Since this is my first post for Mindsharp, I thought I'd start by introducing myself:
My name is Kay McClure and I have been teaching "End Users" (now affectionately referred to as "Business Users" here at Mindsharp), for almost six years. I started my "SharePoint" career in 2004 while working as a project manager for a company in the Midwest, and charged with implementing SharePoint 2003. That was my first introduction to SharePoint, and trying to learn it on my own was a challenge, at best.
I then contracted with Mindsharp and attended one of their very first End User classes taught by a Mindsharp legend - Kim Lund!
My company purchased Mindsharp's training materials, had Kim come down to Green Bay, Wisconsin to run a three day SharePoint 2003 End User class, and my project was off and running.
By the end of 2005, the time came for me to make a career move, and I was offered a role in contract training with Mindsharp. Now I had the chance to combine a 35-year business career, and all the training I had done to date, and literally change my professional life. I love it!
It occurred to me recently, that since I teach SharePoint to business users in many different areas of business, that companies might benefit from a "what next?" scenario. It's pretty obvious to most of us in the business that when the official training class is over, an organization will need to implement its own internal training plan. The two key words here are "training" and "plan." You can't succeed without these two key elements.
While Mindsharp can offer lots of training opportunities for any organization (online, instructor-led, customized, and our newest UserVersity product, among others), any organization may decide to bring their training in-house and do it themselves!
Without going into a great deal of detail, my advice to you if you choose to go that route, would be to plan what I refer to as "role-based" end user/business user training. Since users could act in any number of different roles depending on the site, you must first identify the key end user roles in your organization (reader, contributor, approver, site owner, etc.). You then gather the requirements from the key stakeholders representing these roles, and plan and design the appropriate training for each role.
This is not my typical advice when teaching ... when I take a class; I want to LEARN IT ALL! That's simply not possible with this product. Users will need to learn what they need to know to do their specific job. After all ... they have full time jobs already!
I could go on and on about this topic ... I will be presenting more about SharePoint training at our Best Practices Conference in La Jolla the week of March 7, along with other Business User / Information Worker topics.
Stop by and see me ... I have tons more ideas and would be happy to share them with you!
Can't resist since I live in Green Bay ... GO PACK GO! And ... hope to see you in La Jolla at BPC.
Kay