructor Manual, Labs, etc.). Take this single issue, describe it specifically, creating actionable feedback for just one thing.  You can even upload example files if you need to.

My point here is that you can have direct impact on the quality of any Community Course this way.  It may only take 5 or 10 minutes of your time.  Then the author has something to work with and you just might be able to cross that item off of your Top Five list....