February 27, 2014 I’ve pointed out in many-a-blog, how ineffectual most e-Learning is today. The marketplace is full of word-heavy examples of, what can better be called, e-Information. Most of it relates facts well (but, only if you’re a fluent reader) and, invariably, fails to deliver on skills acquisition and retention —- the two bottom line tests of any good training. However, we have recently forgotten a far better technology —- when...
February 24, 2014 When committing to an LMS, you want it to market, schedule, run and analyze your entire learning strategy —- but, you don’t want to pay for a plethora of bells and whistles that do little to make your job easier. You want to make the planning, delivery, management and tracking of workplace learning more functional and affordable than ever before. You’re looking for an intuitive learning management experience that...
February 19, 2014 When selecting a courseware supplier, demand to know their definition of “customer service.”. As practiced today, customer service is, too often, merely a response-department in which its sole job is to respond to complaints, error reports and other problems. What you should be looking for is a courseware vendor that practices “customer assurance” — a supplier that is thinking “customers” from initial development through after-the-sale service. For skills training...
February 17, 2014 “Do you have a supplier who will take your business, but only on his terms? It seems to me that when a supplier is not aligned with your long-term interest, then you should stop buying from him — or at the very least, limit your buying.” (4 THINGS YOU MUST CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING A SUPPLIER by Jay Steinfeld, Moneywatch, 11/17/2010) With that thought in mind, how should you prepare...
February 12, 2014 From a Money Magazine interview with Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and reported by CNN, we find our first definition: You apply a lot of business-school thinking to life. What’s one example? “In organizations, once you articulate how success will be measured, everybody tries to game the system so that they are measured in the best possible way. If you judge schools based on test scores, every school...
February 10, 2014 My friend, and GASCO Corporate Competence Senior Analyst (UAE), Kamran Ahmed Siddiqui, published an article today in the “GULF NEWS” that provides an apt introduction to today’s blog: “ . . . You are supposed to be on the way of constructing your superstructure — but without the necessary foundation work, imagination and detail design and project quality plan, where are you headed? Think about the future consequences that...
February 5, 2014 Training initiatives are designed to facilitate long term retention of new information and/or engender behavioral modification. When it comes to “industrial skills training,” what do you want to accomplish with your own training initiatives? Will your initiatives focus on minimizing downtime, reducing scrap, cross-training your workforce? Or, are those objectives tied to a “CYA” strategy? In other words, are you simply going to justify your training initiatives by showing...
February 3, 2014 Let’s face it. Sometimes you are unable to find a generic product that fits your needs — even after examining many vendor catalogs of courseware titles. And, occasionally you might even have need for a technology-based course that addresses a particular process or procedure that is specific to your plant. What should you look for? Well, unless the workers-to-be-trained are highly educated, you’re going to want to find a...