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Posts from October 2013

APPLYING THE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

October 30, 2013 “A learning objective should describe what students should know or be able to do at the end of the course that they couldn’t do before. Learning objectives should be about student performance. Good learning objectives shouldn’t be too abstract (“the students will understand what good literature is”); too narrow (“the students will know what a ground is”); or be restricted to lower-level cognitive skills (“the students will be able...

TRAINING: IS NEWER BETTER?

October 28, 2013 In the case of skills training, many of the current e-Learning offerings do not begin to compare with the learning values designed into the older technologies: interactive laser videodisc (IVD) and CD-ROM training. Moreover, e-Learning courseware will need to embrace those media-rich values if it ever hopes to attain the same, or better, results. And, with that thought in mind, what I mean by “media-rich” is courseware that is...

LEARNING’S NEW POSSIBILITIES

October 23, 2013 Imagine a system where learners meet clearly stated, performance-oriented goals, acquiring skills and knowledge that are relevant to real-life challenges. In this system, designed to enable high performance, learners of all levels meet their objectives with the aid of flexible programs that accommodate varied learning styles and abilities. Learners leave the system with all the necessary skills required by both a world-class workforce and as better educated citizens who...

HIGHER EDUCATION IS FAILING US

October 21, 2013 The word “Education,” like the word “Peace,” conjures up a positive response in our minds. Yet, I would maintain that, today, higher education is destructively flawed. American colleges and universities are no longer as dedicated to the liberation of human potential. They are no longer as interested in challenging the young minds they encounter. Rather, American higher education has turned inwards on itself in an attempt to quantify —...

TRAINING’S ULTIMATE ROI

October 16, 2013 No one ever really wants to buy “training!” If they didn’t have to, they wouldn’t. People only purchase training programs when they want to solve a particular problem. Training becomes only a means to resolving issues that management wants to fix. Two decades ago, most buying was done at the plant level. Today most purchasing decisions are made in the corporate office. When a plant level purchase was made,...

THE TRAINING ‘HORSE’ COMES FIRST

October 14, 2013 Far too often, trainers “put the cart before the horse.” By that I mean they, mistakenly, jump into a new training initiative without, first, determining the skills gaps that may — or, may not — exist between the trainees and the objectives to-be-taught by the new learning initiative. And, that’s the wrong way to go! Money and time will be squandered if you don’t first measure skills gaps. For...

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING: BASIC SKILLS

October 9, 2013 Much is being written these days about the workforce that America will need in order to compete in the 21st Century. Apparently, the jobs of today and tomorrow will require a workforce that is better educated and better trained than the workforce of the 20th Century. No doubt, that’s all true. However, it will also be a gigantic mistake to ignore the basic knowledge skills required of every worker....

e-LEARNING: WHAT NOT TO BUY

October 7, 2013 I’m going to reverse the process today. The majority of previous blogs have emphasized the two most important characteristics of learner-effective e-Learning: a) increased retention and b) better on-the-job performance. However, it’s equally important for one to be able to recognize the converse: the examples of e-Learning that will impede your goal of effective training. You may already have seen a decline in retention (assuming you measure that most...

MANUFACTURING COMEBACK & CHALLENGE

October 2, 2013 A TIME MAGAZINE headline earlier this year said it all: “How ‘Made in the USA’ is Making a Comeback.” Excerpting from that article by Rana Foroohor: “ . . . Climbing out of the recession, the U.S. has seen its manufacturing growth outpace that of other advanced nations, with some 500,000 jobs created in the past three years. It marks the first time in more than a decade that...