Two of my proposals were accepted for presentation at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) International Conference in Savannah, GA.  I’d love to connect with any of my readers who are also going to SITE. This will be my second time to attend this conference and my first time in the city of Savannah. … Continue reading "Join me at SITE 2016 in Savannah, GA!"

[Post by Phil Cazella, Director of Business Development at Pillar Training Solutions] A recent article published on the Smart Business website discusses the war on talent as it relates to the manufacturing and distribution industry. Associate editor for SBNOnline, Jayne Gest, writes, "We’ve all heard it: There is a war on talent. The baby boomer workforce is retiring. Manufacturing is dying. The available workforce doesn’t have the necessary skill sets that employers need." Smart Business interviewed Stacy Feiner, Psy.D., management consulting director at BDO USA, LLP, for the article and asked questions such as: Where do businesses fall short with their talent management? And How can employers be more proactive in building their talent management system? Feiner’s responses begin with, "It takes skill to recruit and attract top talent, but many manufacturers and distributors employ antiquated processes and methods that don’t reach ready candidates and aren’t truly connected to the company’s culture." To read the article and answers to those questions and more, visit: How to Attract and Retain Talent In Manufacturing and Distribution

In a recent article on EHS leading indicators, we touched on the topic of training-related EHS leading indicators. Meaning, stuff related to EHS training that can be used as a leading indicator for measuring general EHS performance at a company. Since we’re a training company and offer a lot of EHS training solutions, we thought we’d double-back to that issue and show you how you can track some of those EHS leading indicators that are related to EHS training. By tracking these, along with other EHS leading indicators, you can really begin to gather meaningful and actionable data about the performance of your EHS management system as a whole. Convergence Training is a training solutions provider with a strong EHS offering. We have off-the-shelf EHS e-learning courses, learning management systems (LMSs), and more. Contact us to set up a demo, view full-length course previews, or just ask some questions. Also, feel free to download this free Guide to Effective EHS Training while you’re here. EHS Training-Related EHS Leading Indicators OK, let’s get a few terms straight before we dive in. First, what’s an EHS leading indicator? An EHS leading indicator is something you can measure now that might help you identify, eliminate, and/or control risks that could lead to injuries, illnesses, or other workplace incidents in the future.                   Here’s how the National Security Council’s Campbell Library puts it: "proactive, preventative, and predictive measures that monitor and provide current information about the effective performance, activities, and processes of an EHS management system that drive the identification and elimination or control of risks in the workplace that can cause incidents and injuries." (1) Next, what do we mean by EHS leading indicators that are training-related? We’re talking about things related to EHS training at your worksite that can be used as EHS leading indicators.                     This can include but is not limited to: The number of EHS training activities/programs completed The percentage of EHS training activities/programs completed (as opposed to intended or assigned) Percentage of "compliant" workers Number of training hours per employee/business unit/site/company/time period Number of incidents with a root cause that includes lack of appropriate EHS training Number of certified EHS trainers Dollars spent on training per time period Percentage of new employees who complete new employee safety orientation per time period Percentage of employees who complete job-specific safety training per time period Average scores on post-training employee reaction surveys Average test scores on EHS training tests Tracking EHS Training-Related EHS Leading Indicators Now that we know we EHS leading indicators are, and what are some that are related to EHS training, let’s take a closer look at how you can track these over time to identify positive or negative trends.                 You can access this information from several different sources. For example: EHS Incident Investigation Records and/or Tracking System If you keep records of incident investigations (and you should), or if you have an automated system that does that for you, you can find the following training-related information there: Number of incidents with a root cause that includes lack of appropriate EHS training EHS Management and/or EHS Training Management Records If you keep records for your EHS management system and/or if you have a system that automates this for you (again, you should), you may find the following information there: Number of certified EHS trainers Dollars spent on training per time period Average scores on post-training employee reaction surveys EHS Training Management System/Learning Management System (LMS) If you keep records of your EHS training and/or if you have a system that automates that for you, you may find the following information there: The number of EHS training activities/programs completed The percentage of EHS training activities/programs completed (as opposed to intended or assigned) Percentage of "compliant" workers Number of training hours per employee/business unit/site/company/time period Percentage of new employees who complete new employee safety orientation per time period Percentage of employees who complete job-specific safety training per time period Average test scores on EHS training tests Let’s take a quick look at what each of these might look like if you track them over time. You can get this information by going to your EHS training management system and running a report or perhaps by exporting the data from that system and inputting the data into Excel.                 Because we assume you’re all doing a great job with your EHS programs, our examples will all trend up. The number of EHS training activities/programs completed Why is this a useful EHS leading indicator? Because presumably, if you’re training workers about safety more, they’ll be safer workers. Which should mean you’ll have fewer incidents in the future.                     The percentage of EHS training activities/programs completed (as opposed to intended or assigned) Why is this a useful EHS leading indicator? Same logic as above. We’re just slicing and dicing the information a little differently. This may help you identify training gaps that just looking at the number of trainings may not.                     