Last month, Apple launched its new e-book “Author” application, which looks like it will be a game-changer for the educational textbook publishing landscape. The Author application allows novice users to easily create impressive and dynamic e-books from scratch or from templates (or dragged in directly from Keynote, Apple’s PowerPoint stand-in). It doesn’t take much imagination to see the overlap between educational eLearning and the corporate training market and how corporate trainers could easily benefit from this application as well. Apple has already demonstrated its ability to totally reshape industries through its simple, easy to use products, and so Apple’s entry into the eLearning space is exciting. Corporate HR and training teams have long tolerated training systems and tools that have a clumsy user-interface and poor design. It’s ironic that corporate HR teams adopt systems they would never tolerate for their personal, consumer use. Given that many of the training system companies have recently been acquired by larger, enterprise software firms whose software looks like they’re still in the 90s, Apple’s entry into the corporate training market would be a welcome disruption and game-changer.
Feb
16
DOL Now Provides Soft Skills Training For Workers
Perhaps in response to the unemployment numbers, the U.S. Department of Labor recently announced the release of “Skills to Pay the Bills: Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success,” a collection of career development training activities to help sharpen the communication and other “soft” skills of workers, particularly younger workers.
The DOL’s curriculum, which covers communication, networking, enthusiasm and attitude, teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking and professionalism, is based on the results of a survey of prominent businesses to determine what they believe to be the most important competencies and skills for young workers. According to recent surveys, nearly three-quarters of employers indicated that younger workers were deficient in such basic skills as punctuality, verbal communication and working productively with others. Businesses across the nation have identified soft skills as crucial to the hiring and employment success of all workers.
Certainly, the knowledge of “soft” skills such as communication strategies, teamwork, time management, and so forth, are essential to succeed in today’s workplace. That’s why emTRAiN offers a whole library of courses on these topics to help increase the ability of employees and improve overall workforce performance.
Feb
09
Oracle Buys Taleo in an effort to add SaaS Human Resource Management Tools
Oracle just announced its acquisition of Taleo. This acquisition follows on the heels of SAP purchasing SuccessFactors – another SaaS Human Resource Management vendor.
What does this mean for HR and Training Professionals? Less choices in the marketplace. I know a large corporation with thousands of employees sounds like a “safe bet” to trust to help you with your HR and Training Management, but over the years, emTRAiN has worked with some of the largest vendors on behalf of our customers and unfortunately, we’ve seen that our customers pay more money and get a lot less help from these vendors.
Do you need a vendor that has the functionality, resources and staff to support you? Most definitely. But equally important, you need a vendor that will partner with you and not leave you hanging with unanswered phone calls and emails. All too often, that’s what you get with the big software vendors.
Feb
06
February is Civil Rights Month
Traditionally, February is Black History month but I think it’s appropriate to broaden it to Civil Rights month since African-Americans were a driving force in our Civil Rights movement.
Equality and EEO is a state of mind and therefore, needs to be reinforced. February is a good time to reinforce the EEO state of mind.
For a quick, easy message, try circulating this wonderful video we found on YouTube on Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington with an EEO message to your workforce.
Click here to view a video on Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington.
Or, take the training plunge, and make February your EEO training month by launching our Level Playing Field course, which combines EEO and Affirmative Action concepts.
Feb
01
Stanford University Offers Engineering Classes Online
This past week I heard that the Engineering Department at Stanford University is offering their courses online – - free to anyone who wishes to learn the material and who has a computer and an Internet connection. One of the Engineering Professors commented that they trained “students” who took their courses, exams and who received a grade, from all over the world, and that they trained more students online than they could ever hope to reach in-person during that same time period. Best of all, the courses are free and available to anyone with the motivation to take them.
Quality online education is truly going to be the great equalizer! We may not be there quite yet, but it’s coming. Education in general is on the cusp of a huge paradigm shift and it’s going to be very exciting to watch the opportunities that abound by leveraging new training technology. It’s going to mean a very big difference to people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and underdeveloped countries, who would otherwise never have these types of educational opportunities.
Here at emTRAiN, we’re very excited to play a part in this exciting game-changer.
Sep
28
System Usability Trumps Features
On their website, ASTD reports the results of a recent survey that was conducted, “The Current and Future State of Learning Management Systems.” See report Here.
Generally, people think that the LMS does a good job today for what it was originally intended to do when it was created 20 years ago—that is, to track training. However, people now expect the LMS to be the solution to all their learning problems.
Respondents overall LMS satisfaction level was a B- average. Respondents identified usability as the top challenge when using their LMS, followed by reporting and integration. Learning professionals also ranked usability as the number one challenge for their learners, with 26 percent of respondents agreeing that their learners have difficulty with general LMS functionality.
