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Innovative Ways to Educate Customers

By Luke Kempski, President
July 7, 2010
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“We don’t sell – we educate our customers.” You’ve probably heard this before.

For some businesses, educating prospects and customers is a primary form of branding, lead generation and business development. You see this in the form of user conferences, webinars, white papers, blogs and other educational marketing outreaches.

With today’s learning and social media technologies, there are new ways to educate prospects and customers and, at the same time, achieve sales and marketing objectives. These methods can help you get closer to customers and differentiate you from the competition. Read Full Article »

Tags: e-Learning, Training | No Comments »

Creating Characters for eLearning

By Jennifer Kerwin, Senior Instructional Designer
June 23, 2010
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When I first started as a Management Development Trainer, a colleague and I had an ongoing debate about the need to be a performer when facilitating. We agreed that proper facilitation requires charisma and the best facilitators we knew had a personality that lent to their presentation. However, we disagreed about who was the star of the show. He held that to some extent the session was about the facilitator, while I argued that the session was about the content and the learner’s connection with it. He wanted the presentation to be memorable. I wanted to ensure learning for everyone in the room. Read Full Article »

Tags: e-Learning, Training | 1 Comment

Trends in Learning and Development

By Steve Hulse, Manager, Learning Solutions
June 4, 2010
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I recently had an opportunity to speak with a group of Human Resources professionals. It was clear from that conversation that in times of economic challenge we need to know where to invest scarce resources, particularly in terms of developing staff skills. Predicting the future is tough, but as one pundit put it, why predict the future when you can find data for the present? In that spirit, here are six emerging trends for learning and development. Read Full Article »

Tags: Human Resources, Learning Management Systems | 2 Comments

HR Leaders Tune into Learning Trends

By Luke Kempski, President
June 1, 2010
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Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to the Human Resources Professionals of Central PA about “Trends in Learning and Development.” As part of the program, we did instant polling of the group of 50 participants. While some were part of larger organizations, most were employed in smaller financial services, construction or health care-related firms. Of this group, 80% agreed that investments in learning can provide a high return and increase their organization’s competitiveness. Read Full Article »

Tags: Human Resources, Training | 1 Comment

Motivating Adult Learners – Part 2

By Steve Hulse, Manager, Learning Solutions
May 5, 2010
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In Part 1 of “Motivating Adult Learners,” we said that adults like to learn practical information that they can put to use back on the job. Focusing on single concepts also seems to improve retention of knowledge, particularly among older learners. This time we’ll look at how and why adults learn, and what the implications are for program planning. Understanding these issues will help focus your training initiatives whether you execute your plan using internal staff or a training partner. Read Full Article »

Tags: Adult Learners, Training | 1 Comment

Motivating Adult Learners – Part 1

By Steve Hulse, Manager, Learning Solutions
April 23, 2010
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As a training planner for many years, I often was discouraged by the reaction to my programs. I would sweat out writing objectives, pore over literature to get the latest information, gather appropriate visual aids and coerce experts into speaking to our staff. But more often than I’d like to admit, the reception to training was strictly “ho-hum.” And from discussions with other training coordinators, I knew this was not an uncommon reaction. But why this response to information that should have been important – even exciting to the learners? Whether you work with a training partner or do the training using internal staff, understanding these issues means we need to look at some basic tenets of adult education. Read Full Article »

Tags: Adult Learners, e-Learning | 2 Comments

Learning Games and Simulations: Getting Started

By Luke Kempski, President
April 19, 2010
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I know many training leaders who have developed strong workflows to produce valuable e-Learning courses for their organizations. They have built teams, processes and infrastructure to deliver consistent, quality courses that meet standards and learner expectations. That workflow has also been essential to them meeting productivity goals, deadlines and budgets.

The challenge for training leaders comes when they want to take a learning experience to a higher degree of interactivity, such as in a learning game or simulation. How can they do this without disrupting the efficient, productive and successful workflow? I’ve seen this dilemma navigated in three ways: scaling up to do it in-house, outsourcing the development or taking a partner approach. Read Full Article »

Tags: e-Learning, LEEF, Training; Learning Games; Simulations | No Comments »

Creating a Shared Vision for Learning Solution Projects

By Renee Avara, Sr. Instructional Designer & Project Manager
March 29, 2010
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For a project manager, the key to a successful project is building, communicating and executing a “shared vision” with your team. The project’s vision is the expectation of what the deliverable will be. A shared vision means one that is created by the client, project manager (PM) instructional designer (ID), the production members who will work on the project, and other stakeholders.

So you may be wondering, “How can a team of people create one vision?” Well, think of it like a funnel. Team members come to the project with their individual perspectives. You maximize their experiences and opinions to generate ideas relevant to the project. Then everyone works together until there is one agreed-upon solution. So, how do you work through the funnel? Read Full Article »

Tags: Project Management | No Comments »

Learning Management Systems: A Foundation for Training

By Ryan Kudasik, Instructional Designer & Project Manager
March 9, 2010
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If you’re fortunate enough to have a learning management system (LMS), you know how useful it is for documenting training and tracking performance. But if you’re part of a smaller organization or if you’re responsible for managing training delivered to external stakeholders – customers, distributors or others – you may not have an LMS to track training investments. In this situation, setting up an LMS can seem like a daunting task. You need to get approval from management, plan the implementation, and gain support from IT. Read Full Article »

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Today’s Range of e-Learning Solutions

By Luke Kempski, President
February 25, 2010
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Training leaders today need to consider a wide range of e-Learning and blended learning approaches to accomplish their objectives. Frequently, I see organizations use rapidly developed e-Learning modules as the solution to all learning needs. Others may conduct all of their training in the classroom or through Web-Ex or some other single approach. At the same time, I often read purists lambast rapidly developed learning modules while advocating for full-blown simulations for almost every need. While each approach – including new ones such as social learning – can be appropriate, each learning goal deserves special consideration. Read Full Article »

Tags: Blended Learning, e-Learning, Training; Learning Games; Simulations | No Comments »