Percentage of "compliant" workers Why is this a useful EHS leading indicator? Again, same logic as above (more training should mean safer workers). Just another way to look at the data, which gives you another chance to identify any gaps the other views wouldn’t offer.                         Number of training hours per employee/business unit/site/company/time period Why is this a useful EHS leading indicator? Same idea as earlier-more training, safer workers. Just another view, which may help you identify a gap the earlier views might not.                     Percentage of new employees who complete new employee safety orientation per time period Why is this a useful EHS leading indicator? This is a little different than the other views we’ve shown you. New workers can be more prone to being involved in safety incidents because they’re not as aware of the hazards as other workers are. So this may be an especially important thing to track.                     Percentage of employees who complete job-specific safety training per time period Why is this a useful EHS leading indicator? This is similar to the graph above, but the logic is applied differently. Just as completely new hires at less likely to know all the risk of the job, when a current employee moves to a new job, he or she may not be aware of risks relevant to that job. So again, this may be especially useful data to track.                     Average test scores on EHS training tests Why is this a useful EHS leading indicator? Training completed is good, but this gives you a better "window" into whether or not people are understanding that training, which is maybe even better.                     Using an EHS Training Management System/Learning Management System (LMS) to Track EHS Leading Indicators How did we get all this data in the section above, you ask? We pulled it out of a learning management system (LMS), an online software system you can use to administer any kind of training, including EHS training. Convergence Training makes four different learning management systems (LMSs) that are useful for administering EHS training. They are: Enterprise LMS: Our "flagship" LMS-flexible, powerful, robust, and capable of administering training at multiple sites Express LMS: our "stripped down" LMS-best for smaller companies MSHA LMS: The same as our Enterprise LMS but with some additional features for MSHA mining safety training compliance Contractor LMS: for administering site-specific safety orientations to visitors, vendors, and contractors You may find either of these short video introductions to our LMSs helpful and informative: Enterprise LMS MSHA LMS Conclusion: EHS Training Data as EHS Leading Indicators Hopefully that gave you a good idea of how you can use this kind of data as EHS leading indicators, and how you can collect/gather and visualize it. What are your own thoughts? What EHS training-related data do you track as an EHS leading indicator? Notes: (1) Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 2. The post Tracking Training-Related EHS Leading Indicators appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

Is your learning and development team able to transform so it can support complex work, help people be more creative, and adapt to the changing nature of the digital workplace? Strategic transformation is more than changing what you work on. "Strategic Transformation. This means changing the very essence of what ‘learning’ means in the company, through both a new understanding of how it happens in the workplace (i.e. not just through conventional training but as people carry out their daily jobs) and how performance problems can be solved in different ways. It also means that learning and performance improvement is no longer the sole remit of the L&D department, but something that everyone in the organisation - managers and employees alike - has responsibility for." - Jane Hart The strategic transformation of organizational learning requires a shift from delivery of content and courses to integrating learning and working. While learning is personal, much of it happens while we are working with others. Learning is mostly social and often informal. Informal learning is learning without instruction and is personally directed or done in collaboration with others. Studies show that informal learning accounts for between 70% and 95% of workplace learning. For example, performance improvement specialist, Gary Wise extrapolated Josh Bersin’s research data from 2009 and found that as much as 95% of workplace learning is informal. The surveys of hundreds of companies showed that knowledge workers formal learning averages 100 hours per year out of 2,080 available work hours, which is about 5%. The strategic transformation is to shift the focus to the 95%. Offering only formal instruction as professional development is not enough in today’s complex work environment, as courses address less than 10% of workplace learning needs. We cannot know in advance and prepare instruction for everything that people need to learn on the job today. Everyone needs to experiment, learn from experience, and share with colleagues, as part of their work. The 70:20:10 principle provides a rule of thumb to help organizations stay focused on what is important in workplace learning. The principle states that what we learn at work is based, generally, on these ratios: 70%: Experience 20%: Exposure 10%: Education While multiple good practices and methods can be recommended, a pragmatic approach is to master a few and implement them vigorously. I have identified nine components to create a structure of continuous, action-based learning that goes from the classroom, to the workplace, into the community, and beyond. Moving to Social Action Mapping for Designing Instruction, instead of a focus on content distribution. Flipping the Classroom, so that instructors spend more time assisting and engaging in learning activities, then in lecturing. Promoting Personal Learning Networks as part of all formal instruction. Adopting Enterprise Social Networks as bridges between personal and organizational knowledge. Working Out Loud as part of group knowledge sharing in work teams. Supporting Coaching & Cognitive Apprenticeship to connect different generations of workers. Using Social Media to connect working and learning. Learning Out Loud to ensure more signal than noise is shared with others, within a framework of personal knowledge mastery. Engaging others cooperatively through Communities of Practice. To learn more, the social learning workshop provides a pragmatic path for the enterprise L&D team to implement a performance-oriented and social learning framework that supports workplace performance in the network era. This can be the beginning of a strategic transformation for workplace learning.

