Friday
Dec311999
127 - First Perspectives on Microsoft Office 2000 Learning Approaches
December 31, 1999
TechLearn TRENDS --- Technology & Learning Updates
The MASIE Center http://www.masie.com Elliott Masie, Editor
Hosts of TechLearn '99 including The 1999 Computer & IT Training Convention
First Perspectives on Microsoft Office 2000 Learning Approaches
Yesterday, Microsoft Office 2000 was launched. This special report of
TechLearn Trends is aimed at taking a first glance at the learning and
training approaches being used by organizations implementing this upgrade of
Microsoft's office suite of applications. We will do similar projects as
other desktop suites are launched.
The staff at the MASIE Center have been working with the BETA version of
Office 2000 and offer these perspectives (and welcome TechLearn Reader input
for additional approaches):
Microsoft Office 2000 is really a matrix of products, including different
versions for the small office, organization and developer. While the
programs such as Word, Excel, Access. FrontPage and PowerPoint have a strong
integration, most users will approach the learning one application at a
time. The development of a learning approach requires the organization and
learner to do a quick analysis of which tools they are using and at what
level of sophistication and depth of function. The ultimate target for
learning will be NEW FUNCTIONS and NEW OPPORTUNITIES.
There are three types of learning programs that organizations are offering.
BRIEFINGS: The first is what we coined as an "Office Briefing" when Windows
'95 was launched 5 years ago. (I was the host of Microsoft TV ramping up
to that launch) The Briefing, which can be conducted in a large meeting
format, as a brown bag lunch, as an on-line learning event or as a series of
bullets on a web page, is aimed at providing the learner with a clear reason
for the changes that will happen to their desktop. The MASIE Center has
tracked the process of upgrading in organizations over a dozen years and we
are convinced that most companies do a POOR job of teaching users the WHY of
the upgrade process. While the decision makers have seen the product
presentations by Microsoft and can see the gains that will be achieved
through greater integration with the internet and better administration
tools, most users are never "pitched" with this information. Take a few
minutes to build a sense of excitement and value perception for the users as
their desktop is altered and the organization wins. It is far better to get
their simple questions about the impact and reason for change answered in
advance of the switch.
FUNCTIONAL: There are lots of new features and procedures in Microsoft
Office 2000. The program offers a lot of learning tools and information for
the highly motivated learner to self-explore the changes. However,
organizations should never assume that users will uncover a new feature, or
more importantly change the way in which they do a task in their jobs. A
good example of this is the Pivot Table in Excel. I think it is the
strongest feature in Office and use it religiously to run the financial side
of The MASIE Center. Most of the people I meet haven't even heard the term,
even though they have been Excel users for years. Here, organizations must
step up to ALIGN LEARNING with the FEATURE GAINS they were hoping to get
through the upgrade. Technical users of Office 2000 will gain dramatically
from having access to CBT, On-Line or Classroom training in the changes in
the advanced features. Pay strong attention to the Internet Integration
capabilities of Office 2000.
PROCESS: To really leverage gains from Microsoft Office 2000, organizations
need to address the process side of how this technology is being used to
add productivity to work. Daryl Conner of ODR and myself are working on
the issue of how technology changes and requires changes all sorts of human
processes in the organization. Daryl uses the phrase "recalibrating
expectations" as a term to address the need to alter people's expectations
of how their work might be different. Take the collaboration features of
Office 2000. We were very impressed with the ability of teams to be able
to use the intranet to work collaboratively on documents and projects, right
from within Office 2000. The members of these teams are going to need to
learn not just the feature set of how to dynamically write a document on a
multi-site basis, but they are going to need to address the PROCESS side of
"who owns the document, what are each person's rights, who even gets credit
for a collaborative project". These are exciting elements to making the
shift to working in the digital age, yet are absent from most learning
plans.
On a feature level, here are a few of the topics that we would add to
learner's radar screens:
* Internet Integration: Office 2000 tightly integrates with the corporate
intranet and the external internet. The ability to use these networks
seamlessly from within an application is a high powered change for learners.
They will need examples, models and a strong FAQ to address some of the free
floating anxiety about security issues when hooked to the "net". Help them
make the evolution from a single user to a truly network office environment.