As discussed in the survey, the LMS was not designed to be customer-facing, but now that learning is becoming more user-centered and self-service- oriented, more learners are accessing the LMS themselves and are having difficulty using and navigating these systems.
So, when selecting a LMS, the user interface and usability of the system should outweigh some “nice to have” but not “need to have” features. Better to have your learners comfortably using a system than having a system with every feature, but which never gets used.
Sep
16
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SERVICE PART IN SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE?
Aug
22
Getting Employees Up to Speed Faster
Although companies aren’t hiring in droves, the rate of hiring is starting to pick up. With that in mind, it may be time to revisit your standard onboarding procedures. Questions to consider could be the number of procedures a new employee needs to learn; the number of systems or applications a new employee needs to learn; the amount of product or corporate knowledge a new employee needs to learn, etc. When you add up the list, it may seem daunting. Then ask yourself how easy it is to absorb all of that information in a one or two-day classroom session. These days, it’s relatively inexpensive and easy to turn your onboarding training into an online format (at least some components of it) and have it available 24/7 for new employees so they can get the information exactly when they need it. Plus, by putting it online, you’re able to optimize your onboarding processes so that they are standard and repeatable, thereby reducing costs in addition to delivering an improved new hire experience and quickly boosting workforce productivity.
For emTRAiN customers, your cost to use our LMS to roll out any of your training (onboarding, sales, customer service, etc.) is no more than $12/learner more than what you’re already paying for your emTRAiN course. It’s an easy business decision. Start using technology to maximize your training impact.
Jul
12
Technology Humanizes Learning & Development
This past weekend, I watched Salman Khan’s March 2011 speech about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. If you have children in school, watching this video is a must. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.
Khan points out that teachers typically spend less than 5% of their time actually interacting with students . . . most of their time is spent giving lectures or grading papers. By flipping the traditional model, students can listen to the lectures at their own pace and pause and replay any parts that are confusing to them. They can also ask questions via email where historically, many students are too embarrassed to ask questions. By putting lectures and problem sets online, teachers have much more time to provide individualized attention for each student. It also solves the problem of the teacher/student ratios.
This teaching strategy has even more application to the corporate world and adult learners. Training classes are often static lectures where 90% of the class doesn’t ask questions because they don’t want to call attention to themselves. Even more than children, adult learners don’t want to appear “dumb” in front of co-workers and won’t speak up if they’re struggling. By putting the “nuts and bolts” of any topic in an online format, with the ability to email questions and get timely responses, people can learn at their own pace and trainers and managers are “freed up” to provide more humanized and individual attention to each employee to help them master concepts. So, technology actually injects more human interaction in the learning experience rather than less.
Click Here to see Khan’s March 2011 lecture.
Jun
01
Going Mobile With Training
Our younger generation of workers are accustomed to the twitch-speed, multitasking, random-access, connected, fun world of video games and Internet. Today’s trainers, if not already familiar with the digital language of their employees, must learn it to maximize learning and access to learning.
Over the coming year, mobile learning will expand and evolve dramatically, where learners will no longer be chained to their computers and network connections; they will be learning while out in the field or on the store floor. Given the technology advances and the changing learning patterns of our workforce, it may be a good time to launch a small pilot program where you equip a few departments with a tablet. Last time I checked, the tablets ran about $500. If you get a Verizon 3g or 4g network for about $50 per month, you’ve got instant wireless access wherever you are. For an investment of $2,000 or less, you can try out mobile learning for personnel in the field, warehouses or manufacturing, retail, etc. The tablet should be able to replace the training kiosk of prior years.
Benefits and Challenges of Mobile Learning
Mobile technologies support learning experiences that are collaborative, accessible, and integrated with the world beyond the desktop or workshop. The benefits, however, do not come without challenges.
Benefits:
- Great for people that don’t work on a computer.
- Anytime, anywhere access to content, including videos, podcasts, eLearning courses.
- Can enhance interaction between and among employees and trainers.
- Great for just-in-time training or review of content.
- Can enhance employee-centered learning.
- Can appeal to tech-savvy students because of the media-rich environment.
- Facilitate collaboration through synchronous and asynchronous communication.
Challenges:
- May require media to be reformatted or offered in multiple formats.
- Might render some content outdated because of rapid upgrades—here today, outdated tomorrow.
- Could require additional learning curve for non-technical employees and trainers.
- May be used as a new high-tech package for the same old dull and boring content. Remember, the content should always be the focus and be engaging!