Based upon the impressions of the last post, there are a couple of points I would like to be abundantly clear:This type of re-design is not limited to the STEM area of learning activities. Even though I used a STEM example, if we believe that solving complex real world problems requires a cross disciplinary approach, then collaborative groups must involve more than just the sciences. STEAM projects might be the bridge to hybrid collaboration. The key to thoughtful engagement is to focus on real world problems and feedback should not be simply a self-quiz or exam at the end of a learning activity but should be on-going throughout the learning experience and should shape on-going decision making during the learning experience. This provides a wealth of information for the learner and can also result in a growing self-confidence in themselves as dynamic learners with a purpose.Experiential learning and project based learning take center stage in such a re-design. Design thinking as a skillset becomes a focal point and one that is consistently encouraged in the learner consistently.Education: Specific Changes to Promote Effective CollaborationMoving Away From Content Focused Pedagogy:  One of the great realities of 21st century learning is that knowledge and information are expanding across the disciplines in an exponential rate. The advancing changes in technology based on a revised understanding of Moore's Law have not only accelerated the advancement of information and knowledge but also the time of globally communicating these expanding waves of information and knowledge has quickly grown shorter and shorter. As a student aptly put to his teacher in 2016:"I can find more information and knowledge on the Internet than you could teach me in your life time as a teacher!"Whether we like it or not, Moore's Law is being re-written by the advancements of technology and the growth of information and knowledge. This in turn impacts the shape that education should take. The past focus on educating students to acquire more and more information for the purpose of repeating it back to satisfy the industrial economy mindset, no longer fits with the needs of 21st century society.Credit: Ray Kurzweil and KurzweilAI.netWith the new start up areas in the Internet of Things, the skillsets required go beyond the simple acquirement of knowledge. The focus needs to shift to the higher order thinking skills (Revised Bloom's Taxonomy) and purpose driven innovative thinking.Credit: www.Todbot.comSo, if we move away from a content for content's sake pedagogy, then what do we move to?In order for us to really build effective collaboration in a sea of information and knowledge, information and knowledge is not solely our end goal for the learner. More importantly, the re-design of pedagogy needs to emphasize the following skillsets: Learners already know that there is a huge repository of information and knowledge on the Internet but one of the skills that they need to be mentored on is how to effectively search for information that will be useful for sharing with partners with the common end goal of solving complex real world problems. The great realization that learners need to be led to is that not all information on the Internet is true, real or valid to a particular problem. The fact that the Internet has become an outlet for any person who has web access means that there is a need for "thoughtful discernment".Learners need to be able to collaboratively analyze a problem and be able to see that problem from a cross disciplinary perspective. This is where having an honest assessment of each others gifts and talents will help make the approach to solving complex real world problems easier. For example, a collaborator who has a solid gift for mathematics is able to contribute to the process by analyzing the problem from the point of view of mathematics and can also help in the search by being able to distinguish between shallow mathematics interpretations from those who are valid, real and hold promise for shedding light on the problem.In order for true collaboration to take place, networking with outside specialist learning communities must be established and facilitated so that relationships are developed between the collaborative learners who need to authenticate the knowledge that they find and those who are in the best position to validate what they find in their searches. This relationship is beneficial to both groups. For the learner there are the relationships that are formed between themselves and representatives of disciplines that provide impetus for future professional career directions. For the varied professional learning communities, they are given insight into the potential future growth of their profession. Another very unusual but real benefit for professional learning communities is that they have the opportunity to "step outside entrenched routines and see problems from fresh new approaches." A greater emphasis on the skillsets of synthesis and creativity is needed. With the exponential growth of knowledge, it is easy to become swamped by all that is out there.The learner's ability to analyze and then to synthesize information and knowledge so that it is focused on enabling the production of a host of innovative solutions. This is a discipline of the mind and like any other discipline it requires a commitment to "hone or fine tune" it with an eye on excellence.In a nutshell, it is not about learning all the content for the content's sake but it is about how to search for tasked content, how