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Wish List of Training and Development Professionals

Ayesha Habeeb Omer — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:30:31 +0000

I read a discussion in LinkedIn ASTD group, where the learning and training professionals shared their wish list for a successful training department. I have categorized it under various headings Hope you find it interesting reading.

Management

One of the most important things required is a commitment from the top table that the training of staff improves the bottom line and is a necessary commodity in the growth of any organization.

Complete customer stakeholder/leadership support.

Accountability and reform begin at the top. Culture thrives in this environment.

Top management unstinted belief and support to development initiatives.

Mission

Clearly defined vision, mission, values and principles that the board of directors and all the executive leadership team members are aligned in lock step with commitment to instilling, embracing and supporting throughout the enterprise.

Alignment of the HRD area with the organizations strategy.

Elimination of the mindset training and of a “Training Department.” Put in place a performance-based approach where training is a part of the paradigm, but not the driver.

We don’t NEED anything financial. What we need is a shift in mentality – from the organization, leadership, departments, learners, and even ourselves.

Team

A fully dedicated training and idea generating facility equipped with all the latest gadgets and toys to help the organization grow.

Talent! I would ask for talent. The training part is easy with top talent.

Technology

Free iPads with our IT and /or HR courses so you can have the toys, have access to working offline or where Wi-Fi is not available.

Get out of the classroom! Experiential learning is worth the investment

What is needed are qualified people who want to help others learn. I found that most training, whether e-learning/CBT/WBT/ILT or other forms, were successful when designed by those that are passionate about teaching.

Talent and Content Quality.

Training Evaluation

Student response systems and classroom management software!

Having money/talent available that would allow evaluation of the success [and yes, failure] of training interventions over time.

So, what according to you as a learning and training professional is the important factor that organizations should incorporate to make the training programs a success.

Trainers – Do You Know That Your Learners Have Different Learning Styles?

Sravanthi Baswapatruni — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:30:56 +0000

Learners use different learning styles to receive information and understand it. Most of the learners use one or two learning styles while learning new concepts.

Basically the learning styles theory VARK was introduced in 1987 by Neil Fleming who is a teacher from New Zealand who has taught in universities, education centers and high schools. VARK stands for Visual, auditory, read/write, and Kinesthetic (in short, VAK). The Visual element (the V in VAK) is divided into two parts – Visual (V) and Read/write (R).

From the illustration below, can you identify the learning style of each person?

Didn’t you get it? No problem comeback after reading the blog.

Let’s see what each learning style means.

Auditory Learners

Auditory learners listen to the things rather than read the concept to grasp the information. They remember what they hear and what they say.

How do you find which among your learner is an auditory? It’s simple, answer the following questions.

Does your learner listen to an explanation from someone on how to operate a product before using it?
Does your learner love talking and listening to friends?
Did you find your learner giving verbal explanation while teaching someone a new concept?

If most of the answers are yes, then he is probably an auditory learner.

Visual Learners

Learners who learn best from seeing things are Visual learners. Using graphics, charts, illustrations, videos in the e-learning courses will help visual learners learn better. It is easy for them grasp information by looking at visuals but it is difficult for them to focus while listening to an explanation.

Find out if your learner prefers to learn by seeing or visualizing, by answering the following questions:

Does your learner read the instructions before operating an instrument?
Does your learner like watching demonstrations, charts and photographs?
Does your learner tend to write instructions and teach a concept?

For most of these questions if you responded yes, then he is probably a visual learner.

Kinesthetic Learners

Kinesthetic learners learn best by doing things. They feel easy in learning things by performing hands on activities.

Are you not sure that your learner is a kinesthetic learner? Try out answering these questions.

Does your learner operate a new instrument and learn how it works?
Does your learner love to take part in activities?
Does your learner tend to give demonstration to teach a concept?

If your answers are yes to most of these questions, then he is probably a visual learner.

So we depend on our senses in order to process the information which is around us and we tend to use one of our senses more than the others and use it when learning new things. Therefore most of us learn more through a combination of the three learning styles but, each one of us has different style of learning.

I hope my blog helps you in identifying your learners learning style. By the way I hope now you could find out the learning style of each person (Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic)

Please do share your experiences.

Instructional Strategy for Creating Impactful Compliance Training

Manisha Kallem — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:30:36 +0000

E-learning is an effective way to deliver compliance training as it is interactive and engaging. Ample number of situations can be given to teach and assess the learning outcomes. The best part is the feedback, which includes a clear explanation for the incorrect as well as correct choices, thus making it interesting to learn!

We can achieve this with a variety of instructional strategies such as:

Situations

Give situations (whether actual or hypothetical) which the learners are likely to face in their job, and explain what they need to do. These situations are those which might take place between the learner and his/her superiors, colleagues, clients, external personnel with whom they interact, etc., and they can be related to business, personal or ethical issues, decision-making, etc.
An effective compliance training program will create a rich set of situations which closely mirror the situations the learner is likely to come across.

Expert Advice

The advice of experts and practitioners who have deal with the applicable situations, laws, rules, and policies can be given to guide the learner in better decision-making.

Assessments

Assessments must be designed so that they challenge to the learners to apply what they have learnt.
Assessments should cover all kinds of situations which the learner may come across.
Choices given in the assessments should never be an easy give-away to the learners which they can select with common sense. They should be very challenging and the learner should be able to clearly assess the situation and make the appropriate decision.
Feedback should be given for both correct and wrong answers. Explain why a particular choice is correct and why the others are wrong.

Like for any other training, it is important to know who the learners are for compliance training. Instructional strategy needs to be set depending on the knowledge and experience of the learner.

Let’s look at a few examples:

New Employees

This is the normal, yet an effective strategy:

First explain the policies and rules that each employee should comply with.
Then explain a variety of situations which they may face on the job and what they should and shouldn’t do.
Finally, give a number of exercises that will help the learner comprehend each situation by recalling their learning, and also reinforce learning with the help of feedback.

Experienced/ Higher Officials

Here the employees have many years of experience and are aware of the industry regulations, legislation, and policies. So, we can reverse the above strategy:

Directly start with the assessment, which they attempt with their experience.
After they answer each question, give the feedback or state the regulation, legislation, or policy that governs it.

This results in effective learning, as we are taking the learners’ experience into consideration, and also avoids the tedium of explaining what they already know. This raises interest among them to take the course and learn new policies, if any.

Explore and learn

This can be applied for both new and experienced employees.

Give a question/ situation, a set of options to choose from, and also a few hyperlinks for the learners to go on a web trip
If they are confident (depending on their knowledge or experience), they can go ahead and select an answer.
If not, they can go on a web trip – explore, learn, and then answer the question

This is also an effective strategy, because the learners are adults and enjoy active learning.

Presentation on Effective Time Management – Download Now!

Navyatha Bodanapu — Sun, 19 May 2013 11:30:37 +0000

Time management isn’t just a personal-productivity issue that companies have no control but it has increasingly become an organizational issue. A proper time management or scheduling proves essential to reduce the stress quotient and it also acts as a contingency plan towards any uneven circumstances. However, the concept of time management is not as simple as it sounds; rather it requires self-discipline to practice over the course of time to make it more effective.

Here is presentation that highlights on a few steps to help you build your confidence, get clarity and prioritize your goals, minimize your challenges, follow through with your plans and reach your goals by effective management of the valuable infinite resource – TIME.

Making Training Culture Agnostic – How to Localize Economically?

Ayesha Habeeb Omer — Sat, 18 May 2013 11:30:51 +0000

Research points out that people from different cultures learn differently. So, we just cannot roll out an e-learning course in English language across countries. If we want learning to be effective, we need to customize the course to suit different cultures. Does it mean that we need to make multiple versions of the same course to suit that many cultures? If so, will it not become prohibitively costly? The answer lies in designing a course that is culture neutral or culture agnostic. Let’s see how.

The localization process is not just confined to language translation but has many other steps. Just translating into another language does not to do the trick. Effective localization depends on learners and their cultural characteristics. Based on that, we need to manage our instructional strategy, content strategy, visual strategy and development strategy.

This enabling process of making a course culture agnostic is termed internationalization. An internationalized e-learning course is therefore easier to localize. The process of first enabling a course to be localized and then localizing it for different national audiences is sometimes known as globalization of e-learning.

Let’s now see the specific elements that we need to decide upon:

Instructional Strategy: Courses with symmetrical and orderly layout and design on the one hand and open and intuitive ones at that on the other are the two extreme ends of the cultural continuum. For example, western cultures prefer open and intuitive course structure and design whereas middle-east and south-east Asian cultures prefer a more rigid and orderly design.

Similarly, we need to strike a fine balance between:

Information heavy content vs. No Information overload
Artistry and aesthetics vs. utilitarian design
Precise information & instruction, detailed guidance with strict timetables vs. a more informal and open communication with responsibility on the learner
Flexible, unstructured learning situations and case studies vs. highly structured, straight-forward knowledge transfer
Individual assignments vs. Group assignments
Definitive and assertive vs. Diplomatic feedback with justification

Mercado’s Recommendations for Cross Cultural E-learning are based on:

The design and presentation of course materials
The character and form of facilitative information
Assessment and the nature of assignments
The form and nature of feedback

By taking care of these aspects, we can make a course fairly culture neutral and avoid the bother and cost of making multiple customized courses.

Content: Coming to the language, we recommend that the English in the master course be in simple sentences, in a working kind of English without rare, obscure and difficult words, avoiding advanced idiomatic expressions, colloquialisms, sport references and humor. The focus should be on using ‘visualization’ along with ‘verbalization’.

Develop a Culture Neutral English Course by

Using Simple sentences
Working with Global English
Keeping it free of colloquialisms and Sport References
Avoiding Humor

Visual and Graphics: As far as visuals and Graphics are concerned

Stick to Corporate Branding and Style Guide
Preferably, use Neutral Non – Human Images
When using photographs – have a mix of ethnics, gender and ages
Avoid using cultural and religious symbols and images
Avoid putting content on the image

Audio: Audio should be in a professional tone and accent free. It is tempting to use machine language but we recommend that you avoid it.

Development Strategy: When it comes to development strategy, use authoring tools like Lectora, Articulate and Captivate. You can avoid a lot of technical glitches and also produce very quickly, when compared to Flash based courses. Let’s have a quick look at the authoring tools.

Tools	Articulate	Lectora	Captivate	Adobe Presenter
Key Features	Quick turn-around time from PPTs	Highly Customizable Interface with HTML output	Excellent on screen Simulation	Quickly converts PPT to a web based learning and User Friendly

These days there are many easy authoring tools that help you convert your content into online courses. You don’t have to be a technical expert to develop your courses. As long as you apply learning design strategy to your content, you can publish your PowerPoint Presentation to make excellent eLearning courses. However, the key is applying learning design strategy, as you have seen already. It is however recommended that you engage an e-learning firm to design and develop your courses. It will save you a lot of time, unnecessary cost and effort, and will also result in qualitatively better courses.

Also develop an interface exclusively for multi-language courses. It should be a single GUI from which the learner can switch to any language at any point in the course. Also, it will avoid the clutter of having a course in each language hosted on the LMS.

Thus localization is not just translation into another language. It has many aspects to it including instructional strategy, content strategy, visual strategy, audio strategy and development strategy.

5 Things In LMS Administration You Should Avoid and Why?

Abdul Razzaque Hussain — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:30:40 +0000

As an administrator you may have full access to all the LMS activities. Any administrative activity in the live system can be considered critical if it is just adding a user or creating any complex ILT training. Anything wrong which happens by accident or unintentionally, training function may treat it as a mistake and you may be asked to give a detailed explanation. You will then need to fix it in less time and with highest priority. In some instances, Administrators have lost their jobs.

By handling many support requests and by self-learning you may have come up with some standards to be followed by you and all other sub-administrators for your LMS. As an administrator to various LMSs and various industries I got opportunity to learn some do’s and don’ts of LMS administration. I am sharing 5 things which should be avoided to reduce risk in LMS administration.

1. Don’t put inconsistent course titles or enter incomplete information:

When you are creating a new user account or creating new training in the LMS, it is important to fill all the mandatory fields. Missing any such field may affect reporting. To avoid this you may need to maintain an excel sheet which can be used as a template to get the user or training details. You may add instructions and conditions to fill all the required data correctly. Once you are done with the sheet then you can create it in the LMS accordingly. Checklist and step-by-step procedure may also help in maintaining consistency and complete information in the LMS.