* FrontPage Integration: More and more documents will be published as HTML
files rather than end up as first generation print documents. In fact, more
and more of what we print will probably have come from a screen displayed
from a browser. FrontPage 2000 has lots of new features to drive content
creation and even site management down from the technical level to the
business unit and user level. We would strongly urge training on these
topics, to make sure that learners have a PROCEDURAL and CONCEPTUAL level of
what they are doing. We set up a pilot FrontPage website in our office, so
that users could play in a no-risk zone. The more you can provide strongly
created corporate templates of pages and forms, the shorter the learning
curve.
* Technical Developer Skills: The high-end version of Microsoft Office 2000
is targeted at the technical developer. Make sure that you integrate this
into the IT training skills for this staff. Some IT folks have asked why
they need to go to training to learn a user application. Don't let that
become the perception ... it will leave your organization unprepared to
leverage the enterprise level of this new edition of Office. There are a
wealth of courses from Microsoft's training partners, from Microsoft Press,
from technology delivery groups such as CBT Systems, NETg and others, as
well as a slew of on-line learning programs aimed at the technical
developer.
* Content Reuse: Remember, one of the shifts is the view of content. We
want to create content to be as fresh and dynamic as possible. More and
more documents will contain active links to databases, will be dynamically
written based on user preferences and will be authored once and reused over
and over again. Give users guidelines on document naming, storage and how
to create these dynamically linked documents. One user wanted to be able to
have the date created and date modified displayed right on a document. Make
sure that your users have the skills to create content that will be an
active part of a Knowledge Management Model.
Microsoft Office 2000 can be used rapidly by current users without a lot of
formal training or learning programs. If the goal is to keep on working in
much the same way, do a good job of explaining why, administer the feature
set and launch it. However, we believe that the time is ripe to help the
organization leverage the capabilities of these programs in a stronger and
more integrated fashion. Learning does not have to mean massive trips to
the classroom for the entire workforce. There are strategic ways to blend
classroom and on-line learning content, along with a process approach to the
upgraded suite to get a new boost from technology.
We invite TechLearn Readers to provide additional approaches, questions and
suggestions, which we will post and circulate rapidly. Send your notes to
msoffice@techlearn.com We are also planning on having a session on
Approaches to Office 2000 Learning in the Computer & IT Training section of
TechLearn '99 in Orlando in early November. (http://www.techlearn.com)
This page is also posted at http://www.techlearn.com/office2000 if you want to
point colleagues to it.
Resources:
Microsoft Training & Certification Page: http://www.microsoft.com/training/
Microsoft Office 2000 Page: http://www.microsoft.com/office/
The MASIE Center http://www.masie.com Elliott Masie, Editor
Hosts of TechLearn '99 including The 1999 Computer & IT Training Convention
First Perspectives on Microsoft Office 2000 Learning Approaches
Yesterday, Microsoft Office 2000 was launched. This special report of
TechLearn Trends is aimed at taking a first glance at the learning and
training approaches being used by organizations implementing this upgrade of
Microsoft's office suite of applications. We will do similar projects as
other desktop suites are launched.
The staff at the MASIE Center have been working with the BETA version of
Office 2000 and offer these perspectives (and welcome TechLearn Reader input
for additional approaches):
Microsoft Office 2000 is really a matrix of products, including different
versions for the small office, organization and developer. While the
programs such as Word, Excel, Access. FrontPage and PowerPoint have a strong
integration, most users will approach the learning one application at a
time. The development of a learning approach requires the organization and
learner to do a quick analysis of which tools they are using and at what
level of sophistication and depth of function. The ultimate target for
learning will be NEW FUNCTIONS and NEW OPPORTUNITIES.
There are three types of learning programs that organizations are offering.
BRIEFINGS: The first is what we coined as an "Office Briefing" when Windows
'95 was launched 5 years ago. (I was the host of Microsoft TV ramping up
to that launch) The Briefing, which can be conducted in a large meeting
format, as a brown bag lunch, as an on-line learning event or as a series of
bullets on a web page, is aimed at providing the learner with a clear reason
for the changes that will happen to their desktop. The MASIE Center has
tracked the process of upgrading in organizations over a dozen years and we
are convinced that most companies do a POOR job of teaching users the WHY of
the upgrade process. While the decision makers have seen the product
presentations by Microsoft and can see the gains that will be achieved
through greater integration with the internet and better administration
tools, most users are never "pitched" with this information. Take a few
minutes to build a sense of excitement and value perception for the users as
their desktop is altered and the organization wins. It is far better to get
their simple questions about the impact and reason for change answered in
advance of the switch.
FUNCTIONAL: There are lots of new features and procedures in Microsoft
Office 2000. The program offers a lot of learning tools and information for
the highly motivated learner to self-explore the changes. However,
organizations should never assume that users will uncover a new feature, or
more importantly change the way in which they do a task in their jobs. A
good example of this is the Pivot Table in Excel. I think it is the
strongest feature in Office and use it religiously to run the financial side
of The MASIE Center. Most of the people I meet haven't even heard the term,
even though they have been Excel users for years. Here, organizations must
step up to ALIGN LEARNING with the FEATURE GAINS they were hoping to get
through the upgrade. Technical users of Office 2000 will gain dramatically
from having access to CBT, On-Line or Classroom training in the changes in
the advanced features. Pay strong attention to the Internet Integration
capabilities of Office 2000.
PROCESS: To really leverage gains from Microsoft Office 2000, organizations
need to address the process side of how this technology is being used to
add productivity to work. Daryl Conner of ODR and myself are working on
the issue of how technology changes and requires changes all sorts of human
processes in the organization. Daryl uses the phrase "recalibrating
expectations" as a term to address the need to alter people's expectations
of how their work might be different. Take the collaboration features of
Office 2000. We were very impressed with the ability of teams to be able
to use the intranet to work collaboratively on documents and projects, right
from within Office 2000. The members of these teams are going to need to
learn not just the feature set of how to dynamically write a document on a
multi-site basis, but they are going to need to address the PROCESS side of
"who owns the document, what are each person's rights, who even gets credit
for a collaborative project". These are exciting elements to making the
shift to working in the digital age, yet are absent from most learning
plans.
On a feature level, here are a few of the topics that we would add to
learner's radar screens:
* Internet Integration: Office 2000 tightly integrates with the corporate
intranet and the external internet. The ability to use these networks
seamlessly from within an application is a high powered change for learners.
They will need examples, models and a strong FAQ to address some of the free
floating anxiety about security issues when hooked to the "net". Help them
make the evolution from a single user to a truly network office environment.
* FrontPage Integration: More and more documents will be published as HTML
files rather than end up as first generation print documents. In fact, more
and more of what we print will probably have come from a screen displayed
from a browser. FrontPage 2000 has lots of new features to drive content
creation and even site management down from the technical level to the
business unit and user level. We would strongly urge training on these
topics, to make sure that learners have a PROCEDURAL and CONCEPTUAL level of
what they are doing. We set up a pilot FrontPage website in our office, so
that users could play in a no-risk zone. The more you can provide strongly
created corporate templates of pages and forms, the shorter the learning
curve.
* Technical Developer Skills: The high-end version of Microsoft Office 2000
is targeted at the technical developer. Make sure that you integrate this
into the IT training skills for this staff. Some IT folks have asked why
they need to go to training to learn a user application. Don't let that
become the perception ... it will leave your organization unprepared to
leverage the enterprise level of this new edition of Office. There are a
wealth of courses from Microsoft's training partners, from Microsoft Press,
from technology delivery groups such as CBT Systems, NETg and others, as
well as a slew of on-line learning programs aimed at the technical
developer.
* Content Reuse: Remember, one of the shifts is the view of content. We
want to create content to be as fresh and dynamic as possible. More and
more documents will contain active links to databases, will be dynamically
written based on user preferences and will be authored once and reused over
and over again. Give users guidelines on document naming, storage and how
to create these dynamically linked documents. One user wanted to be able to
have the date created and date modified displayed right on a document. Make
sure that your users have the skills to create content that will be an
active part of a Knowledge Management Model.
Microsoft Office 2000 can be used rapidly by current users without a lot of
formal training or learning programs. If the goal is to keep on working in
much the same way, do a good job of explaining why, administer the feature
set and launch it. However, we believe that the time is ripe to help the
organization leverage the capabilities of these programs in a stronger and
more integrated fashion. Learning does not have to mean massive trips to
the classroom for the entire workforce. There are strategic ways to blend
classroom and on-line learning content, along with a process approach to the
upgraded suite to get a new boost from technology.
We invite TechLearn Readers to provide additional approaches, questions and
suggestions, which we will post and circulate rapidly. Send your notes to
msoffice@techlearn.com We are also planning on having a session on
Approaches to Office 2000 Learning in the Computer & IT Training section of
TechLearn '99 in Orlando in early November. (http://www.techlearn.com)
This page is also posted at http://www.techlearn.com/office2000 if you want to
point colleagues to it.
Resources:
Microsoft Training & Certification Page: http://www.microsoft.com/training/
Microsoft Office 2000 Page: http://www.microsoft.com/office/
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