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Posts from April 2015

DOES YOUR E-LEARNING REALLY WORK?

April 29, 2015 More and more is being written about the growing importance of e-Learning. And, in terms of future potential, those opinions are essentially correct. At this moment in training’s continuum, however, much that passes for e-Learning has little actual training value. That is because the majority of e-Learning today is either PowerPoint adaptations or written procedure adaptations – neither of which teaches anyone much of anything. At best they are...

AUGMENTING OTJ

April 27, 2015 Some time ago, I received two newsletters advocating the same thing: On-The-Job (OTJ) Training. One newsletter pointed out, “. . . you can learn about forklift safety, but eventually learners will need to drive one before true learning takes place.” The other observed, “. . . when you ask a dozen workers in almost any organization about how they learned their job – most will point to On The...

TRANSITIONING INDUSTRIAL SKILLS TRAINING

April 22, 2015 In case one hasn’t been paying attention, there are big changes taking place in industrial skills training today. One significant trend is toward competency and accountability. Clearly competency-based courseware with integrated measuring capabilities will be recognized and used as tools for reaching those goals. Another change is the impending fall of the wall between business and education. That wall has separated the two sectors for many years, but the...

CHEERLEADING FOR e-LEARNING

April 20, 2015 It’s past time to recognize all the many advantages online learning offers you, your trainees and your organization! Yes! We’ve come a long way down the technology trail in the past three decades. The training challenges for our industrial workforce have been immense. And, the trade-offs involving instructional design, production values, plus cost and efficiency issues have complicated the entire process. Maintenance and Operations training for our workforce has...

UNEQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN EDUCATION

April 15, 2015 Growing up in a small South Dakota town with sparse financial means (my mother was left in significant debt after my father died), for me, equality-of-opportunity in education was not a major problem. My friends and I believed that if you “worked hard” and applied yourself, all possibilities were open to us. Well, that’s not as true in the American twenty-first century! Without doubt, money matters much more today....

USABILITY & e-LEARNING

April 13, 2015 In simple terms, we define “Usability in e-Learning” as to how user-friendly or appealing the program is to its users. In practice, usability goes deeper than this, and is closely related to how much users actually learn from the courseware you choose to implement. Even more importantly, how much newly acquired knowledge can your trainees actually put into practice after completing the curriculum you have provided? An excellent understanding...

POWERPOINT: ANTITHESIS OF LEARNING

April 8, 2015 Several previous postings have exposed the disconnect between PowerPoint and learning. On many occasions I have pointed out the great damage repurposed PowerPoints have done to the reputation of e-Learning. Such adaptations have turned off the majority of trainees (more than two-thirds never complete e-Learning courses that were adapted PowerPoint presentations). Here’s a new and interesting twist on an additional “Why” reason: “One of the many jokes about Powerpoint...

E-LEARNING & EDUCATION/TRAINING

April 6, 2015 In previous postings I’ve pointed out differences between the benefits of education and the benefits of training. E-learning can effectively address both needs. One of the best explanations of the differences comes from an eLEARNING INDUSTRY article by Chris Barnes, “Education and Training – What’s the difference?”: “Education is all about learning the theory. Traditionally, an education may reinforce knowledge in which that you already have a foundation. For...

STOP POLITICIZING EDUCATION!

April 1, 2015 The politicalizing of American public education keeps gathering steam. Education, the heart of any democratic system, is continually under attack as politicians relentlessly strive to bend it to their own uses. And, in that process, we all suffer. George Washington certainly recognized the importance of education: “There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest...