The BBC has reported that Barclays Bank is moving away from “the arcane language that has be-devilled bank customers for generations”. The bank said it wants to move away from confusing acronyms and jargon, using “more colloquial” terms instead. Jim Hytner, Barclays’ marketing director, said: “We will be using language that everyone knows and understands”…. Read more »

If you are looking to justify software testing and quality, then these two reports may help: The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing The ROI from Software Quality – An Executive Briefing

Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005 SDK now includes a Help authoring tool that allows “authoring, building and deployment of documentation to be plugged into Visual Studio”. The tool, HelpStudio Lite, is a slimmed down version of the Innovasys’ HelpStudio. If you would like training in Help Studio or Help Studio lite, then please contact us.

Many online communities suffer from a lack of contributions by community members. Researchers from the University of Indiana have tested ways to encourage participation in online communities. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/ling.html They found individuals contributed when they were reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and challenging goals. Were they correct?

We’ve been looking at some of ways in which Instant Messaging and audio support can be built into e-learning, so that delegates can contact an instructor when needed. We think this will help improve the effectiveness of online courses. What do you think of this approach?