Subject: Land Navigation with a compass and a map- Orienteering
Purpose: My purpose in creating this instruction set is to educate people on how to use a map and compass to effectively navigate across land and find their way from a starting point to their destination.
Audience: This set of instructions will be for an audience who have experience but are looking to refining their skills and learn some more advanced steps. The audience is most likely those above the age of fifteen and have used the skills roughly in the past but are looking to employ them in a more thorough manner for a more advanced setting such as a orientation competition, or this group could be for person such as a boy scout who is simply trying to study for advancement in the scouting ranks.
Context: The audience’s instructions will come from a website that with a focus on outdoor activities and orienteering to the extreme and detailed instructions will be the order of the day.
Strategies: The set will be much more thorough and lengthy than a beginner’s instruction set with more than the basic steps, including locating and understanding the legend, using the angel of declination, and using the scales to measure distance. In this the instructions will be best described as several smaller sets of instructions rather than a single set. The feeling of the instruction set will be focused more on a professional side.
Medium: The instructions will be in document format for uploading to a webpage and meant for printing. This will lend to the idea of relative availability for all.
Arrangement: Parts include the Table of Contents, the Opening, the Body, and the Closing. Opening will present the situation to the reader so that the reader can tell the document is meant for them. The Body is complicated and will start with a list of necessary items and defining information then go straight into the steps for the different procedures on each of the different methods. The second part of the body will follow with advisements and troubleshooting. The closing will have suggestions to the audience for testing what they have learned as well as inform the reader that there is still more on orienteering that can be learned.
Testing: I plan to present this sets to a Scout troop and have them evaluate the instructions via some of their older scouts and leaders.
Review
The element that is being covered most thoroughly is probably the audience. You know exactly who your instructions will be aimed towards. The part that I found interesting was that you not only know who your audience is but that you imagined when they might be using the instruction, for example the boy scouts studying for advancement.
The element that is being covered least thoroughly is probably medium. You know that you are going to make these instructions in a printer friendly webpage, but it would be helpful to have some description of what that website looks like.
Our topics are completely different but we are both going to break our instructions up into different sections.
This instruction set would change if you meant them to be for a different audience. Because you have more advanced terms and skill level required, they would need to drastically change for the beginner level who would have no skill at all.
About Orienteering for the Experienced
1. The strategies section is well developed. Its good to know exactly what information you need to include in the instructions.
2. I think you should go into greater detail with the medium. pdf? html? etc...
3. My second set of instructions is also geared to a more knowledgable group.
4. What if this was also printed in a small handbook available at scout conventions and at the camps? You may consider listing the the instructions like this:
a.Use the compass to find north (for tips see page 3)
b.Find the legend on the map (see page 4)
This way, you get all the necessary steps in one place and people who already know a how to do a step don't need to read unnecessary information. Someone who needs all the information will still have it only a page turn away.