to authenticate that which is true, real and valid to the task and reject everything else, how to take a huge body of knowledge and through the skill of synthesis make it manageable so that you have the most current, authenticated cross disciplinary knowledge that can be shared and used to arrive at innovative solutions to complex real world problems that to this point have defied solution 2. Create a Global Learning Contract Between Education and Professional                Learning CommunitiesThe learning of future citizens living in our global societies is no longer just the responsibility of the educational communities in an age of information and learning. All of society has an important stake in how education of learners progresses because the focus is to create agents of change who can effectively deal with very real complex real world problems that are increasing. The professional disciplines as well as global business are stakeholders because they are greatly affected by the results of education. Education needs to establish what I would term a "global learning contract" between themselves and the other stakeholders. This means extensive collaboration among the learning communities with a powerful purpose of supporting those who would become agents of change in our societies.  How are business organizations and professional learning communities affected? More in the next post and the idea of using collaboration in learning assessment.

I am proud to share that in a few weeks, Training Magazine Network will release a new first-of-its kind member service. Our research confirms this is brand-new. We call it Path to Expertise or Path2X.According to Judith A. Hale, Ph.D., CPT, ID (ILT, JA+): I am humbled by the experience and learning during the Path2X platform creation and making it available to our members. Thanks to everyone who has helped make this vision a reality.Please watch a brief video. Path2X has these key elements.1) Power of the Prompt QuestionsWith over 90,000 TMN members asking questions in their search activities, we curate and share these questions with the whole community. These prompt questions get crowd-sourced. We refer to them as, "exploratory thinking," "thinking aloud" or "intense curiosity." As the saying goes, "the solution is possible if we ask the right questions."It's challenging to formulate these questions and if we reuse and repurpose all of them including the search results, it would save time and add more context to the learning.2) Freedom to Learn One's Interest AreasWe allow members to follow their interests and passions openly through access to unbundled and unrestricted sources of content.Training magazine is a 40-year-old company. It has developed the best-of-breed resource materials in the world of training. Yet, the breadth and depth of knowledge required by learners surpass our present capabilities to provide this to our members. So, we unshackled our thinking,pushed beyond our current boundaries and uncovered a path for learners to have far-reaching access to varied learning.We published guest blogs - now 50,000 and growing each day. Our learners deserve to enjoy the abundance of open content from all other sources.3) Ripple Effects of InsightsEncourage real-time insights noting, sharing and tracking.Savor the moment. As members go through all types of content that they find interesting through the help of a powerful search engine, they are constantly encouraged to record their insights as it happens. The key idea is to allow them to document what they find interesting at the moment.Their learning preferences and interest areas are captured by the system. This provides them a unique perspective of their pursuit of expertise.In TMN, we capture the ripples of insights, those small and micro instances of learning - as they happen. While in webinars, reading white papers, watching videos, etc. members can quickly record the ripple of their insights. They also share and view other members' insights.4) Trending and Patterns of Insights are Predictors of Expertise AreasArticulate your expertise/digital tracker.I like the book Show Your Work by Jane Bozarth. It suggests a profound change of our outlook. When we share our work, we actually learn a lot better. I recall a story from a toxic waste company client about how they apply "Chalk Talk." After each training they ask participants to use chalk and blackboard (may be flipcharts, white boards and markers) to talk about what they have learned.This is a powerful self-learning process that enables the learners to articulate what they know and correct themselves along the way. Let's call this the digital tracker.At TMN, we allow members to capture trends and patterns. They discover, learn and track what they are good at and they show it off in the "Trending Report."5) Celebrate and Stand Out as Experts and SpecialistsFeedback to self, peers and significant leaders.Mobile apps and digital watches are so good at this. Their entry into the market is by providing people immediate/instant feedback - whether they are walking, running or consuming calories. The key is feedback for people to correct and achieve their goals. In the Path2X (Path to Expertise), our members achieve this through Path2X eShare.TMN members can share with friends, peers, leaders and if they wish, in the world of social media like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. We encourage TMN members to announce and celebrate their accomplishments.What is the single most compelling Benefit to TMN Members?The new world of learning is open, limitless, abundant and exponential. It is our ardent hope that TMN members experience first-hand this new learning environment. As they discover possibilities, gain insights into their expertise and interest areas and showcase their achievements, we strongly sense that members will eagerly pass on this breakthrough in learning environments to their own learners - helping them to learn better and faster.Join The All-New TrainingMagNetwork.com. Preview the video again, click here.References Gerald O. Grow. Teaching Learners To Be Self-Directed. Florida A&M University, Tallahassee.http://aeq.sagepub.com/content/41/3/125.short   Jane Bozarth. Social Media for Trainers: Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning. John Wiley & Sons, 30 Jul 2010. https://books.google.com.ph/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xiWi4fuOOl0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=Jane+Bozarth&ots=KLyp2Na35O&sig=KLyMa5H8ngmbLbwLxqhCZyFlHU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Jane%20Bozarth&f=false   Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Learning is a creative process. We start with a question, a challenge, a problem, an opportunity or possibly simple or complex tasks. Then we go back to asking more questions. Because of what we want to do, accomplish or learn, our minds go through discovery and creativity.Recursive learning and Creativity The focus of this tip is on Recursive Learning and Creativity. People learn recursively. We connect past experiences, with new experiences, and formulate new insights.  These then, become part of our new and improved expertise. Doing these repeatedly help us build skills, mastery and expertise.The compounding effect of incremental insights show us where our interest areas are,and where our vocation and our passion lie. People tend to do things that give them pleasure. What gives them pleasure allows them to pursue interests. Eventually and along the way, our expertise is rooted in our passions and vocations, whether we are consciouslyor just unknowingly pursuing them.Generating insights is normal and common. But deepening insights which is a creative process requires some level of intensity and penetration of desire. Is it difficult to attain? Not really.It is easily provided when it is incremental - thinking through your insights as it happensis where the epiphany is. It is like when you eat really great food at a 5-Star Michelin restaurant. It is at the moment when your taste buds savor the flavor - at that moment - where experience is highest. This is the moment of ecstatic insights, sometimes euphoria or the Aha!moment. This is similar to the feeling when one generates fresh ideas to change a product and improve services in order to achieve organizational goals. This is similar to the Aha! moment when one discovers the connection between two previously unrelated concepts.                                                                                                                According to David Jones, "Aha! moments may be sudden, but they probably depend on an unconscious mental process that has grown slowly." Jones argues further that we can't truly have new ideas, rather, we can connect existing facts or notions by observing others. The Social Component of CreativityCreativity does not occur in a vacuum. Experts agree that while creativity or insight is a personal experience, "creative thinking is not so much an individual trait but rather a social phenomenon involving interactions among people within their specific group or cultural settings."By curating and sharing back to the community "prompt questions," members find it easier or faster to direct their attention to answers and therefore facilitate discovery and insights.The most intriguing part about prompt questions is that it sends or kicks off learners into an automatic recursive learning process. When we ask questions, our minds go on autopilot to find what we already know, then search outside what else we can know. This allows us to reflect and gain insights -- this is recursive learning or creative musing in action. This happens in milliseconds. Although this is most often unconscious, it is most effective in learning and gaining insights.Two phases of creative musingWe introduced the process called "Path2X trending" which means that as you add and record insights, you are able to see your "crumbs" - where you have been and what you have been thinking aloud, and the interests you are pursuing and the knowledge and learning that you are accumulating. In essence you are building expertise, but instead of a whimsical and tentative way, we allow members to see the trends of their insights. Here are the two phases of creative musing: 1. Generative phase - During this phase, one tends to generate different solutions to a given problem. Also known as the divergent phase, the creative mind is in a brainstorming mode and tries to consider a variety of ways in which a problem can be approached and a solution can be had. This is what we commonly call "out of the box" thinking.2. Exploratory/Evaluative phase - Also known as the convergent phase, during this phase the creative mind tends to focus on the best solution to the problem. No longer is the mind brainstorming ideas, rather, with surgical precision, it decides on what to do and faces the problem head on. According to Robert L. DeHaan, "During the generative process, the creative mind pictures a set of novel mental models as potential solutions to a problem. In the exploratory phase, we evaluate the multiple options and select the best one."ConclusionCreativity is the result of incremental and recursive learning. While we tend to think of it as an innate talent, it cannot be separated from the social context. As a matter of fact, it is enhanced by social interaction as observed from the curated "prompt questions" by TMN members. With "Path2X trending," members can focus and see the trend of their creative musings.References Robert L. DeHaan. Teaching Creativity and Inventive Problem Solving in Science. Division of Educational Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322.  