Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving From Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere

by Allison Rossett, Lisa Schafer

Job Aids and Performance Support in the Workplace gives us everything we’ve ever wanted to know about these invaluable tools and techniques!  Allison Rossett and Lisa Schafer have created a comprehensive, pragmatic, and very readable guide.  The authors don’t exaggerate when they claim it’s ‘knowledge everywhere.’

Genres: Business

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Michael James · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this book is a few years old, it is spot on in many of the changes in learning. No longer is everything about training in a traditional sense, but due to the fast pace of life, it is about performance. While not a replacement for education and proper training, performance-centered design will only continue to become more important as the abundance of information grows. Simplicity and essentialism shine here. Thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to proselytizing others :)

[Robert Bogue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been a big fan of job aids for years. It’s my awareness that job aids are more impactful than training that led to the creation of the SharePoint Shepherd’s Guide. I’ve read many materials about how adults learn – like The Adult Learner and Efficiency in Learning. However, I’ve not found many resources that focused on the humble job aid – that is until Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving from Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere. Finally there’s a book that focuses on the fundamental reality of today’s world – that we can’t possibly take it all in and memorize everything. We have to leverage brain augmentation systems to cope in today’s world.

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[Stan Skrabut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Improving your performance may be as simple as having a job aid on hand. Take a recipe for example. Recipes are a job aid used to help you bake a cake or make a casserole. When you are just learning to make this particular dish, you might have to refer to it often to get the dish right; if you make the dish often, you might have to refer to the recipe occasionally.  Nonetheless, it certainly is convenient to have these job aids handy when you need them. Read more.

[Sheri Trapp-Cordova · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book helped me to understand better the distinction between performance culture versus the training culture of corporate learning initiatives. The first half of the book was a little slow. Authors add lots of examples which is good. The last half of the book picked up for me. I enjoyed her analysis of performance consulting as change management.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gave me some ideas on how to make some changes about what we currently do at work to make our support documentation better.