In my first post of this series I listed some reasons I think we may be nearing the end of the classroom participant guide. Today I’m going to talk a little about the budget question.
While it is being reported that spending on training is on the rise, this comes after years of declining or flat budgets. And while spending is increasing, so to are the calls for greater and greater efficiencies from leaders.
Print materials are a great place to look for opportunities to reduce costs. A participant guide costs a lot to create, print, and maintain. Especially when it becomes one more binder that gets tossed on the shelf, never to be referenced again (be honest, you have your own collection of never used again participant guides).
So we should throw participant guides out entirely to save money? Maybe, maybe not. Here are a couple of ideas for replacing the participant guide:
- Create a guide that is 4 or fewer pages that is a reference for the key concepts being taught.
- Create a guide that only contains the information necessary for classroom exercises.
- Create a guide that is just a few pages long and allows participants to build their own quick reference guide.
Those are just a couple of ideas that came to mind. What about you, what have you done to reduce or replace printed participant guides?
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