June « 2010 « ITC Learning - Industrial Training Skills Blog

Archive for June, 2010

“ A QUIZ & A PRESCRIPTION “

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Let’s begin today with a series of questions — questions that you should think about and answer truthfully before we talk about solutions.

1) Is your organization getting healthier?
a. If applicable, is the export/import ratio shifting positively?
b. Are your earnings healthier?
c. Is productivity increasing?

2) What is happening to the “training function” within your organization?
a. Is the traditional “student/teacher” (“lecture/reading”) relationship changing?
b. Is the role of “visual aids in the classroom” changing?
c. Is training getting more corporate management attention — and, dollars?

3) What means the most to your organization?
a. ROI?
b. Share Price?
c. Growth?
d. Earnings?
e. Market Share?

4) What effect could “change in performance” have on any of the above?
a. Downtime?
b. Scrap?
c. Abseteeism?
d. Overtime?
e. Benefits Knowledge?
f. Selling Skills?
g. Communication?

If your answers to these questions are satisfactory to you and to your organization, there is no reason to read further. But, if you are looking for improvement in any of the above, the following will give you insight into the “positive prescription to re-direct performance” that state-of-the-art training can make today.

1) Today’s training should be “Performance-Based!”
a. Job-Oriented Content!
b. The primary focus is on Performance Objectives!
c. The training is user-controlled with Built-In Practice!

2) Today’s training should be “Learner Oriented!”
a. It is based on “Multi-Sensory Media” instruction!
b. It must have “Optional Full Audio Support” for poor readers!
c. It must have an “Intuitive Interface!”

3) Today’s training must be “Accountable”
a. It must have “Integrated Testing!”
b. It must provide for “Automatic Record Keeping!”

4) Today’s training must be “Customizable!”
a. It must provide for “Facility Specific Information!”
b. It must allow for “Customized Testing!”

Effective training and learning must be more than the organized teacher-led group environment we’ve known in the past. It must become a process that fully accommodates the uniqueness of individuals. And it will only achieve that goal when “intimidation,” a natural by-product of group instruction, has been erased. Multi-sensory media instruction, that is both user-controlled and educationally interactive, is uniquely positioned to serve as that ultimate eraser.

The “Learning Genie” is out of the bottle — and, not even Aladdin can put it back!

“ Mens sana in corpore sano “

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

The philosophy and aims of an educational institution are concerned with the education of the whole man — mind, body, soul and emotion — and with the realization that knowledge is unimportant without the ability to communicate and exchange it. The Harvard Report on “General Education in a Free Society” placed first in its list of objectives “training in the ability to communicate orally and writing the results of thought.”

Ideally the purpose of an educational institution is to prepare a student to educate herself. An institution attempts to do this in three ways:

A. It exposes the student to philosophies, ideas and personalities (knowledge).
B. It teaches the skills the student needs to master in order to use his education and to continue his growth.
C. It provides opportunities for the student to begin producing creative or contributory products of her own stage of education.

Too often, colleges and universities graduate sterile scholars. These “mechanical minds” that matriculate from our educational institutions each June may be storehouses of facts and ideas — but they are, for the most part, without any system of values — unless they encounter those values outside, perhaps in an extracurricular activity.

The so-called extracurricular activity makes its greatest contribution to the students’ value system and it is for this reason an interesting and most desirable corollary to the academic classroom.

Training, however, is a different horse. Its aim is to improve the skills necessary for better life and job performance. And, rightfully, the emphasis today for both education and training has shifted from the provider to the receiver — allowing us to now focus our attention on learning and the learner.

Since training is almost exclusively centered on skills acquisition, we can assume that the adult employees we encounter in our businesses and other organizations have already formed their value systems. But, they are highly motivated to acquire the skills necessary for better job performance and the resultant monetary rewards. Most of them have failed to learn in a traditional classroom lecture/reading regimen and, along with their employers, are looking for a more effective way to learn.

It is here we find the promise and future of learning through multi-sensory media — learning that is both engaging and effective. Learning that is individualized and lengthens retention. Learning that can translate into promotions and “better lives.” Learning that actually works for both the organization and for the employee.

That’s the major difference today! Multi-sensory learning can deliver substantially better results in skills acquisition than any lecture/reading course ever did!

“ BASIC SKILLS – AN ANSWER “

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

We’ve all heard a lot about the lack of basic skills in America’s workforce. But, have we all read about it? Approximately 30 million Americans can’t. They can’t even read this sentence. Estimates range that up to 75 million Americans cannot read at a level that would allow them to function fully in the workplace. The numbers are staggering.

And reading is not the only skill workers are lacking. Millions cannot perform the simple mathematical problems now required in their jobs. For example, many employees can neither use a calculator nor graph numbers.

For American industry, the problem first came to light more than two decades ago when many organizations began trying to implement statistical process control (SPC). Many employees could not learn the new tasks required of them in order to implement SPC. Management began to ask, “why?”

The reason became rapidly apparent — the workforce lacked the 3 R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic). For the past couple of decades, this issue has been given a lot of press and a great deal of money. In response, many classes were formed and the focus shifted to address this basic skills shortage.

But are we any better off than we were? Not really. Small gains have been made but no dramatic changes. Recently, trainers began sitting back and looking at the methods that are being employed to teach basic skills. They are beginning to reject traditional classroom training as a viable solution to the skills shortage and are turning instead to individualized, interactive multi-sensory media for answers.

