It’s the beginning of the year and I’m going to take a brief step away from instructional design topics and write about something that has improved the quality of my instructional design work- my treadmill.

In 1982, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman popularized the phrase "Management by Walking Around" in their book In Search of Excellence. I like their ideas and what they write. I am also a fan of John Kotter and his article Management is (Still) Not Leadership which is why I replaced "Management" with "Leadership", which I think more closely defines the goals most executives strive for. Peters and Waterman borrowed from Hewlett Packard, and I borrow from everybody. Whether the term Management or Leadership is used, the walking around part is key. It denotes personal, authentic interaction at a wide variety of levels within the organization.

You can’t train a manufacturing workforce using just one "type" of training-just field-based OJT, just written materials, just instructor-led classroom-style training, just e-learning, etc. Well, you can. But you won’t get the most effective training, and you won’t create a cost-effective training program. So you don’t want to. Instead, it’s best to use a "blended learning" solution that mixes and matches different types of training. In this article, we’ll give a few reasons why you should consider a blended learning solution for your workers; give you some tips for creating the right blend to help workers acquire basic knowledge, develop skills and learn procedures, and develop advanced job skills that really create value for your company; and show you some tools and techniques for making this all happen smoothly. Convergence Training is a training solutions provider with a strong manufacturing offering. We make a variety of learning management systems (LMSs), off-the-shelf e-learning courses for manufacturing topics, EHS, and other workforce training needs, custom training, mobile apps, and more. Contact us for more information. You may also want to check out our free Guide to Effective Manufacturing Training.   Why Use Blended Learning? In short, blending is better. But let’s look at that in a little more detail. We’ll focus on four aspects: employee engagement; individual learning preferences; suitability of the training materials for training needs;  and issues related to scalability, cost, and scheduling logistics. Employee Engagement Your employees will appreciate training more if it "comes at them" in different ways. Doing the same thing over and over again gets boring. Mixing a little variety into your training program will make it more exciting for your employees. And that will make them more active, engaged, receptive learners. And that will make your training more effective-meaning your workers will develop those job skills they need. Appealing to Different Learning Preferences/Needs Some people like a certain kind of training more than other kinds. For example, some people really like instructor-led training but don’t care for e-learning or written materials as much (written materials can be especially problematic for workers who aren’t native speakers of the language, have limited reading skills, or are dyslexic). And on the other hand, some workers really like e-learning but don’t care for instructor-led training (maybe they appreciate the ability to train at their own speed with e-learning). It would be great if you could design an entirely personalized training solution for each worker that takes into account their own personal learning preferences. If you can do that, hats off to you and go for it! But more likely, you can’t, and you’ll have to develop training solutions for everyone in a group, team, department, site, or job role. Given that, if you used a blended solution, you have a better chance of including at least SOME training that appeals to the various members of your training audience. Suitability of Training Materials for Training Need Some training needs are very well served by a particular kind of training. For example, if you’re trying to teach someone a skill, and that instruction really benefits from a lot of hands-on practice (with real machines and equipment at your site) and immediate feedback from a knowledgeable subject matter expert, then some form of face-to-face training may be best. On the other hand, if you’re trying to teach workers about a work process, explaining the machinery and equipment involved in the process and what happens inside those machines, an e-learning course with sophisticated visuals (that your employees can watch and rewatch at their own learning pace) may be just what they need. In still other cases, you may find that the best way to train people for one training need is to use a blend. Maybe you’ll assign a self-guided e-learning course to workers first. They can complete that on their own, and this provides the basic information. Then you’ll have an instructor-led training session or do some field-based OJT if hands-on practice, demonstrations, skill evaluations, question answering, and/or spontaneous feedback are necessary. Scalability, Costs, and Logistics Sometimes, you’ll have to consider issues such as scalability, cost, and logistics when you choose which kind of training to provide for a given training need. Let’s look at each of these briefly. Scalability You may find that the best way to train a person to perform job skill X is to personally demonstrate the procedure, have the employee perform it, and let them benefit from your instructive feedback. But maybe you’ve got a day job, too, and you can’t give that kind of training to 1,000 employees a year (or some similar big number). In that case, you may find that creating a video recording as you perform the procedure, and then delivering that video to your 1,000 employees online through your LMS (or even through mobile learning apps they use to watch the video in the field) may be much more scalable. Cost Maybe you find that pulling the department out of work, taking them out of town, putting them up in a nice hotel, booking the conference room, buying lunches, paying overtime, and leading some instructor-led training creates a very relaxed, congenial atmosphere that makes it easy to learn. And hey, you may well be right. But the odds are, your company can’t afford that, or can’t afford that for every training need. Even if we exaggerated our