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Posts from June 2012

“BE WARY OF PRE-TEST PLACEMENT”

Some courseware vendors have begun promoting their pre-tests as prescriptive tools. If a trainee passes certain sections of the pre-test, she will be automatically taken only to those learning units she did not pass. She will not be directed to the other learning units. There is a real danger with this practice and having produced more than four hundred training courses as Founder and former CEO of ITC Learning, I steadfastly avoided...

“WHO ARE YOU TRAINING”

There’s a long standing definition of an academic lecture that goes something 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 listens to opinion radio or watches the opinion cable networks for factual information one might restate that definition this way: “That which passes from the mouth of one person to the ears of another...

“ONLINE LEARNING’S CHALLENGE”

Today, we are somewhat closer 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. Just what are those goals and challenges facing us — and by extension, our companies, our co-workers, and our society — as we move through these uncertain times? Certainly, the training requirements of...

“DESIGNERS TRUMP TECHNOLOGY”

With the potential for growth clear, how should producers of E-Learning courses proceed? First, we must acknowledge that effective educational programming has always been a designer’s medium. It has never been an evolving electronic gadgetry world. Therefore, it is important to remember that E-Learning has been developed with the capability of becoming yet another communication tool for transferring skills and knowledge — just as the written word, printed text, and video have...

“YOU HAVE A CHOICE”

Those of you working in education or training today readily recognize that students and our younger workforce learn best if the skills presented are packaged around full-motion video, gaming, and/or simulations. Television has been the great communication tool since the 1950s and both gaming and simulations have been entrenched in our learning environment for the past few decades. So it was not surprising that, with the advent of CD-ROM instruction a couple...

“BEWARE OF POWERPOINT”

Why do supposedly responsible individuals continue to create PowerPoint presentations and then ascribe the word “learning” to their creations? Why do E-Learning courseware vendors continue to produce and sell adapted PowerPoint presentations? Why do vendors of LMS’s continue to tout the capability of their associated authoring systems to convert PowerPoint presentations into an E-Learning environment? One of two reasons — of which “ignorance” is the more easily forgiven. PowerPoint is slick, attractive...

“ALL TRAINING IS NOT EQUAL”

All training is not equally effective. All courseware titles are not equal in scope or production design. All trainees do not come to you from a single learning culture. Many studies have proven that traditional “lecture/reading/testing” training programs no longer give the payback in skills acquisition and ROI that they once did. For individuals born after 1960, their learning culture has become a TV, Simulations, and Games learning culture. That is why,...

“OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN”

The May 31 blog certainly unleashed additional comments from individuals who had experienced similar employment hurdles or had observed “degree bias.” I’ll quote from a few, putting my edits in quotes: “My boss promised me a promotion but the administrative officer informed me that no such promotion would ever be forthcoming because I lacked a degree in music. ‘But I have been doing this job for five years,’ I argued. ‘And you...