http://www.lifescied.org/content/8/3/172.full    David Jones. The Aha! Moment: A Scientist Take on Creativity. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2715 North Charles Street, Baltimore Maryland 21218-4363. https://books.google.com.ph/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pbZzl0V0s0YC&oi=fnd&pg=PP2& dq=aha+moment&ots=XmDDAuCR6d&sig=JE0yiMz6uOL3RyfQoR06MZljtQE&redir esc=y#v=onepage&q=aha%20moment&f=false     Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

This is the second installment of of my five-part blog series on helping members of TrainingMagNetwork understand their expertise better.We believe in unshackling our thinking and providing learners as much access to content and this is what this post is about.Trainers and content developers can no longer hold back learners from using other sources of knowledge. There is a breaking away from control as these new discoveries continue to sprout like mushrooms. This allows them to accelerate learning. It is in this openness that we encourage the learners to explore, create and develop.The Proliferation of Open LearningWe have witnessed the dramatic increase in open learning. If you have been following the online trends, you will have noticed the popularity of sites like Coursera, edX and other spinoffs. The dramatic decrease in cost of producing learning materials contributes to the proliferation of open learning.According to Caswell, Henson, Jensen, and David Wiley, "This marked decrease in costs has significant implications and allows distance educators to play an important role in the fulfillment of the promise of the right to universal education. At relatively little additional cost, universities can make their content available to millions. This content has the potential to substantially improve the quality of life of learners around the world."But the cost is just one aspect. While technology made open learning easy, it is the current attitude requiring more flexibility and collaboration in learning that made this possible. Rigid and traditional approach to learning is a thing of the past.  According to Liyanagunawardena, Adams, and Williams, "Connectivity is usually provided through social networking, and a set of freely accessible online resources provides the content or the study material... For example, MOOC participants may create their own blog posts discussing aspects of the MOOC in different spaces and/or may use microblogs such as Twitter to express themselves."eLearning pioneers like Jay Cross are advocating informal learning wherein unofficial and impromptu encounters between learners and people in the know take place. Jay posts that "formal training and workshops account for only 5% to 20% of what people learn from experience and interactions."If you are a lifelong learner, you can find free and open courses at Harvard Open Learning. Are you looking for a new recipe to cook for lunch? You can just head to Youtube, watch a video and turn yourself into an instant chef.We haven't witnessed this level of openness before and this is just the tip of the iceberg. With technological development mostly done in the open, the high level of interactivity required to respond to modern challenges and the attitude of modern learners all converge to spice up Open Learning. The concept of Open learning is far more vast than what we have witnessed and I believe the best is yet to come.The Philosophy Behind TrainingMagNetwork's Open Learning Richard Baraniuk shares his vision of open learning which led to the creation of OpenStax, an open-source, online education system which allows teachers to share and modify course materials freely and globally.Different programs have varied degrees of openness and diverse implementations of the concept of Open Learning.At TrainingMagNetwork, we allow the members to search over 50,000 blogs and resources (growing each day). We believe we can only serve the learners by enabling them to access quickly, assist them to search with prompt questions and discover what they want in the abundance of content. They drive the learning, not us or the designers or any form of formal structure. In fact, we don't have a hierarchical learning design that is typical of other associations and learning providers. We want to free our learners to follow their own passion and help them track their own studies.References Tharindu Rekha Liyanagunawardena, Andrew Alexander Adams, and Shirley Ann  Williams. MOOCs: A Systematic Study of the Published Literature 2008-2012. July 2013. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1455/2531    Tom Caswell, Shelley Henson, Marion Jensen, and David Wiley. Open Educational  Resources: Enabling universal education.February 2008. The International Review of  Research in Open and Distributed Learning. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/  article/view/469/1001   Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning