Employment Costs: Need to train people? – Send them to the movies…

Computer movies – What are they? How can they help your business? How do they work?

What are they?

Usually in the form a Flash program, a computer movie displays a series of actions on the screen to show a viewer the steps needed to complete a process.

The important word here is ‘show’. People extract fully eighty percent of information from the visual and only twenty percent from words spoken or written. By showing the trainee what is required, rather than listing the requirements in an instruction, the lesson is better and more quickly learned.

Movies can be interactive, that is they can be made to pause and wait for input from the viewer. This input can cause the movie software to feed back corrective information, or take a different branch down a diagnostics path, or be stored for analysis of user input.

In addition to the animation, informational slides or interactive question-and-answer slides make up the movie content. These are enhanced with computer screen shot and digital photography graphics and deliver to the viewer a highly visual training session with emphasis on product and component identification.

How can they help your business?

Training movies and instructional movies are becoming more popular and are now even used by some Universities to deliver degree level instruction - http://www.cont-ed.cam.ac.uk/elearning/

Though computer based movies have been around for some years it’s only relatively recently they have become the method of choice for internal training.

Trainees can be schooled in complex processes individually, without the need for dedicated training rooms or the need to schedule training sessions. The training function becomes an ‘anytime, anyplace’ process.  All that is needed for a session is one trainee and one computer. The movie content can be delivered on CD, data stick, network connection, Intranet or Internet.

How do they work?

In training each movie describes a process that has been defined as a competency requirement. The trainee is given computer time, in the place of taking up the resource of another employee or a trainer. Each individual can learn at their own pace, taking as many runs through the movie as necessary to learn the process.

Movies can be created for learning basic functions such as use of correct telephone manner or simple word processor usage, or they can be used to cover complex diagnostic processes on technical products.

Flash is a registered trade mark.

© Copyright 2007