Day 3 SESSION 3:
Integrated document use

Presenter:  Pat Salt (Bow Valley College)

Document Use refers to tasks that involve a variety of information displays in which words, numbers, icons and other visual characteristics (eg., line, colour, shape) are given meaning by their spatial arrangement. Graphs, lists, tables, blueprints, schematics, drawings, signs and labels are documents used in the world of work.

Document Use includes:

• print and non-print media (for example, computer screen or microfiche documents, equipment gauges, clocks and flags)
• reading / interpreting and writing / completing / producing of documents – these two uses of documents often occur simultaneously as part of the same task, e.g., completing a form, checking off items on a list of tasks, plotting information on a graph, and entering information on an activity schedule.¹

Every occupation profiled by the Government of Canada in the Essential Skills Research Project was found to require some use of documents.

Pat took participants through a document use exercise involving flowcharts. The point of the exercise was to demonstrate that:

• Document use skills can be taught
• With only a few minutes of training, workers are able to navigate documents much more efficiently
• Some documents are not designed well and some basic principles help to improve document usability
• Practice improves document use efficiency