quote:

I hope people are realizing that a template is only a tool in which one can put one's information.

Good point! I'm wondering if people are not really looking for something more than just a template - For example, one of the posts recently asked about a courseware template. I'm not sure what that even is, but I suspect the poster was asking for something to basically teach him/her how to develop a course rather than just a master or layout that can be used to make something similar, or maybe an automated tool. Maybe they are looking for something that not only has the master and automation, but also a tool that has leading questions that, by being answered, will produce a course or facilitator's guide. In other words, something fairly detailed that just walks one through course development or facilitator guide development, etc., etc.

Here's the real value of using templates.

There are a lot of decisions you can make in advance that will make it easier to develop 10 50 or even 100 programs. Many of these decisions have to do with type fonts, spacing, terminology, pagination, file name conventions, etc.

In addition, if you have 20 designers working on a project it's important that everything looks the same. It also makes it easier to manage those developers.

For those running training departments I always recommend that they develop a template for all the document types they will be using. This allows everyone to spend more time on content and instructional strategy rather than graphic design and secretarial work.

Here's an example, if you're going to do leader's guides you need to pick a type style. It's less important whether you pick times new roman or arial than it is that everyone uses the same one.

It's really a choice on how you want designers and developers using their time and if you think things look more professional when they look like they were done by the same company.

Respectfully, I'm not questioning the use of templates. I am very familiar with the benefits of templates, having done technical writing and loads of desktop publishing.

I'm questioning the use of a *facilitator guide* template.

A facilitator guide template as well as a participant guide template makes a lot of decisions that don't have to be made each time you have a project. Here is just a short list of the decisions which don't change content or design but cut development time and make things more consistent.
1. Type font and size
2. Margins
3. Spacing between paragraphs
4. Person and tense
5. Use and style of bullets
6. Use and style of tables
7. Headers and footers
8. Use and style of Heads and Sub Heads
9. How the facilitator guide cross references to the parcipant guide, overheads and other media.
10. Set up to make automatic table of contents
11. How much direction to give a facilitator which can range from a script to a brief outline.
12. Where and how to insert graphics
13. How to store the document such as PDF
14. File names especially for mutliple versions and drafts.

All of this and more is reasable to set up if you have a good command of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. A good test of this ability is with the following short questions:

1. Can you generate an automatic table of contents?
2. Can you use the ruler to add tabs, create indents and center text?
3. Can you put a space between paragraphs without hitting the return twice?
4. Can you set up and edit styles?
5. When using tables can you create a header that repeats itself on each new page?
6. Can you change headers and footers from page to page?

Respectfully, again, LPC, that's not what I'm asking.