For the past 13 years, Knowledge Anywhere has witnessed or supported hundreds of organizations deploy learning programs. We have witnessed the whole spectrum of success. We have seen learning initiatives flop as the “build it and they will come” model was followed and we have seen fast starts with usage dropping off after a couple months, but we have also experienced perfect implementation that has resulted in the learning programs exceeding the business objectives. From all these experiences, we established the elements of the best demonstrated practices to ensure the success of your training and education programs.

To successfully obtain the short term traction and long term results you desire from an online learning program, these are the elements that will prove paramount to your success:

Effective Communication

• Realize that if the target audience does not know about the training, they will not participate, and the desired results will not be realized. (simple, but the basic concept is sometimes lost).
• Over communicate the online learning with references on related web sites, newsletters, email campaigns, etc.
• Everyone who interacts with the target audience should be aware of the program (i.e. Field Sales, Inside Sales, and Call Center teams).
• Use physical media to highlight the availability of training (i.e. getting started cards, posters, mouse pads, table tents in conference rooms etc.)

Setting Goals

• Have obtainable and measurable goals for the online learning center (i.e. 1,000 new users by March 25; 5,000 users by April 20, and 3,000 completed courses by July 20).
• Measure and communicate progress on a monthly basis.

Access and Ease of Use

• Create easy access to the training (minimize barriers).
• Enable easy visibility for learners to see to the courses they need to take as well as completed courses.

Substantial Content

• The learning site needs to have relevant and engaging content.
• A new course or updated content should be available on a regular basis. Take this opportunity to communicate the additional material to all learners.

Secondary Support

• Connect the online training with in-person training, national meetings, and webinars.
• Obtain senior leadership support and communicate results.

Incentivize and Promote Engagement

• Highlight participation success.
• Think about a fun contest to jump start the program.
• Highlight performance success based upon learning participation.
• Respond immediately to feedback or suggestions.

Last but certainly not least, an extremely important part of this whole process is having great help and guidance along the way. Companies like Knowledge Anywhere have the skills and experience to make your learning program the best it can be, but only you can make sure that it really takes hold and makes a difference in your company. It is critical you partner with a firm that is not only concerned about selling you an LMS or building courses, but also shares your interest in ensuring the learning system has the business impact you require.

CSG’s channel focused Business Development Managers (BDMs), possess the knowledge and experience to assess areas of improvement for partners and identify vendor resources that can be utilized to address these problem areas. Using Knowledge Anywhere’s innovative certification and training portal technology provides vendors with straightforward, easy-to-use systems for designing and executing effective trainings. Pairing Knowledge Anywhere’s impressive e-learning tools with CSG’s extensive understanding of channel function and partner needs brings vendors the perfect resource to increase their business through certifications and trainings.

“In order to prepare partners to effectively drive channel revenue, it is often necessary for vendors to provide one-on-one support to guide and assist partners to increase their overall skill-set,” said Tina Lauzon, CSG VP of Marketing and Alliances. “Our integrated efforts enable vendors to easily address the challenges partners face regarding certifications and trainings so they can equip partners to reach the revenue goals anticipated by the vendor.”

Project managers and channel strategists frequently test, analyze and update the program to ensure success. Constantly assessing the program provides CSG’s BDMs with the data necessary to make beneficial adjustments and modifications, which result in educated, inspired partners that possess the knowledge to sell new products effectively.

ABOUT CHANNEL SERVICES GROUP (CSG)

Channel Services Group (CSG) is the leader in channel partner marketing and sales solutions, with expertise and precision in indirect sales channels and strategies for technology based companies. CSG’s highly agile services and SaaS software empower enterprises and their indirect selling partners to gain channel efficiency, performance and predictability with results in increased sales revenue. For more information on CSG, visit our Web site at www.csgchannels.com.

ABOUT KNOWLEDGE ANYWHERE

Founded in 1998, Knowledge Anywhere provides technology-based learning and performance solutions to corporations around the globe.  They deploy products and services to educate large numbers of employees, customers, and channel partners to directly impact performance. For additional information on Knowledge Anywhere, visit their website at www.knowledgeanywhere.com.

Home Care Aides, who are professional workers who work in the home, can take the courses as many times as they like, from any computer. Mary Margaret Callahan, Director of Research and Development for the Training Partnership, said of the new initiative, “Online learning provides the flexibility that perfectly suits our learners and meets our training goals. We are thrilled we accomplished these goals with our first set of online continuing education courses and plan on launching more soon.”

