Ideas to create Excel microlearning videos for my colleagues

[Excel_apprentice]

Hi everyone,

I've been tasked with creating some Excel microlearning videos for my schools to help upskill them. I have a number of ideas about videos to cover but they're a bit more advanced, struggling to work out what videos to start with at a more basic level. Was just wondering if anyone had some suggestions about Excel basics to cover to a novice?

Thank you.

[TMS]

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm, but wouldn't that be like re-inventing the wheel?

Google: excel videos for beginners … I would think you could use them as is, or create something based on the ideas presented.

[Excel_apprentice]

Thank you. There's a real mix of ages in the company and some of the older staff are lacking in Excel knowledge and skills. That's why I've been tasked with this.

[MrShorty]

I don't know much of anything about creating videos, but it seems that the starting place will be deciding what topics/skills need t be covered.

I know the first things I learned about spreadsheets were basic formula building skills (like how to use relative and absolute references to make copying easy). Do you need to get that basic?

Google classifies spreadsheets as "function based programming languages". Definitely a key part of using spreadsheets is learning to use their built in function library. Do you need to build some videos for common functions that your people use?

Do you need to cover number formatting/custom number format codes?

Do you need to cover how Excel stores dates/times and how to work with dates/times in the spreadsheet?

I'm sure I could keep going if I wanted to, but I can at best only guess what kind of topics/skills you need to teach your staff.

[ELeGault]

Exactly. This is not something that we can answer.

The Type of business, data sets available to work with, cleanliness of the data and the level of interaction that these employees will have with the data is entirely in a scope that is limited to you and your company.

Once you figure out WHO will be using it. What they need to get FROM it, HOW they will interact with it... you can then start to build the outline of your lessons and as MrShorty pointed out... the internet is filled with self help videos that you can piggy back off of - just need to know what they need to know.

[TMS]

I have to agree with the last two replies.

I think you need to determine who NEEDS to use Excel, who WANTS to use Excel and who WILL actually use Excel. And then you need to establish what they NEED and WANT to use Excel for. And THEN you need to assess the skill levels of your audience. Finally (maybe), you need to understand their learning styles: do they prefer one-to-one tuition, class-room training, practical application of topics? Do they WANT to watch videos? Are there specific challenges they can address to consolidate their learning?

What use does your organisation make of Excel? Do you import data? Do you download data? Do you generate data internally? Do you need to organise, manipulate, analyse, extract or export data.

Assuming you DO use or develop videos, how do you assess their effectiveness? What ongoing support will you, or anyone else offer?

Last point, for the moment: Excel is an incredible tool but it can be very dangerous. Assuming you teach people how to create formulae, who will audit those formulae to ensure the output is valid and correct? For example, there are functions in Excel 365 that allow you to easily FILTER and/or count/sum the extracted records. If you have, say, 10,000 records and want to extract specific entries, what method will you/they use to double check that the correct entries have been extracted and analysed?

[Excel_apprentice]

Hi,

thanks to all those responding, I had to sideline this project but working on again now. Will look into all of your suggestions and take on board.