2. Don’t create your own training structure or workflow each time

If you have a team of administrators, then there may be a chance of not following the best practices or standards in maintaining the LMS. In every LMS you may find at least 2 ways of doing any activity. Both may be correct but only one of them may be up to your training standards. So it becomes necessary for all the administrators to follow the same standard. Following standard training structure or workflow will help other administrators to understand the user support requests and fix them quickly without contacting the person who created it.

3. Don’t update training status on behalf of learner or any other user

As an administrator you may have access to do any activities on behalf of other users. For example, you can cancel/register the trainings on behalf of learner or you can approve training request on behalf of the Manager. The intention behind it may not be to tinker with the LMS records but wanting to help the user. These sometimes may put you in trouble and the best way to handle these requests is to guide the users how to do it through documentation. Another advantage with this procedure is that the next time the users will do the activity themselves without contacting you for support. This will reduce number of support requests in the long run.

4. Don’t test directly on live system

It is a best practice to utilize the advantages of test system on the LMS when there is any bulk activity to be executed in the LMS. For example, when you need to add bulk user accounts or migrate training data into the LMS first you may test it on the test system and then upload it in the live system, so that you can avoid mistakes and the effort of correcting them. It will be helpful and gives you lot of freedom to learn or practice a new feature on the test system rather live.

5. Don’t assign trainings carelessly

Assigning trainings may look very simple and easy. However, the problems may come when you are going to assign it to the audience or group. Imagine that you are going to assign a product training course to the marketing & sales team. When selecting the audience to register if you select global domain instead of marketing & sales domain, then each and every employee including CEO of the company receives LMS notification to take the course and the situation becomes very critical with no way to stop these emails.

Please share your tips which should be avoided in LMS administration.

How to Add Spice to Your eLearning Course?

Niroop Patnaik — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:30:58 +0000

We can make eLearning more interactive. Here is the one way of making an eLearning course a little livelier.

Audio Snippets:

In formative assessments, we can add audio snippets. Below are the three examples of audio snippets, which you can try out.

1. We can add the sound of Applause for positive feedback and “OOPS” sound for Negative feedback. Click the image below to view a snippet at work.

Example 1:

2. For one of our clients we have done a football game and a bike racing game in which we have used snippets like cheering, fireworks and bike roar. Click the images below to view the snippets.

Example 2:

Example 3:

Try the above and please share your experiences.

Are Your Training Programs Burdening Your Employees? Part-2

Srujan Pakala — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:30:39 +0000

In my previous blog we have looked at various issues which demotivate the employees attending the online training courses. Here I have come out with solutions which could fix some of those issues.

1. Make learner know what the training is all about and why he should participate in it?

When you ask your employees to invest their valuable time in taking the online course, it’s your responsibility to respect your learner and tell him or her what the course is all about.

For this you have set clear learning objectives. For example before starting the course give them a challenging scenario or a problem and ask him to solve it. To solve it they search or think for more information. This becomes the basis for you to explain why they should take the course and what the training is all about.

2. Make the course more interactive and well designed:

Make your courses designed by professional instructional designers who are well versed in learning theories. Interactivities added to your courses using lectora, flash, articulate and other rapid authoring tools enthuse your learners to complete the course.

3. Make learning collaborative:

According to Christian Dalsgaard of the Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark, “eLearning needs to engage students in an active use of the web as a resource for their self-governed, problem-based and collaborative activities”.

Some organizations, such as IBM, have begun offering a range of social networking tools such as blogs, discussion forums, wikis for collaboration and interaction between employees. The key idea behind such initiatives is to develop an inclusive learning environment, where learners are given an array of options to learn, contribute and interact with their peers.

Formalize the collaborative learning environment, as a part of your organization’s eLearning initiative to facilitate an effective learning environment in your organization.

4. Make learning applicable:

How to apply information is the most important aspect of the course. Rather than just making them know. Making them know how to apply the information makes the course more practical and relevant to the learner.

These are few ways you can make your learners feel enthusiastic about the online training programs. Have more to say please do share!