While protecting the names of the organizations, here are a couple of the answers they have found out:

“We have to increase the skill levels of our workforce because of rapidly changing technologies. We had determined that there was a serious literacy problem in our plant and had implemented classroom training as a solution. We quickly found that some of our employees did not thrive in that environment. In fact, they were embarrassed to be seen in a basic skills class. Most adults do not want their peers to know that they have a literacy problem, let alone know the extent of the problem. So we turned to interactive multi-sensory media to provide individualized, private training for these critical skills. Now, no one knows whether a worker is training on technical skills or basic skills. . . . We plan to implement more such training across the company, making basic skills training available to all employees.”

“The use of interactive multi-sensory media allows the student to interface with the computer and avoids placing the student in an embarrassing situation. These programs have provided us with a resource to train one-on-one effectively and have proven to be cost-effective. . . . Student performance is monitored and, as a result, we have seen as much as 60% improvement in the areas of comprehension, reading and writing skills.”

Improving basic skills training is a necessity today. Fully interactive multi-sensory learning is the best answer. Whether it is digitized CD-ROM or next-generation e-Learning, the answers are at hand.

“ LITERACY RE-DEFINED “

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

The majority of “reading tests” today primarily measure vocabulary recognition. But, does vocabulary recognition mean very much?

Of course not! The ability to form opinions from what individuals read is the only real test of reading ability — and, that depends upon reading comprehension.

What are the facts today? Only 24 percent of this nation’s fourth graders are able to form opinions from what they read, and only 34 percent of our high school seniors can. The majority of our working adult population cannot comprehend beyond a third- or fourth-grade reading level.

Whether we like it or not, our learning culture has changed. We must realize that we are no longer a nation of avid readers. It may be that we never were, but reading today continues to shrink as the most effective way by which the majority of us can assimilate knowledge and form opinions.
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But ours is not a stupid nor uninformed society.
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On the contrary! Only our primary means for communicating information has changed. But many of us have yet to awaken to this new dawn.
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Where then do most of us get the majority of the information we assimilate today?
From television, of course! And yet, for all of the advances made in linking technology with learning, too many organizations today still rely on the old traditional methods of stand-up lecturing and reading. The result is that the learning needs of nearly two-thirds of our citizens are being largely ignored through the use of these traditional methods.

We are sensory beings. The more of our senses that can be involved, the more completely and enjoyably we learn. Even better, the more of our senses that become involved with the learning experience, the greater our retention. Nobody is trying to exclude the one-third of us who are comfortable in a reading-based learning environment. We’ll respond favorably to multi-sensory e-Learning, too. But for the two-thirds in this nation who have no learning culture choice, the incorporation of video, animations, optional full audio, music and sound effects into our e-Learning designs and programs will be pivotal.

“ ENGAGING MINDS “

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

There’s a long standing definition of an academic lecture that goes like this, “That which passes from the notes of the professor to the notes of the student without engaging the minds of either one.” If one looks at opinion radio or watches the opinion cable networks one might restate that definition this way: “That which passes from the mouth of one person to the ears of another without engaging the minds of either one.”

So it is with e-Learning today. Those organizations that transport PowerPoint presentations and written procedures into an e-Learning environment are guaranteeing that no minds will be engaged. Consequently, precious little learning will occur.

Rather, the workforce will be bored, disinterested and, worse of all, will not finish those lessons you have assigned. Statistically, more than 75% of e-Learning lessons that are based on the written word are never completed. And, why?

We live in a television learning culture today. Media is as much a part of the learning culture as magazines, newspapers and books were a half century ago.

Too often today, the decisions regarding e-Learning are made by an organization’s leaders who, themselves, are often unaware of the learning culture evolution and the power behind well designed media instruction.

Since more than 40% of our workforce does not read above a 4th Grade level, throwing reconstituted PowerPoint and written procedures at those individuals is doomed to failure.

Video, animations, optional full audio, music and sound effects are the necessary components of effective e-Learning today. And, the results are, often, even greater than they were in the days of that older learning culture — the one that dominated when I was a kid.

“ MULTIPLE PATHS “

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

We are somewhat closer today to realizing the dreams that will be made possible by online learning. However, the need for digital technology to catch up with the new learning designs required is greater today than it’s ever been. But just what are those goals and challenges facing us — and by extension, our companies, our co-workers, and our society — as we move through uncertain times to the new millennia?

Certainly, the training requirements of today’s workplace are intensifying. The National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) undertaken by the Department Of Education has reported that, “Growing numbers of individuals are expected to be able to attend to multiple features of information in lengthy and sometimes complex displays, to compare and contrast information, to integrate information from various parts of a text or document, to generate ideas and information based on what they read, and to apply arithmetic operations sequentially to solve a problem. The results from this and other surveys, however, indicate that many adults do not demonstrate these levels of proficiency.” Obviously, it is no longer enough to simply stand on the assembly line and push one button over and over. Today’s workplaces — and the global economy — have rendered much of this rote activity obsolete. And, where repetitive task labor is still required, the corresponding remuneration allows only for a life bordering on subsistence.

In education, too, there is a real gap in learning and it grows with each passing year. It’s growing because of the unintended arrogance of the “reading elite” — those of us possessing more advanced reading and writing skills — combined with a greater need to use those skills. According to the NALS, adults who performed in the lowest two levels of literacy (on a scale of 1 - 5) were far more likely to report receiving food stamps, to be living in poverty, and to be less likely to have voted in a recent election. “Adults in prison were far more likely than those in the population as a whole to perform in the lowest two literacy levels.” “. . . The continuing process of demographic, social, and economic change within this country could lead to a more divided society along both racial and socioeconomic lines.”

However, let’s get to the real point here. The opportunities in media instruction that I am challenging you to think about are those instructional designs which should be directed at the current two-thirds of Americans who are cut off from that reading-based learning culture associated with the CBT-design world of the 1970’s. Our future e-Learning instructional designs must become part of that television learning culture — which supplanted the printing press world as the primary medium for communication — beginning in the 1950’s.