I am looking to develop a strategy/plan for maintaining training materials and was wondering if anyone had any ideas or suggestions.
Thanks,
Irene

The only advice I can give in this area is to make sure that a maintenance strategy is documented as a part of the initial stages (design) of the training.

Document such things as who is going to do it? Who is going to pay for it? Where are the funds and headcount coming from? How much of a workload is anticipated? How are you going to handle retrofit training? By retrofit, I'm speaking of training for people who were trained on an earlier version but who will need some sort of something when the training is revised. Assume that the current people associated with the instructional design of the course have all left the company. Is the strategy constructed and worded such that a different design team can make sense of it and implement it. Might not be a bad idea to include the rationale for each course maintenance decision.

These are but a few of the items that need to be addressed.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Pete Blair SCC,

The maintenance plan needs to identify who owns the plan and keeps it up to date, what documentation is required, who constructs the documentation, who is responsible for providing the appropriate information for the documents and records, and where those materials are stored. The plan needs to include documents identifying the status of all training materials (something easily referenced and updated); some type of receipted control distribution system identifying changes made, who gets copies, revision information, etc.

You also need to maintain all process documentation to help ensure compatibility of training content with other documentation: i.e., standard operating procedures, job or task instructions, company procedures and polices - basically all documentation that instructs or guides employees in task accomplishment or describes conditions under which tasks/jobs are performed, and the gremane quality and engineering standards.

Maintain all training and certification records for both trainers and trainees (including individual training plans). You probably want to maintain records of who knows how to do what, when they were trained to do it and levels of expertise, who is qualified to train what, etc.

You need to maintain all training program evaluation documentation including:
1. objectives defined during the analysis phase (as well as business objectives and how they are related to training objectives)
2. baseliine data (pre-data) collected prior to implemention of training
3. any data tracked by trainers or managers following training
4. evaluation results for trainer/trainee performance; program and training material content and implementation; and benefits - training, performance, attitude benefits. etc., including quality improvements, enhanced productivity, and increased job satisfaction.

Maintain and document areas of training program obsolescence, new training needs (such as those required due to advancing technology or new products, equipment, processes), opportunities to streamline to make more cost effective, organizational changes that affect training.

Maintain all documents that help identify and link corporate goals and inititives to future training

And finally, the maintenance plan should include a process for maintaining visibility to ensure continuing support and expansion - updates to senior management, newsletters, etc. to highlight benefits of the training, etc.

Hope this makes sense.

To piggy-back off of this message (because my question is very similar), can anyone provide their procedures/best practices for maintaining materials?

We have training software that has been updated, but no one has ever documented changes, or labeled versions. What SOPs do you have in place, how do you document changes, and how do you store old versions?

I've worked in highly regulated environments with very strict versioning policies, etc...

A strong change management process is recommended. What constitues a new "version" versus a "tweak"? What is the natural review cycle and ad-hoc editing processes? How do you document submitted/approved vs submitted/rejected changes? What is review/approval process, and documentation required to release content to the "live audience"?...

I'd offer the following as two of the most painful learning points we've struggled with:
1. Define when it's time to stop maintaining something (too often folks "maintain the beast"- a huge course catalog of basically obsolete content- think lean).
2. Beware of "ownership"- get cross-functional- too often we had folks that "owned" content and when they changed position, the vacancy created caused huge issues.