[FM Discuss] Putting training exercises into Booki

[Michael McAndrew]

On 2 April 2011 04:04, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 14:38, Michael McAndrew
> <michaelmcandrew at thirdsectordesign.org> wrote:
> > Hey there (sending to FM-discuss and civicrm-book),
> >
> > Today we did a fair amount of work creating the user and administrator
> > exercise book for CiviCRM.  Still lots more completing of exercises and
> > proof reading, etc., to do but we think there is a decent structure in
> place
> > now and shouldn't be too hard to finish off.
>
> Excellent.
>
> > We transferred the exercises (actually we are now calling them tasks for
> > some reason) from the wiki to the book and came up with a standard task
> > format, which is basically:
> >
> > summary of the task
> > instructions on how to do the task (numbered if there are a lot of them)
>
> Is this simply a do this, do this, procedural format, or do you allow
> for exploration and discovery? Is there any provision for
> collaborative exercises, where students practice taking someone's
> result and working with it in some other way? I have done a lot of
> procedural documentation as a Tech Writer in Silicon Valley, but I am
> working on how to help learners achieve a deeper level of
> understanding.
>

The idea is that these exercises accompany a structured two day training
course where we get a classroom of people together and go through the
exercises.  It is an evolving format, but in the past, people have worked in
groups of two or three doing these exercises on a version of CiviCRM that is
set up to handle the training.  Hence they build on what they did in the
previous exercises.

>
> > data that should be used in the task (in formatted)
> > space for notes (you can write on paper with a pen or pencil, FYI)
> > any tips about the task
>
> Have you thought about making the book interactive, with links to the
> software?


we hand out a link to a training site for each group of participants at the
beginning of the training.


> I know that this means abandoning print publication, or
> having two somewhat different versions. Your text says that the
> student will be connecting to a CiviCRM instance via the Web.
> Presumably a tutorial instance could be set up with links between
> exercise pages and prepared configurations.
>

we've done that already :)

>
> > The book has three sections:
> >
> > intro
> > exercises
> > finding out more
> >
> > The exercise section is broken down into chapters which are one-to-one
> with
> > a hands one session that we will carry out during the training.  The
> > chapters (h1) are further broken down into h2s to help people find their
> way
> > through the exercises.
>
> This implies that the tutorial is sequential. Is that the intention?
> Are you able to fit all of the topics needed into one sequence?
>
> yes - it is sequential - they have to be done in order.


> > You can see the work in progress here:
> > http://booki.flossmanuals.net/civicrm-user-and-admin-exercises/_full/
>
> The introductory section has no illustrations. It seems to me that we
> could make it much clearer with a few diagrams and screenshots.
>
> I expect to have more questions when I get deeper into the material.
>
> > We plan to make each task summary an h3 and then style the css with an
> image
> > to the left of the heading to show it is a task (rather than what we are
> > currently doing which is bolding them and sticking a image above them.
> >
> > I think we'll handle the notes area by making an image with a fair amount
> of
> > vertical white space and a 'keep with before' to  avoid any nasty page
> > breaks and avoid any nasty page breaks).
>
> "Keep with previous" actually creates nasty page breaks. You might do
> better to use a two-column format or just an adjustment of the margins
> to leave space for notes to one side of the instructions.
>

thanks for pointers and ideas :)

>
> BTW, does anybody know of a Free Software PDF editor that makes it
> easy to insert notes, in the manner of Adobe Acrobat?
>
> > It would be great if we could get some div handling or something similar
> for
> > 'data' and for 'tips' to avoid us using but I know that can be a huge
> pain
> > so not holding my breath :)
> >
> > Hopefully I haven't gone into too much detail here and people are still
> with
> > me :)
>
> You can't push me away with detail, no matter how others may feel. ^_^
>
> > Would be good to get people's feedback on what we have done so far and if
> > people have any time to improve what we have done that would be awesome.
>
> I'll see what I can do.
>
> > Cheers,
> > Michael
> >
> > --
> > Michael McAndrew
> > 07817 802299 (mobile)
> >
> > Third Sector Design Ltd.
> > http://thirdsectordesign.org
> >
> > For support, email support at thirdsectordesign.org
> >
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
> Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
> http://www.earthtreasury.org/
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-- 
Michael McAndrew
07817 802299 (mobile)

Third Sector Design Ltd.
http://thirdsectordesign.org

For support, email support at thirdsectordesign.org
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