The DKTS Courseware Development Process

  Choosing the Topics

We develop courses both on generic topics for our own curriculum, and as works for hire for clients with specific requirements. In all cases, our choice of topics and emphases are driven by customer demand.

  Getting Started

The development process starts by identifying:

1. The audience -- their jobs and associated skillsets
2. The training objectives ("Upon completion, the student will be able to...")

It's essential that all objectives be stated with active verbs naming specific activities that graduates will become capable of doing. These activities must be directly relevant to their work. Knowing and thinking are not enough. Doing is what counts.

  The Skeleton of the New Course

From these objectives, we develop sets of exercises and labs that reinforce and prove the students' grasp of the relevant skills. Well-designed in-classroom activities are essential to effective training. This is where students get the sense that they really have assimilated new skills and with it a sense of purpose and accomplishment. Excitement and growth are powerful motivators and these are best achieved by doing. Students know they've learned to do something new because they've done it!

  Adding Flesh to the Bones

Next, we develop the courseware (the teaching points, visual aids, diagrams, and other supporting material) that enables the students to acquire the skills and the knowledge they'll need to do the exercises, the labs, and their jobs. This latter point is extremely important. People take our classes to get better at their jobs. Constant reinforcement of the relevance of the classroom material and activities keeps the interest and value high.

  Testing and Polishing

Initial testing of the materials - the "alpha" class - is done with a group of our own internal people and, on occasion, interested outside parties, sometimes including clients or potential clients. Information gleaned from the alpha enables us to polish the materials enough for the "beta" class, taught before a live, client audience, with the understanding that detailed feedback is expected. Do the alpha and beta phases in the lifecycle sound familiar? Courseware development has much in common with software development. Both demand careful design, extensive testing, and debugging.

  Ready to Roll

Upon completion of this process (typically four to eight months from start to finish) the course materials have attained our high level of quality and are ready to be offered to our entire client base.

  Continuous Improvement

The courseware development process is never really done. Especially for courses on rapidly-evolving technologies like the Internet, frequent updates are demanded. Timeliness is an important part of our quality formula. And as our instructors' experience delivering the courses grows, ideas for improvements emerge and are implemented. There's nothing "shrink-wrapped" about what we do!