The present invention relates generally to the area of software training and more specifically to generating training objects capable of being executed within a software application.
Success of a new software application depends on the ability of users to effectively learn and utilize the software. Unfortunately, nearly all computer software today is designed around processing data with little or no consideration of how people need to use it to perform their work tasks. As a result, user training, software documentation and end user support services have flourished as a way to help users figure out how to work around these systems.
Current software training approaches include general classroom training sessions, online tutorials and third party training resources. These systems typically employ a general teaching approach to accommodate the wide variety of users. These training approaches cannot provide individual customized training. Thus the users are often limited in their training for utilizing the new software, reducing productivity.
With continued advancements in software applications, it is important to keep users abreast of new techniques. If users fail to grasp the improvements of existing systems, these shortcomings will only be perpetuated with new systems. This is problematic because after several generations of new technologies, the user may be severely restricted in the ability to use the software, increasing the likelihood that the user will not use the improved software, but will reduce productivity using the comfortable previous generation software system.
Current training techniques also utilize hands-on training. For example, some systems may utilize pop-up windows having visual demonstrations of a particular application resource. Other approaches may include a user prompting a system to run a tutorial when the user first launches a software package or is confused during operation.
As noted above, the approaches are also standard approaches offering no customization for specific users. As the complexity of the underlying software increases, the software training techniques must also be customizable to focus on the target audience of the intended user.
Also, the generation of those software training techniques are generalized. As a software application is generated, the general training materials are also created. Other software training techniques, such as classroom training techniques, are generated to teach a large group of varied users. Current training approaches fail to provide a customized learning approach because individualized training techniques are not generated. Therefore, there exists a need for generating software training objects that are customized to target specific users.