One Home Care Aide said the training has met an important need. “It has always been very difficult for me to take training,” she said. “I work two jobs with irregular schedules and have my own family to take care of on top of that. The online training is available to me any time, and that’s so helpful to me.”

The courses were developed with Seattle-based e-learning solutions provider Knowledge Anywhere, Inc.

The SEIU Healthcare NW Training Partnership, as part of the SEIU Healthcare NW Benefits, and Knowledge Anywhere both strive to deliver high-quality products to their industries and are both located in the Pacific Northwest, so there was a natural fit between the two organizations.

“We know that Knowledge Anywhere training has been helpful to many people,” said Charlie Gillette, CEO of Knowledge Anywhere. “But it is especially gratifying to us to support Home Care Aides, who work so hard at such an important job.”

With over 40,000 home care aides throughout the state of Washington, the Training Partnership (http://www.myseiubenefits.org) is the ideal partner for providing training and benefits to home care workers.

About the SEIU Healthcare NW Training Partnership
SEIU Healthcare NW Benefits – through the Training Partnership and Health Benefits Trust – provides training and health care benefits to home care aides across Washington state. These professionals provide life-sustaining support to seniors and people with disabilities. Through our innovative training and affordable health plans, SEIU Healthcare NW Benefits is helping transform the long-term care profession.

About Knowledge Anywhere
Founded in 1998, Knowledge Anywhere, Inc., (http://www.knowledgeanywhere.com) is an award-winning company that has emerged as a leader in the specialized arena of building technology-based learning solutions and performance support systems that provide tangible results. The company uses innovative technology to offer a broad base of products and services, including custom and mobile content development, and virtual classrooms.

The Digital Landscape, a comprehensive online training program designed to help advertising and media agencies keep pace with the ever-changing tools, terminology and applications of digital communications is being launched today by the 4A’s.

Aimed at beginners as well as veterans across a full spectrum of industry disciplines, this unique e-learning program will help 4A’s agency members integrate digital thinking into the work they do for clients.

“Our goal is to consistently provide industry-leading programs that help our members make more informed marketing decisions,” stated Nancy Hill, President-CEO of the 4A’s. “The Digital Landscape is an excellent example of how we are providing the necessary tools to meet the challenges brought on by the rapidly growing digital environment.”

The Digital Landscape program is a collaborative effort of more than 50 content authors and editors from GroupM agencies including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom, Maxus, Outrider, Catalyst, M80 and Joule.

“More than 2,000 of our people from across all disciplines have benefited from this digital training program,” said GroupM Interaction Chief Operating Officer John Montgomery, one of the program’s chief architects. “It has proved to be an invaluable integration tool that has advanced digital knowledge across our agencies. I can only imagine it will offer the same benefits to any 4A’s members who choose to take advantage of it.”

Divided into 13 modules, program content covers the entire digital arena including ad serving, digital media planning and buying, search, analytics, and emerging media.

The interactive program, with 24/7 access from any location with Internet connection, features avatars who guide users through each module that takes approximately 30 minutes to complete, followed by knowledge tests at the end of each session to help users monitor progress throughout the program. It also features a Digital Marketing Glossary of over 500 terms and a comprehensive FAQ section.

In order to meet the rapid changes in the digital media world and remain relevant, the program has been designed to allow for regular updates. Extensive use of flash, rich media and video, makes the content fun and engaging.

This custom built on-demand program is supported by Knowledge Anywhere, a leader in the distance learning field.
About the 4A’s
The American Association of Advertising Agencies is the national trade association of the advertising agency business. The 1,196 member agency offices it serves in the U.S. employ 65,000 people, offer a wide range of marketing communications services, and place 80 percent of all national advertising. The management-oriented association helps its members build their businesses, and acts as the industry’s spokesman with government, media, and the public sector. For more information, visit our Web site at www.aaaa.org. ]]> http://thenewlearner.com/2010/09/16/4as-launches-digital-landscape-online-training-program-to-help-agencies-keep-pace-with-rapidly-changing-digital-communications/feed/ 0 http://thenewlearner.com/2009/05/29/improving-on-the-job-training-with-lms-and-e-learning-tools/ http://thenewlearner.com/2009/05/29/improving-on-the-job-training-with-lms-and-e-learning-tools/#comments Fri, 29 May 2009 16:33:42 +0000 Mary Polley-Berte http://thenewlearner.com/?p=113 On-the-job training (OJT) is common in both large and small organizations.  It is usually done informally, with an experienced colleague or mentor overseeing or teaching the trainee.  It may take place in a classroom, on the plant floor, or in any other place where work is being performed.

OJT is usually quite cost-effective, because it focuses on the tasks at hand, and requires no equipment beyond what the company already provides.  It’s also much less disruptive than other forms of training, because employees aren’t removed from their duties, but are instead trained for their work while doing it.

The actual training is usually done by a manager or supervisor who is coaching employees while they work.  Supervisor feedback tends to be immediate, and trainees often improve their job performance quickly.  Employees also feel more confident about their job performance when they are being coached by supervisors, and on-the-job training is a good way for new employees to build relationships with their comrades.

Problems to Avoid

There are, however, potential issues with on-the-job training.  Supervisors and experienced employees may not have the needed skills for training other employees.  Often, supervisors or managers were promoted because they were good at performing or managing their own work, but this doesn’t guarantee that they also possess the skills or ability to coach new employees.  Not everyone is a born teacher.

Time also can be a huge issue! Supervisors and mentors may not have the time to spare to  help new employees. And since on-the-job training usually follows no formal procedure or specified content (other than the task at hand), supervisors and mentors will need still more time, to pass on the extra knowledge, skills, and  business context that employees will need to solve future job problems and respond to business changes. So upper management must give employees who are doing this training the time they need.

During on-the-job training, trainees also need time to practice the skills they must learn.  In turn, supervisors and trainers must prepare adequate drill materials for trainees, and provide feedback early and often in the drilling process, to prevent trainees from acquiring unwanted job behaviors. So again, upper management must make sure that everyone gets the time they need.

An often-overlooked issue that can plague on-the-job training is company lingo. Trainees must receive a clear, consistent understanding of the concepts and terms used in their organizations. And even when an employee says they understand a word or concept, they may not.  They will often say they understand to avoid looking incompetent. So supervisors and mentors must keep this in mind, and constantly repeat and reinforce the terms and concepts that new employees must learn.

And on top of all the above, supervisors and mentors are only human. They can easily pass on their own counter-productive habits to other employees…and must work hard to avoid doing so.

OJT Development Techniques

Usually, OJT employs one or more of the following four techniques:

·         Coaching—This one-on-one interaction is usually done by a supervisor or someone outside the company, and is often prescriptive and corrective in nature.  It helps the trainee understand their strengths, weakness, and areas of improvement, and tends to be applied for a fixed amount of time until the employee is deemed proficient.

·         Mentoring—This too is an ongoing one-on-one technique that’s usually done by a more experienced company executive or supervisor.  The mentor works with the trainee to find their strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement.  The mentor provides feedback and guidance, and points out areas that may have been overlooked.

·         Job Rotation—This approach allows trainees to practice and become proficient in various aspects of the work at hand, or different roles within the company.  It helps employees because they are exposed to different work areas and learn about various company functions.  (It’s also a great opportunity for employees to try out different functions, to see what they like or don’t.)  The company also benefits, because job rotation diversifies worker skill sets in critical areas, and helps the company respond to unforeseen events like vacations, flu epidemics, and catastrophes.  Job rotation also fosters organization-wide goal- and objective-sharing, because employees better understand each other’s job responsibilities.

·         Job Instruction Techniques—There are many great online resources to help you plan, prepare, and implement on-the-job training. But most models ask trainers to plan, present, trial, and follow up.  The plan consists of a written breakdown of the work and of your training objectives.  In the trial stage, the plan is presented to the trainee(s), who are asked to try it out…with regular follow up during the process. There are variants to this method and it can be either streamlined or made more complex, depending upon the business case and the tasks to be learned.

How Can LMS and e-Learning Tools Help?

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and e-Learning authoring tools can help with all parts of on-the-job training.  Depending on your organization’s needs, you can use an LMS to track and manage one or more parts of the OJT process, including:

.

·         Registering trainees

·         Scheduling training

·         Storing and delivering reference materials (such as company procedures, concepts,  and terms)

·         Delivering regular practice drills

·         Testing and evaluating job competencies being learned

·         Collecting and storing training results

·         Delivering and collecting follow-up employee surveys

·         And, more!

About the Author:

Mary Polley-Berte is Director of Customer Support & Training at SyberWorks, Inc., in Waltham, Massachusetts. Mary is a graduate of Boston University and resides with her family in New Hampshire.

About SyberWorks

SyberWorks, Inc. (http://www.syberworks.com) is a leader in providing Learning Management Systems and custom e-Learning Solutions for Fortune 1000 corporations, higher education, and other organizations. Located in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company serves the multi-billion-dollar e-Learning market.  Since 1995, SyberWorks has developed and delivered unique and economical solutions for creating, managing, measuring, and improving e-Learning programs at companies and organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other countries.

http://syberworks.com/articles/ojt-article.htm

When I had written the article, “Recession Proof your Training Organization,” for the Chief Learning Officer back in May of 2008, the recession was just beginning.   Now, a year later, with better understanding and realization, I still strongly stand by the key points I stated in the article to help make your training organization thrive through this tough time:

1.       Right Size Now

2.       Demonstrate Clear ROI from your Training

3.       Deliver High-Quality Programs, On Time

4.       Outsource Noncore Activities

5.       Choose the Right Training Modality

For your training organization to survive the current recession and support long-term success, it’s crucial to understand what all of these points mean.  However,  I dropped the “right sizing point” since all organizations already reduce the size of their teams, and I doubt there is much “right sizing” left to complete.

I will dive into more detail, and also add another key point, which is to reuse the content you already have.

1. Demonstrate Clear ROI from your Training.  Simply saying that you are delivering a great training product won’t cut it these days. You have got to be able to prove your value to the company in hard, cold dollars, demonstrating an uncontestable return on investment for every penny in your budget.  If you cannot measure the ROI, you might want to question why you are doing the project before someone else asks the question. When in doubt, work on projects that drive incremental revenue or reduce costs within the next six months.

2. Deliver High-Quality Programs, On Time, that Align with Business Objectives.  During corporate belt-tightening, all things perceived as “fluff” should automatically go. Take a good hard look at the programs you offer— how well do they align with the two universal goals of increasing revenue and cutting costs? Clearly, any training that improves employees’ critical skill sets will be a must-have, such as compliance programs and other mandated training initiatives. This is what will allow you to stay in the game.

But for other programs, keeping them may be something you will want to reevaluate. Inspecting your organization for indications that training quality is slipping, and fixing those issues fast is critical. In many cases, Pulitzer-quality text or sophisticated graphics are less important than timely delivery, which lets the organization start realizing value immediately. A perception of being slow and unresponsive will doom your group, even if there are really good reasons for these delays or changes.

3. Outsource When it Makes Sense.  Like anything else, outsourced training has its pros and its cons. Bringing in contract training resources saves headcount and related fixed costs, and often allows you the flexibility of offering training programs that would not possible with just your in-house staff. However, on the other hand, outsiders often lack the industry or company-specific knowledge necessary for effective training in your particular market niche. A good solution is maintaining a small core of trainers to manage internal coordination and provide subject matter expertise.

 4. Choose the Right Training Modality.  Studies have shown that training effectiveness is heavily dependent on the way material is presented. Some topics, like diversity awareness or interpersonal communications, are best taught in a traditional instructor-led classroom setting. Others, like introducing new product features or regulatory compliance, can often be covered faster and more easily with an e-course. Webinars work well for other topics that require discussion in addition to content, such as an overview of an issue with a question-and-answer period following.

Selecting the best modality for your various training offerings demonstrates to senior management that you are a good steward of tight dollars. By explaining why one delivery method is superior to others, you substantiate your role as a leader, and prove your personal value to the company. You might point out, for example, that switching your new-hire training from an instructor-led to an online format trims orientation time by an entire day, at a savings of $1,000 per person (see the Training Calculator). Once again, this underscores the need for credible metrics and a value-driven approach to training.

5. Reuse the Investment in Content that Already Exists.  Most of the budget for developing new online training relates to the content creation.  As we work with large organizations, we usually find they have an abundant of content in the form of presentations, recorded webinars, white papers, etc.  However, often times, the content needs to be trimmed down, organized, the interactivity needs to be added, and the assessments needs to be built.   These organizations have spent historical dollars in developing the content, so this presents an opportunity to leverage their investment.   In addition, re-using and enhancing the existing content will support the turnaround time

I am in high hopes that my next follow-up article will relate to supporting your organization during the faced-paced time of the recovery.

Biographical Note:  Charlie Gillette is Managing Director of Knowledge Anywhere, an online training company in Bellevue, WA:  www.knowledgeanywhere.com.  email: charlie@knowledgeanywhere.com

With the advent of “Software as a service” (Saas), and SalesForce.com’s commitment to that technology, a rich API is available to allow integration between SalesForce.com and other client applications. And one of the client applications that can be integrated is the LMS system.

General Considerations

First, there are two primary (and competing) factors to consider for streamlining SalesForce.com transaction times:

    * Batching data

      Batching as much data as possible in an APEX API call can reduce the cross-network traffic.

    * Reducing the size of data requests

The more data that is sent to SalesForce.com, the more time it will take to process. It is best to send SalesForce.com only the data that is necessary at any time. Sending superfluous data only increases the size (and processing times) of APEX API calls.

Of course, these factors are at odds with each other. And users must often balance transaction speeds with other business requirements, to determine how optimal SalesForce.com transactions really can be.

A related factor to keep in mind is that SalesForce.com enforces a daily limit on the number of APEX API calls. This is done to balance server processing across multiple concurrent users.

From Users to Business Leads

There also may be good business reasons for turning LMS student data into business leads through the SalesForce.com application. This is especially true in situations where companies sell training to customers, vendors, or partners.

An automatic process can turn a newly registered learner in the LMS into a SalesForce.com business lead. Using the SalesForce.com APEX API WSDL (Web Service Definition Language), lead objects can be generated and directly added to the SalesForce.com leads database. And the individual who is used to authenticate into SalesForce.com becomes the owner of the newly generated lead.

And if your registration process collects data that is not inherent to the SalesForce.com application, custom data objects can be created to represent this application-specific data. A new APEX API WSDL needs to be generated when these objects are created, to make them available to your application interface.

From SalesForce.Com to LMS

The next question becomes, “How can I get to my LMS data from SalesFoce.com as seamlessly as possible?” Given the nature of Saas, SalesForce.com provides the ability to create your own application within the SalesForce.com structure. You can create custom tabs that are visible to your SalesForce.com users. These tabs can use custom S-controls of type HTM, URL, or Snippet. You can use whichever is suitable to your LMS integration and acceptable as a user-interface element for your users. This setup allows you to connect pretty easily to your LMS.

A related task is logging in to the LMS. If your LMS supports single sign-on, you may want to use the same User IDs in both SalesForce.com and the LMS. If this is done, the user can click a link in the SalesForce.com application, be automatically logged into the LMS, and presented with its starting page. Of course, you need to consider user password security here. And this again depends on the LMS. It may use a generic password for all users connecting through a single-sign-on procedure, or an MD5 hash (or similar encryption technique) of previously agreed data, which could be verified against each user’s specific LMS data for authentication.

From LMS to SalesForce.com

Communicating in the other direction-from the LMS to SalesForce.com-depends on the data that must be stored in SalesForce.com. Some examples of data that could be passed from the LMS to a SalesForce.com application are training purchases and course results. (Training purchases would assume that the LMS uses an e-Commerce module, where web- or classroom-based courses can be purchased.)

A major consideration again becomes whether this data should be transmitted on a real-time basis or by means of scheduled batch jobs.

    * The real-time option requires the LMS to support calls to the SalesForce.com interface whenever user results are updated or an LMS purchase is made. These calls would be made through a web service that transmits the data to SalesForce.com. Any data properties that SalesForce.com does not inherently support can be created as custom objects, so no data need be omitted.

The benefits of this are that the SalesForce.com application is up-to-date whenever a SalesForce.com administrator or reporter interrogates its data. The downside is the overhead for each call made to the SalesForce.com application. The number of calls made through the APEX API, though they can be estimated, cannot be predicted, since they occur as events occur.

   * Batching data does not use real-time call outs from the LMS code, but instead retrieves data directly from the LMS database at scheduled intervals.

      This naturally lends itself to the recommended batching of data to SalesForce.com’s servers, and the number of calls to do that is both predictable and low. However, there is a time lag between actual activities in the LMS and the transfer of their resulting data to the SalesForce.com application.

The decision between using a real-time interface or batch process depends on, but is definitely not limited to, the following:

    * The timeliness with which business needs to reach SalesForce.com.

    * The ability of the LMS to support real-time data collection and communications.

    * The estimated volume of data that will be transmitted to SalesForce.com (keeping in mind that SalesForce.com enforces a daily limit for API calls).

About the Author:

Stuart Campbell is Director of Software Development for SyberWorks, Inc., a privately held supplier of e-Learning software and training. A native of the United Kingdom, he had previously served as a Principle Software Engineer, Senior Consultant, Senior Software Engineer, and Development Specialist for companies such as Brooks Automation Inc. (Chelmsford, Mass.); Digital Equipment (South Queensferry, U.K.); and Honeywell Control Systems (Motherwell, U.K.). Among his many roles at SyberWorks, he leads the software-development process and helps to build new software releases and update kits.

About SyberWorks, Inc.

SyberWorks, Inc. (http://www.syberworks.com) is a leader in the custom e-Learning Solutions and Learning Management System/Learning Content Management System (LMS/LCMS) industries for Fortune 1000 corporations, law enforcement, healthcare, and other industries. Located in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company serves the multi-billion-dollar e-Learning market. Since 1995, SyberWorks has developed and delivered unique and economical solutions to create, manage, measure, and improve e-Learning programs at companies and organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and around the world.

1. Read a book.
2. Watch a video.
3. Attend a speech or workshop.
4. Enroll in an online course

Now suppose that in addition to being more knowledgeable you wanted to become skillful at something. It could be anything like golf, karate, selling refrigerators, negotiating, making presentations, etc. The point is you want to become truly proficient. Your objective is not just to know something; you want to be able to do something, and do it well. If skill is your objective, then your only option is to practice with an expert coach under realistic working conditions until you achieved fluency.

When you do something repeatedly – trying to perform up to an explicit standard – your mind and body get the “feel” of doing it proficiently. And the “feel” of doing it is the skill. If you don’t acquire the feel, you haven’t acquired the skill. Further, the feel is acquired only by using the skills to produce a real result: A good golf stroke, a sale, a successful negotiation.

Coaching the actual performance shortens the time it takes for an individual to become proficient enough to achieve the desired result repeatedly. Eventually, the new behavior becomes a preferred and self-chosen way of behaving.

Yet, when it comes to interpersonal-skills training in the business world – the teaching of so-called “soft skills” such as listening, leadership and teamwork, practicing with an expert coach under realistic working conditions is the least chosen development method. And that is the real reason behind the endless hand wringing in the corporate training field about how hard it is to get “learned” skills to transfer from the classroom to the job. It is also the reason that in difficult economic times, the training budget is often the first one cut, and it’s our fault

Training vs. Education
There is a great deal of difference between training and education, though the vast majority of trainers are not aware of it. Educating is not the same as training. For most people, there is no causal relationship between education and performance. There is, indeed, a causal relationship between training and performance. Knowledge isn’t power. Competence is power. Power is the ability to create a desired effect and that is performance.

To educate is to increase intellectual awareness of a subject. To train is to assist someone become proficient at the execution of a given task. Many wonderful things can be said about education, but education doesn’t cause competence.

Try making a youngster competent at riding a bicycle by sitting her down at the kitchen table and explaining how to ride a bicycle. Try taking a one-hour golf lesson from someone who uses typical online “training” methods. He’ll meet on your computer screen far from the golf course, talk to you about a golf swing for 30 minutes, show you his swing for 10 minutes, let you take make-believe swings at an imaginary golf ball for 5 minutes, then ask you to write an “action plan” describing how you will apply what you’ve “learned.”

Skeptics will protest that some people who receive education in soft-skills areas actually do turn out higher performance as a result: They do, in fact, get better at selling or influencing or working in a team. And this is true-for maybe 10 percent to 15 percent of the trainees. In fact, that 15 percent were already skillful before they attended the latest online educational offering. If you take anyone who is already competent and add more education, you often will get better performance to some degree.

What about the other 85 percent or 90per cent? It make no sense to pretend that the training department’s job is simply to deliver some information about skills (The Five Key Practices of Famous Leaders, The Ten Fabulous Values of Team Players), and then abdicate responsibility for proficiency to the person’s manager/supervisor. If you accept the title of “trainer,” your task is to make people competent, not just more aware. Blaming managers because the “skills” you supposedly imparted in your educational event failed to transfer to the job site is irresponsible.

Real Training For Real People
Begin by abandoning notions of what people ought to know or what sort of attitudes they ought to have or even how people acquire knowledge. Instead, ask, “How does one acquire skillfulness?” The most efficient and effective way to acquire skillfulness is straight forward: 1) Spend a little time educating about the results to be achieved and the skills to be executed in order to obtain those results. 2) Spend a lot of time practicing, with a coach who can reduce trial and error time, until fluency is achieved.

In the hands of a good trainer or coach, Step 1 takes up 5 percent to 10 percent of the allotted time. Step 2 takes up the other 90 percent to 95 percent. Step 1 is purely education. Step 2 is training.

If the student isn’t doing it, it isn’t training. A day spent talking about skills will not make anyone skillful. Nobody gets the “feel” for real execution, done to a specific standard of competence, and if they don’t acquire the “feel,” they don’t acquire the skill.

Even if you agree with these points you may say: “Fine, but all of that would have to be done in the field. It can’t be done in a classroom. And even if it weren’t too expensive and difficult to put that many expert coaches in the field, we don’t want our trainees practicing on real customers. So how we do make them proficient before we send them into the real job environment?”

There is a way.

How to Do It

To do real training in soft skills, start by taking a tip from advocates of “action learning”: Invite people to a meeting room for a genuine working session—into which some coaching will be added. You can provide some online pre-meeting assignments and education to maximize your work session time.

The purpose of this working session is to evaluate and make decisions about ideas for improving the business: Real ideas for real improvement that will make a real difference to the company. Ask participants to bring their own ideas to the meeting. Stipulate that these ideas must meet two criteria. First, the people in the meeting must be capable of implementing them; that is, someone in the room must have the authority to give a real yes or no to the idea. Second, if adopted, the improvement must be both measurable and capable of producing financial consequences for the business within 90 days.

In other words, you don’t want ideas such as, “Let’s change the cafeteria’s vending machines.” That might be an improvement, all right, but it’s unlikely to produce a measurable ROI within three months. Your online pre-work gave them a quick educational overview of the skills that would most likely help them gain the commitment and support they’ll need to implement their ideas.

Next you must also clearly define what “skillful” means – not just what the skills are. For instance, you are skillful at “showing respect” if you can acknowledge another person’s point of view so well that the person begins to feel they are being taken seriously within 15 seconds.

Make this introduction as succinct as possible. Then put everyone to work on the task of trying to gain commitment and support from one another. Coach them while they do so. Make them do it over and over again, until at least 85 percent of them have become proficient at the skills and have achieved concrete desirable results.

An obvious “desirable result” is that a participant gains the needed support and approval for a good idea. A less obvious but no-less acceptable result is that the participant becomes persuaded that his idea is flawed, but accepts this with no hard feelings; that is, the participant and his “adversary” agree that the idea is a nonstarter, and emerge with their relationship undamaged or even strengthened.

You can stop worrying about “reinforcement.” Why? Because we all naturally keep doing what works. We only need the goading or encouragement or reminding of managers when we can’t produce the results we want.

Online “training” is acceptable and even preferred when the desired outcome is to educate.

Doing the real training is required and perfectly feasible, even with large groups of people when the desired outcome is acquiring skill and proficiency. This approach – Educate briefly, then train at length – is the method of martial arts trainers. It’s the method of sports teams. It’s the method of coaches in the performing arts. It works.

This formula almost always achieves measurable success, regardless of the skills you’re trying to develop: Selling, leadership, teamwork customer service, problem-solving and so on. Instead of seeing slight improvements in the performance of those 15 percent of trainees who were already capable, you’ll send 85 percent out the door with genuine skillfulness instead of mere awareness.

The group is producing real initiatives that will make or save money, your company can expect a very healthy return on investment within three months. These outcomes are critical in these difficult economic times. And nobody will have to ask you again if your training actually makes a difference.

G. Thomas Herrington and Patrick T. Malone are co-authors of the new book Cracking the Code to Leadership and Senior Partners at The PAR Group, an international training firm headquartered in Atlanta. They may be contacted at info@thepargroup.com.

Companies and organizations today use web conferencing in many aspects of their organizations—to conduct meetings, collaborate on projects, demonstrate products and services, and more.  Learning to use web conferencing technology is pretty easy, but there is a lot more to training via web conference than just putting on a headset, dialing up an audio‐conferencing bridge, and logging onto the application. 

This article offers some helpful tips specifically targeted to web conference training.

            1. Even though you are using web conferencing to deliver training, the training content itself must still be planned and crafted just as carefully as if it were for a traditional classroom session or e-Learning course. 

            2. When developing PowerPoint slides to use in web conference training follow these guidelines:  

            - Simplify content.

            -Use a large, bold, simple font like Arial.  

            - Have no more than 6 to 8 lines of text per page (fewer are better).

            - Make no more than 4 to 5 training points per page (fewer are better).

            - Use plain backgrounds that contrast well with the text without clashing.

            - If possible, avoid complex animations (i.e. no spinning text, etc.).

            3. Establish one person as the point of contact, (POC) for communicating with their group of attendees. Provide all information to this one person and let them communicate it to their own people.

            4. Provide an outline of objectives for attendees prior to the conference.

            5. Test all aspects of your presentation ahead of time. (Enlist the help of an online facilitator or a student for these tests.):

            - Check your phone lines and headset, and replace weak batteries with full new sets.

            - Though most web conference technologies automatically run a short program to install and test your machine, open your own test conference and run your presentation. Confirm that your machine won’t freeze up because of low PC memory or connection speed.

            - Check any online exercises, tests, or polling questions you have planned for the session.

            - Run through the presentation twice, to both check its timing and leave ample time for questions and answers.

            6. If student answers are being stored in a database or a learning management system (LMS), determine how they will be scored, saved, and accessed later.

            7. Are you using an electronic whiteboard?  Check to see how its images will be stored. Will your students need them later? How can they access this material? Is it something you can post in a reference area on your training LMS? 

            24. When you get close to the end, if you feel like you might run over or need a few extra minutes to finish up, stop and check with all participants.  Be considerate of others’ schedules.

            25. Provide training exercises on the topics discussed.

            26. Plan ahead for how you will close the session.  Thank everyone for their time and attention, leave time for any closing comments or information, discuss next steps (if any), and review how you can be contacted (if needed).

            27. Follow up with your learners after their web-conference training. This could be by email or perhaps even through a test to gauge their understanding of the material.

            28. Keep a log of all training and notes. It can help improve your future training.

About The Author

Mary Polley-Berte is Director of Customer Support & Training at SyberWorks, Inc., in Waltham, Massachusetts. Mary is a graduate of Boston University and resides with her family in New Hampshire.

About SyberWorks

SyberWorks, Inc. (www.syberworks.com) is a leader in the custom e-Learning Solutions and Learning Management System industries for Fortune 1000 corporations, higher education, and other organizations. Located in Waltham, Massachusetts, the company serves the multi-billion-dollar e-Learning market. Since 1995, SyberWorks has developed and delivered unique and economical solutions to create, manage, measure, and improve e-Learning programs at companies and organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other countries. 

http://www.syberworks.com/articles/28-Web-Conference-Training-Tips.htm

I work for a company called Knowledge Anywhere that does (among other things) custom content development for e-learning. When we develop a course, content development is often a large part of the effort, and one key decision is who will write the content. Sometimes we write the content ourselves, based on source content provided by our clients, and sometimes our clients write content. Both approaches work well, and both approaches can be problematic. It depends on the situation.

So here are some things to consider if you’re working with a company like ours and aren’t sure who should write the content.

·         Do I alone have the expertise to write the content? This is the key question, because if you have to write it, you have to write it. Generally, our clients need to write content if it’s highly technical or if a writer with the specialized knowledge required is not available or it would be too expensive to secure. (Writers with specialized skills can command high rates.) Or, the client may need to write the content if it relies on specialized knowledge available only within their organization; for example, an evolving go-to-market strategy for a new product. In some organizations only one or two people have this information and it changes frequently, which can be a tough environment for a writer.

·         Do I have the time to write the content? Be honest. Most people don’t. Successful content writing requires focused blocks of free time, an uncommon commodity in most jobs. We frequently see clients volunteer to write content, with the best of intentions, then they struggle to get it done, because they don’t have the time. Writers block may be a factor as well.

·         Can I write content that’s suitable for e-learning? In other words, can I write a course that flows, has interactivity that enhances the content and is within my organization’s capabilities and budget, has good assessments, etc.? Can I communicate with the team that will be coding the course? The type of course you’re writing matters here. It’s much simpler to write a PowerPoint that will be converted straight to e-learning using a tool such as Adobe Presenter then it is to write a storyboard for a highly interactive course. The expectations for the final product are lower, too.

·         Do I have very definite ideas of what I want the course to be like? If you know exactly what you want, then you may want to write the course yourself. In the end that may be easier then iteratively working with a writer to get to the same point.

We consider these same factors when considering a project, because we don’t want to put ourselves in the situation where we can’t succeed.