Quotable: Michael Lee Stallard
Managers organize, leaders engage. People follow managers because these individuals have the authority to hire, fire, and promote them. People follow leaders because they are inspired to.
Quoted in Connect to Engage, published in TD, April 2015
Quotable: Leah Matthews
Distance education is bringing about a new revolution where students are putting together their own playlist of curriculum.
Leah Matthews, head of the Distance Education Accrediting Commission
WebEx Tip
In a recent poll of Training Doctor newsletter subscribers, the majority estimated that they only used 20 - 50% of their synchronous platform capabilities. So each month we will offer you a tip or "trick" - alternating between WebEx and Adobe Connect, the two most popular platforms.
WebEx Tip: Do you find that text "falls out" of your tables or you have weird line breaks on your slides once loaded to WebEx? Stick to Helvetica or Ariel for your slide font. WebEx gets persnickety otherwise - especially if your organization has its own custom font because it simply doesn't know how to translate it.
How is training predominately delivered?
training hours via method
Results of an eLearning! Magazine Group survey conducted Jan – April 2014 of 408 individuals in corporate, government, and educational institutions. Most respondents were non-managerial, trainer / teachers.
Online Collaboration MUST be Designed
All virtual classroom platforms pledge that their product enables your organization and your learners to work collaboratively. And it is true. All virtual classroom platforms allow for learners to interact verbally, via chat or instant messenger, through the use of feedback symbols or emoticons, and often through breakout rooms which enable smaller discussions and group activities to occur.
This doesn't just happen spontaneously, however. It is imperative that the training be designed to be collaborative.
Quotable: Bob Mosher
To survive, and thrive, we need learners to own their own engagement, not an organization that drives it.
Excerpted from: It All Starts with Learners, Bob's regular column in CLO Magazine
Adults Need Time for Real World Application
Real World Application
Trainees need to return to their jobs behaving differently than when they went into the training; therefore workplace training relies on 'real world application.' Unfortunately, most training designs don't allow for real-world application. They include a lot of theory or rules (we pre-qualify a sales lead so that we don't waste our time pursuing someone who will never buy), practice in a fabricated manner (work with a partner to create or practice the pre-qualifying questions you would use back on-the-job), stories of successes (Jim, our star salesperson, spends 80% of his time pre-qualifying and only 20% making sales), and sometimes a checklist or job-aid reminder of the process / steps we have taught.
Is this how you would teach someone to ride a bike (Let's hear from Mike, who has experience in bike riding) or counsel a drug addict (Work with a partner to come up with some questions you might ask the patient)? No. But far too often this is the "design" we see in corporate training programs.
The point? Training, in order for it to stick and be sustained, must include real world application so that people understand what the task or process is and how they would actually perform it on the job. We know about chunking, we know about timed-intervals, now we need to also embrace real-world application.
Have trainees go back on the job and actually practice what they have been taught - BEFORE the training is over. Give them time to practice and fail and report back on what they have learned. Give them time to try two or three techniques to see which they are most comfortable with. It's much smarter to learn from one's own experience than Jim's or Mike's.
Are you going to that place-based class?
Heard around the water cooler: Place-based learning to identify learning that is classroom-based or face-to-face.
Quotable: Suzanne Martin
Everyone who comes to Google comes with a learning hat and a teaching hat - they have to teach as much as they learn, says Suzanne Martin, head of global people development, brand and marketing at Google, referring to the company's g2g (Googler to Googler) program that puts employees in teaching roles.
Source: HR Magazine, May 2015
FREE Video Editor
Last month we told you about a free video recording software that will allow you to quickly and painlessly record training videos using your webcam or by application sharing to something you need to demonstrate.
This month we suggest you checkout www.123apps.com for free video and audio editors. You can also use this website to record a video from your webcam.
Quotable: John Medina
Before the first quarter-hour is over in a typical presentation, people usually have checked out. If keeping someone’s interest in a lecture were a business, it would have an 80% failure rate.
John Medina, author, Brain Rules
Training Doctor in the media this summer!
The Training Doctor was featured in the Staples Small Business Hubarticle, 4 Ways Apple Devices Can Help your Small Business
Also, the founder of The Training Doctor, Dr. Nanette Miner, was featured in an article from The American Express Open Forum, Successful Entrepreneurs' Secrets toMastering Work-Life Balance.
We're not name droppers... but....
TrainingIndustry.com just announced its Top 20 Training Content Developers and three of our clients are on the list! Congrats!
Training is essential for public safety!
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has suspended the repair station certificate of Aviation Service, Inc. (ASI), a Lexington, Kentucky-based aircraft repair station.
The FAA alleges that ASI failed to establish an Employee Training Program (ETP) that met FAA regulations. The FAA notified ASI numerous times between July 7, 2011 and October 9, 2012 that its ETP did not meet FAA regulations.
After ASI failed to modify its ETP, the FAA issued an immediately effective action to suspend ASI’s certificate, determining that an emergency existed related to the safety of the traveling public.
An FAA-approved ETP is critical to ensure that employees performing maintenance for a repair station are capable of completing such work.
The suspension will continue until ASI develops an ETP that the FAA approves.
Source: AviationPros.com
You Can Stop Doing Performance Reviews - Let the Peers do it
In The Crowdsourced Performance Review: How to Use the Power of Social Recognition to Transform Employee Performance, Eric Mosley argues that social recognition, a practice in which many people use social media to consider and recognize an employee's performance on a daily basis, can improve performance more effectively than either the one-on-one performance review or 360-degree feedback.
Most Kids are EXPERT Gamers by Age 21
By the age of 21, kids have spent 10.000 hours playing games. This correlates with Malcolm Gladwell's position in Outliers, which says that 10.000 hours of practice makes one an expert - interesting and thought provoking...
Transitions In UX Design
The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work of De Stijl artists is a major source of reference for this kind of work.
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life
One day, however, a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen
Portugal 2013 road-trip gallery
The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work of De Stijl artists is a major source of reference for this kind of work.