Capturing Classroom Training-Why choose Articulate

Sharath Chaganti — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:30:46 +0000

In a Linkedin group I came across a discussion on Capturing Classroom Training. After seeing the comments made in the discussion I got to know that Articulate Storyline, Captivate6 and Camstacia tools are highly suggested for capturing the classroom training. In this blog I will touch upon how the simulations are captured and why we at CommLab use Articulate Storyline for Capturing the screens.

Simulations – How are they captured

In a classroom if you are teaching about software and want that tutorial to be recorded, Screen capturing tools like Articulate, Lectora and Camstacia can help you by capturing and recording anything that is on the computer screen. While recording, these tools can also capture the mouse cursor movements, clicks on the screen and also any audio if played through a microphone.

After you record, you can edit the recorded video to your heart’s content. Editing is an important feature offered by these tools, as you may want to delete any unnecessary parts in the captured screen.

Why Articulate Storyline

Articulate Storyline’s powerful feature is screen recording which allows a training manager to quickly and easily capture the screens. With storyline you can capture your classroom training once and edit it again and again without re-recording. Capture your screen and add captions, characters, and zoom and panning effects to the screen.

With Storyline you can automatically segment your recording into individual slides. This allows the you to visually show the simulation flow from one screen action to the next.

With Articulate Storyline you can present the Recorded video in the following ways

1) Video on a single slide: You can insert the captured recordings on a single slide as full motion video

2) Step by step slides: The second way to insert your screen recordings into your storyline projects is by selecting the option step-by-step slides in Articulate. Step-by-step option facilities guided simulations, wherein the learner is guided through a set of steps to achieve a specific objective. The step-by-step slides option in turn consists of 3 more options, called View mode steps, Try mode steps, Test mode steps. Let’s see them

View mode steps:

In view mode steps, learners can see each of the steps demonstrated to them. In view mode steps, by default you have captions, mouse cursor and clicks with highlights.

Try mode steps:

In Try mode steps learners will be engaged in trying out the steps for themselves. In Try mode by default you will have the captions, Hand cursor when hovering over the hotspots and hint captions.

Test mode steps:

In test mode steps you can check if your learner can carry each step on their own. In Test mode, by default you will have incorrect feedback, when trying the wrong steps, result slide to display the result after trying out these steps, Limit to Unlimited attempts to set the no of attempts and Try again feedback.

In this article we have looked at how authoring tools can help you in creating videos and simulations. If you have any suggestions to make in capturing the classroom training, do share with us.

Follow me on Twitter @sharath_CommLab

Are Your Training Programs Burdening Your Employees? Part 1

Srujan Pakala — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:30:02 +0000

Most of the organizations complain about low registrations and high dropout rates among their employees for their eLearning courses. That motivated me to find out why employees are not enthusiastic about online training. Here I pulled out some intriguing information regarding this type of training.

Some of the findings which I would like to share with you are:

1. Employees feel that they have inadequate knowledge:

Many employees feel that the training programs are implemented by the company because they are not doing their job well enough. They also feel that what they have been doing all these years is useless and there is an urgent need to change their working style. This perception makes the employees less responsive to training programs.

2. Employees feel the instructional presentation is not engaging:

According to Keller (creator of ARCS model of Motivational design) online learners tend to drop out when they perceive that the online learning environment and instructional presentations are not attractive. This means the courses which are not instructionally sound and which are filled with much text, without any interactivities, are responsible for the high dropout rates.

3. Employees feel training is intruding on their personal time:

Managers do not want their employees to spend their working hours in training sessions. As the result employees are required to attend it on weekends or during their free time. This makes their employees feel that their personal or leisure time is being poked. This sort of feeling demotivates the workers and prevents them from attending the training sessions.

4. Employees come to training with closed mind:

Employees take the training course expecting it to be boring with routine presentations. This is because previous experience with such sessions makes them think in that manner. This sort of expectation even before the start of training session proves to be a major drawback to training efforts.

5. Employees feel that training is irrelevant to them:

If the content is not relevant to the employees current job role or at least will not be relevant for quite some time, there is a possibility that employees will resist the training process. Employees feel that they are wasting their time.

These are some common reasons why the employees are not enthusiastic about the online training programs. If you like to add more; please do share.

In my next blog I’ll come up with some interesting solutions that can make the employees feel that online training courses are no more boring.