622 
In addition, we found it effective to prepare a special 
overview course for the senior managers. When new 
hardware and software are installed, it is important to give 
the mid-level managers and supervisors an opportunity 
for some hands-on exercises. Having them actually run 
the equipment gains a lot more enthusiasm and support 
than demonstrating capabilities to an audience. 
One of the largest differences between commercial and 
academic courses is that the students and their managers 
must be satisfied that the instruction enables them to 
perform well. They are customers and they must 
succeed. The organization loses money and time if 
students don't learn or drop out. If the students are 
having difficulty learning the material, then the instruction 
must be adjusted rather than remove the poorer students. 
Therefore the course materials must actively reduce the 
students' differences in note taking and learning skills. 
Well-written outlines and summaries of the lectures for 
the students allow them to listen actively rather than 
concentrate upon recording the dictation. Worksheets, 
figures, tables, and openbook quizzes that summarize ALL 
the important points provide personalized references after 
a course is completed. Handouts that operators almost 
feel compelled to keep readily available are highly valued. 
The students should leave the course, feeling ready to 
proceed. 
Exercises for digital cartographic and photo interpretation 
courses require image coverage over a suitable 
geographic area. Selecting the imagery, the geographic 
areas, the geographic features, and the order of the lab 
tasks is an iterative process. The geographic feature 
content may require modifications to the logical sequence 
of teaching points in order to conduct the lab exercises. 
The production of multiple copies of source materials, 
reference materials, and digital student projects may 
require extensive resources and coordination. 
Temporary modifications to the production software may 
be necessary to support training activities. For example, 
our production control software protects data base 
integrity by limiting user access. The preparations for the 
production manager courses included altering the 
software to allow simultaneous access by multiple users. 
Such alterations can impact system configuration, 
tracking, and verification procedures. Thus in some 
situations, the training and production environments may 
have conflicting configuration requirements. 
To guide the selection and balance of lesson content, we 
found it useful to have the planning team appoint 
cartographic product experts from each production site as 
points of contact to the lead developers. Establishing a 
frequent dialog between these experts and the 
developers during this phase is a very important 
ingredient. Like the members of the planning team, they 
become personally vested in the outcome of the training 
activities. These people review draft outlines, schedules, 
and course descriptions. They answer numerous 
questions, approve lab exercise content, geographic 
coverage, and often select the geographic features to 
collect. They also critique the draft presentations before 
the courses are taught on site. After the contractor 
completes the delivery of the courses, these same experts 
may teach new operators or other instructors. Lastly, the 
personal rapport between the lead instructor and the 
expert is an enormous asset during the on-site instruction. 
PREPARING THE SCHEDULE 
Preparing a schedule is an iterative process. During the 
early phases of developing the training plan, several draft 
schedules were reviewed by the planning team. Since 
this team was also reviewing the delivery and acceptance 
schedules, once an agreement was reached the schedules 
did not change frequently. Several of the factors to 
consider when developing a schedule are summarized by 
Table 2. Schedule Factors. 
Table 2 - Schedule Factors 
• How much time per function or task. 
• Determining calendar dates for teaching. 
• How much development time. 
• How many instructors are needed. 
• Sequence of courses and cartographic products. 
° Relationships between program milestones. 
We based our estimates for lecture and lab time per 
function upon the frequency of use, the degree of 
difficulty, and the presentation method. To determine 
these factors, we employed our corporate instructional 
experiences in general and our specific program 
experiences in particular. Some government programs 
also require individual task analysis by operational role 
and a traceability matrix between system functions, 
operator tasks, and lesson outlines. However, task 
analysis is a lengthy process, so many contracts do not 
include it. 
Determining the calendar dates for presenting the courses 
includes considering holiday periods, shipment 
preparations, instructor travel time, course preparation 
time, and actual platform time. When presenting eight or 
nine on-site courses that are fifteen days long with two 
days of preparation time before each one, the instructors 
also need 'home breaks' or possibly vacations 
incorporated into the schedule.. Figure 3. Product 
Schedule Example illustrates a daily representation of on 
site course preparation and instruction which is useful for 
facilities, shipments, and system logistics planning. 
Once the course duration is determined, then the 
development labor hours can be estimated. After 
reviewing our accounting records, we concluded that a 
desirable ratio would be 65 to 1; i.e. 65 hours to prepare 
one hour of instruction. This ratio applies for the 
following conditions: 
• We prepared a training plan without formal task analysis. 
• We prepared lesson plans, visual aids, and student 
guides with lab exercises. 
• We had approximately one third content overlap 
between courses of the same type (production manager 
courses and photo analyst courses) for different 
cartographic 
products. 
• We actively contributed to the reference manual 
preparations. 
• We mass produced individual software projects for 
each student. 
We divided our work into five phases; Developing the 
instructors (15%), analysis and design (15%), course 
development (53%), draft presentations of lectures (2%), 
final production (15%). Developing the instructors and 
lab assistants included learning the technical content, 
attending two week instructor training courses, plus 
providing speaking opportunities and feedback during the 
development process.