We have spent many a BLOG discussing the attributes of well-designed e-Learning. Many times, we have listed the salient characteristics that are found within effective e-Learning designs. We have emphasized learner-control and increased retention as attributes of properly produced e-Learning. Today, however, we’re going to reverse that story. We’re going to examine the characteristics you should avoid when buying or producing e-Learning. The following items are the “no-no’s” — if you are...
No one wants to buy “training!” People only purchase training programs when they want to solve a particular problem. Training becomes only a means to resolving issues that management wants to fix. A decade ago, most buying was done at the plant level. Today more and more purchasing decisions are made in the corporate office. When a plant level purchase is made, the decision is generally in the hands of the Maintenance...
Today we’re going to look at the “Design Requirements for Effective On-Line Learning.” There are five essential requirements: • Navigation through a lesson is simple, consistent and intuitive: o The graphic interface (GUI) is attractive, inviting and meaningful. o The components for learning appear in a consistent and logical location. o The components for learning are always visible to the user and accessible with a single click of the mouse. o Individual...
Writing for the online publication, SALON.com, last week, Mary Elizabeth Williams engaged in some brilliant reasoning in her article, “How Nationalized Education Standards Ruin Schools.” National Standards testing began under President G. W. Bush and has been expanded by President Obama. The unintended results will include a decline in thinking, reasoning and individual achievement. Why the federal government continues to believe that all problems can be solved with new regulations and additional...
We’ve discussed the values and benefits associated with multi-sensory media many times in previous BLOGS. We’ve seen the real positive results that are making a real difference in education and training. Today, however, I’d like to share some factual results that individual businesses have been achieving: a) A leading energy corporation had a training need in their pipeline division. Their challenge was to disburse training to over 100 individual sites, some of...
Multi-sensory media is part of the informational and instructional evolutionary process that has taken us beyond storytelling, the printing press, and radio wave transmission. Multi-sensory media is a communication tool. It makes possible more efficient information transfer and more effective learning. Who then, among us, must we look to — to lead us forward? Certainly not the producers of the various technology platforms. By their very nature, those producers must remain “box...
As a friend of mine has recently observed: “Today all the moons are in alignment for the very first time.” How right he is. But I am not convinced that many of us who work with the new e-Learning technologies really understand the opportunity that’s out there. Suppose that once every five hundred years or so, you find yourself handed a set of keys which can help advance society and personal living...
More than forty years of research clearly shows that greater family involvement in children’s learning is a critical link to achieving a high-quality education: • What PARENTS do to help their children learn matters more to their children’s achievement than family income or education. • What SCHOOLS do to encourage parents to participate in their children’s education matters more to parental participation than parent income or education. • What COMMUNITY GROUPS (including...
A headline in “The New York Times” last week said it all, “FACTORY JOBS RETURN, BUT EMPLOYERS FIND SKILLS SHORTAGE.” The article by Motoko Rich confirms many of the issues we’ve been examining over the past year and a half. “ . . . manufacturers who want to expand find that hiring is not always easy. During the recession, domestic manufacturers appear to have accelerated the long-term move toward greater automation, laying...
As the United States continues an uphill battle to reform its education system and to re-establish its manufacturing dominance, many educators are seeking new and innovative programs to better prepare workers and students. Tomorrow’s students need more effective training solutions and today’s workers need upgraded skills in order to cope with the ever-changing technologies of today and tomorrow. Both multi-sensory based e-Learning and networked, digitized CD-ROM are uniquely capable of providing those...
For decades, decentralized companies have had to cope with training challenges that included lack of standardization, inconsistency, and facilitation challenges. An absence of centralized record-keeping has also negatively impacted their efforts. We’ve seen how modern LMS’s have addressed the latter issue and, today, e-Learning is effectively solving the other challenges. One such multi-national company has commented publicly about the positive impacts made on their organization by a corporate-installed LMS and, most importantly,...
Let’s begin today with a series of questions — questions that you should think about and answer truthfully before we talk about solutions. 1) Is your organization getting healthier? a. If applicable, is the export/import ratio shifting positively? b. Are your earnings healthier? c. Is productivity increasing? 2) What is happening to the “training function” within your organization? a. Is the traditional “student/teacher” (“lecture/reading”) relationship changing? b. Is the role of “visual...
The philosophy and aims of an educational institution are concerned with the education of the whole man — mind, body, soul and emotion — and with the realization that knowledge is unimportant without the ability to communicate and exchange it. The Harvard Report on “General Education in a Free Society” placed first in its list of objectives “training in the ability to communicate orally and writing the results of thought.” Ideally the...
We’ve all heard a lot about the lack of basic skills in America’s workforce. But, have we all read about it? Approximately 30 million Americans can’t. They can’t even read this sentence. Estimates range that up to 75 million Americans cannot read at a level that would allow them to function fully in the workplace. The numbers are staggering. And reading is not the only skill workers are lacking. Millions cannot perform...
