Creating training material based on exported PT8 Help

Question

Preamble: I’ve been tasked with working on PT8 training materials for my organization to prepare us for the rollout. My plan is to start with a training manual Word doc organized by project stages. The table of contents will be the portal to whatever a person needs to know based on whatever they are currently wanting to work on. For example, if they are about to start reading a co-translator’s draft, they would go to:
Stage 2 – Internal Review
I want to review my teammate’s draft.
Clicking the latter would take them directly to the section of the doc where they would learn about things like Project Notes. The content of the section would be taken directly from the PT8 Help file that I exported as html.

Questions:

• If I create a PT8 training manual that is basically the PT8 Help topics rearranged to accommodate a problem-based learning approach, how widely would I be allowed to distribute such a thing? I’m not talking about selling; I mean free distribution, to anyone who would find such a thing useful.
• How should I do attribution in the document? Is there a list of names of the folks who wrote the PT8 Help file? Or is there specific license wording I would need to use (e.g. a specific Creative Commons license)?

Answer 1

anon766047:

How should I do attribution in the document? Is there a list of names of the folks who wrote the PT8 Help file? Or is there specific license wording I would need to use (e.g. a specific Creative Commons license)?

If you anon421222’t agree with @Paul and @Jeff+W about training, @anon421222 would be the person to ask about this as he’s the author of most (all?) of the Paratext help.
He may not know the “licensing”, but he might know who to ask.

Comments

A bit off topic but feel free to suggest topics for the help if you find a topic is not covered or covered adequately.

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Thanks, anon044949. I can’t remember a time offhand when I went looking for help in Help and found a topic inadequately covered. In fact, I find the Help so content-rich and straightforward on a topic-by-topic basis that it made a natural first “go-to” for training content gathering in my mind. But if I find something in my process of reading and reorganizing the whole Help files export, I’ll be sure to communicate that.

Answer 2

Question: you wouldn’t want to just teach your users to use Help themselves…? I anon421222’t mean to offend you, but it sounds like the project is a bit like recreating the wheel. The one reason I could see for a project like you’re working on is that your users anon421222’t have a good enough command of English (or other LWC) to find what they’re looking for in Help (I confess, there are times I can’t find what I’m looking for either–my search terms aren’t necessarily the same as the Help writers’ terms). But in that case, might you just want to create a ‘quick find’ guide: to find information re. Stage 2 type ‘project notes’ into ParaTExt Help? This might have the added benefit of them consulting Help on their own for things that the ‘training materials’ anon421222’t address.

Comments

Eventually, the ability to use Help would be ideal, yes. But the wiki-literacy and google-skill that some of us have from our decades of exposure can be a barrier at the very onset of Paratext use for those whose literacy is primarily linear. Would it be great if every translator developed wiki-literacy and google-skill? Sure. But it needn’t be a prerequisite to learning how to use Paratext effectively.

The example you give, ‘project notes’, is a good one. When I search for project notes and anon421222’t include the quotes (google-skill), I get 50+ hits. Which of these should I start with? The first hit is “Introduction to Project Notes”; a good start. But the next hit is “How should I set the options on the Tools menu?”. Someone with wiki-literacy might readily identify this as not particularly important to read right now when you’re just getting started with project notes. Someone with linear literacy would be more likely to read the next item, then the next, then the next. It can be easy to get lost in a sea of new information without someone identifying for you which bits are important for you at which stage.

Now, the list at the end of “Introduction to Project Notes” is great; it will take you to the foundational information that you need. It’s even organized in a helpful linear fashion (kudos!). Let’s say I click the first item, “How do I insert a project note?”. Once I finish reading that article, I would go to the list at the end of that note for my next bit of information. But the list here is different. The first link takes you back to “Introduction…”, where you could access the original, fuller list of related topics. Or the reader could say to themselves that they have already seen the first one, they will now click the second list item (wiki-literacy), “How do I add a comment to note?”. So now they have access to that new information and can apply it. But what if they wanted to go back to the “Introduction…” right away? They’d have to use the back button (wiki-literacy) to see what they were looking at before. And, doing that, they would no longer be able to see the other helpful and related information, something that they can do if it has been presented in a linear format.

I agree that many would benefit from just such a “quick find” guide as you are recommending (good idea!). Still, I know that there are also many who would benefit from having the wiki/google barrier minimized at the onset of Paratext exposure. It would be pretty easy to pull a quick guide out the Table of Contents of my proposed Word doc. Both/and rather than either/or, eh?

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@ anon766047, you’ve identified a significant ‘feature’ of Help, i.e., that it requires a certain kind of literacy. Thanks for pointing that out; I’m not sure I would have identified that, even though I recognise it (fish in water syndrome…) So a big part of what you’re doing in linearizing the information into ‘stages’. I get the significance of that: guided, ability-appropriate instruction. I wish you well. Have you seen other attempts at this? I think people in PNG have put a lot of effort into something like this…

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Paul:

Have you seen other attempts at this? I think people in PNG have put a lot of effort into something like this…

What I’ve seen of PNG materials is what James Post shared with me in October, the “August 2016 Trial Edition”. So, I do have a digital copy of the 3 course manuals, along with their practice projects. They are well-organized and comprehensive, look ideal for a workshop setting. I think in a context where there may be many people from different languages needing to be trained in one fell swoop (e.g. PNG) because of the sheer number of projects, that format/method makes sense. In LBT, we tend to have few projects that start at the same time, resulting in each project having very different training needs. I suspect that we could meet our training needs more simply, with just a manual organized by project stage and a person on the ground who can spend time with each project, taking them through only the part of the manual that is relevant to their current stage.

Another facet of my training vision is that we wouldn’t be using practice projects. If the training comes to a team after stage 1, they would be working with texts that have already been produced. If they’re starting from scratch, I have a selection of short parallel passages that they could translate as a part of the training time. This selection would enable them to practice using all the tools thoroughly with up to 3 translators able to practice/learn simultaneously without encountering overwriting issues when they do a S/R. I suspect that team engagement with the training might be higher if they are working with data that actually matters, seeing how the tools will help them in their actual work. And since the training could happen in-office, time could be allowed to work through any language-specific issues that arrive in the application of any particular tool.

If there is another PNG tool that could be used as I’m describing, I’d love to see it. I try not to reinvent wheels, though I do often try to repurpose them.

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In all the training I do, I give the key words or phrases to search on in the help to find the topic. A good example is how to type Greek and Hebrew. Few will remember which key on a QWERTY keyboard is mapped to which Greek or Hebrew letter, but if users can remember how to find the info in Help then they will be able to search for Greek and Hebrew words when needed.

Answer 3

My approach to training for the last several years is to do just what Paul is recommending–using the titles of Help topics as the course content which users type in to the Help search bar. I actually do this on the screen while teaching for many topics.

As he suggests, this trains them to use Help in the future.

It also allows them to see most up to date version of the Help information as Paratext is improved.

Comments

Jeff+W:

It also allows them to see most up to date version of the Help information as Paratext is improved.

Hmm. An excellent point. It would be ideal if such a document could somehow be integrated with the Help itself to stay up-to-date. I’m not techy enough to know how such a thing could be made possible. Perhaps if the “stage-based table of contents” idea were integrated into Help itself, with the ability to export current helps organized by that ToC as a single document? I say this with an awareness that I am now being one of those people who is not a programmer myself but who has “great ideas” about what programmers could do without any personal ideas of how it could be done.

Answer 4

There is the site LingTranSoft.net that is a repository for training materials. You could either put your materials there are maybe link to them. It is a wiki site so materials posted there have to be formatted in the correct way. The URL is https://lingtran.net/LingTranSoft+Wiki

Answer 5

@Paul and others.
Likewise off topic:
If you wish certain words would bring up certain topics, let me know what those are and what topic you wish would show when you enter those words. I can put them in and improve searches in help.

Answer 6

Hi anon766047,

Many people use the help topics to create and adapt as training materials. You may do likewise, just be sure to slap the CC BY-SA license on them.

Comments

dhigby:

…just be sure to slap the CC BY-SA license on them.

Will do. For the “BY” part of the license, which person(s) and/or entities need to be listed in the Attribution section?

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SIL and United Bible Societies

Answer 7

Not sure this is relevant, but there is a topic in Paratext help entitled:
“Table of Contents for Paratext Help”.

It is accurate for Paratext 8.0, but needs to be updated for Paratext 9

Comments

Thank you for this. It’s relevant in the sense that it shows how links to help topics can be organized under different headings to make topics easier to find. What it doesn’t do for me is organize the topics by the stages when they would become relevant to translation personnel. That is, in this table of contents, you’d have to already know the menu that a task is found in in order to know where to look for the relevant help link.

What I would like to have is another table of contents that organizes the links not by menus in the UI but by sections that correspond to normal translation project stages. For example, the first section would contain links to help topics on getting started with Paratext for the first time. The next section could have setting up a project, registering users, getting a project from the server, creating a project plan, etc. (Perhaps that section could even be labelled admin only .) The next section - drafting - would have links to topics on USFM, setting up windows, opening resources, typing in a window, etc. The next section would have self check links, such as spelling check, key terms, parallel passages, etc. (or that could be a part of the drafting section). The next section - team check - would have notes orientation, Paratext Live, etc.

The point is to have a place where the help topics are organized by the stage in the process where a person is most likely to need that information. I mean, I could create a document outside of Paratext that copies the information found at each of the links. But then I anon421222’t get updates to the topics at those links when they are made and my document may get out of date very quickly. I would be willing to help create such a thing within the Paratext environment, if developers were willing to let me work on it with or for them.

Answer 8

I understand you to be asking for a place, within the Help system, “where the help topics are organized by the stage in the process where a person is most likely to need that information”.

If the organized place you have in mind is based on a “canned” plan that is included with Paratext (in Paratext 8 look for canned plans in: Project > Project Plan > Click Manage Plans - the list of plans is in the drop-down list below “Show Base Plan”), then including this within the Help system seems like a good idea.
On the basis that this is what you are asking for, I can help you create such a place. Please write back if that is what you have in mind.

If the organization is based on a customized plan, my opinion is that including this within the Help system would NOT be a good idea.

Comments

Basing it on a canned plan would work. Even if the plan used by actual projects is slightly different, a straightforward base plan—I’m thinking of the SIL Base Plan Rev 1.34 in particular, with basic stages but with a pretty detailed breakdown of common tasks and checks within those stages—could provide an easily navigable structure.

Let me know what our next steps would be to work on this. I’m going to be working on a Language Tech course for a seminary that begins in September 2020 so if this could even be ready by then, that would be a dream.