description above for the sake of humor, there’s no doubt that paying for instructor-led training can get expensive, either because it happens during overtime, or because there are travel expense involved, or simply because you pulled everyone away from their job responsibilities. Many times, it may be more cost-effective to use training materials in written format (PDF or PowerPoint), video format, or an e-learning course, all of which can be delivered online and all of which employees can view and complete during their own downtime at work. Scheduling Logistics If you’ve got employees working multiple shifts, you know how hard it is to get them all together for training. It’s like herding cats, as they say. And that gets harder if the shifts that people work change from time to time, or if an employee may work at different locations on a given day of the week, or if you’re trying to train workers at multiple locations or workers who work remotely. Often times, logistical issues like this will play a role in the training you choose to provide. This is one area where online training, which your workers can complete individually and within their own schedule, creates a lot of efficiencies. How to Use Blended Learning You’ve now read that it’s a good idea to use a blended learning solution, why it’s a good idea, and have even picked up some tips for creating the right blend when you’re designing training for each job role. But let’s take a closer look at one aspect of this: the type of material that you want an employee to have learned after the training. We can break that down into three different levels, as shown below. Let’s look at those in more detail. Basic Job Knowledge There’s always basic, foundational information that employees need to know in order to perform a given job. This information can be broken down into facts (example: this is a boiler), concepts (example: these are all different types of boilers), and processes (example: this is how we make our product). In many cases, this is information that your employees can most efficient process in a self-guided learning activity, such as with some written materials, a video, or a simple e-learning course, like the course below, which demonstrates the important concept of Meeting Customer Expectations. Basic Skills and Simple Procedures In nearly every job role at a manufacturing facility, workers have to learn a set of procedures-the way to do this job task, the way to do that job task, etc. In some cases, a simple written document (maybe with some labeled pictures) can do this quite nicely. In other cases, you may want to use an online learning tool (like the one shown below) that your workers can watch from a mobile device while in the field. And in other cases, you may need some face-to-face training for this, either in an instructor-led, classroom setting, or in an OJT setting in the field. Click here for a more detailed explanation of how to teach your employees basic job skills and procedures (and this article on the Training Within Industry Job Instruction program may also prove interesting). And you can also read more about tools to help you with training workers to perform basic job procedures. Advanced Job Skills Finally, in every job (or most every, especially those higher up on the line of progression), workers develop what we might loosely call "advanced job skills." These are the job skills that turn key workers into true value creators for the company. They include things like problem-solving skills, troubleshooting, process improvement, adaption of things like lean manufacturing techniques, new product creation, and more. Traditionally, workers develop these advanced job skills after many years on the job and as a result of experience and trial-and-error. The problem with that is it takes a lot of time, it’s an unorganized process with no standardization or consistency, and it doesn’t work for every employee. You can help workers develop these advanced job skills more quickly and reliably by creating structured learning activities that allow them to practice these skills  (in addition to their work experience). This kind of training often requires some form of face-to-face interaction (in the form role-playing exercises or other types of classroom-style instructor-led training and/or field-based OJT. And that’s one reason why it’s nice to reserve face-to-face instructor time (which is often a scarce resource) for this kind of training. In addition, e-learning courses that make use of scenario-based learning and/or gamification can also be effective for this. Tip: another benefit of using written documents and online learning tools for teaching workers foundational knowledge and simple procedures is that you accelerate them through the early processes of learning their job role and get them ready to begin learning advanced job skills more quickly and efficiently. Click to read more detailed information about using scenario-based learning to help workers develop these advanced job skills. Using an LMS to Administer Your Blended Learning Solution Now that you know what a blended learning solutions is, and have some ideas of how to develop one to help employees in a given job role understand the knowledge, develop the basic skills and perform the simple procedures, and acquire the advanced job skills that are necessary for their jobs, you may wonder what’s the best way to assign, deliver, track, and otherwise administer this kind of training. You can use a learning management system (LMS) to manage much of this, including automating a significant portion. The LMS will save you a lot of time and clerical hassles, allowing you to more productively use your time on instructor-led training, field-based training, or other aspects of your job. The short video below provides a brief overview of things you can do with an LMS. Conclusion: Your Own Thoughts on Blended Learning Solutions What are your thoughts on blended learning? Do you blend? What elements do you include in your blend and how do you make that decision? How do you administer your blended learning training? The comments section below awaits your pearls of wisdom. And please do download the free Guide to Effective Manufacturing Training below. The post Blended Learning for Manufacturing Training appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

I came across a new gem in YouTube via a Google+ post by +Kyle Beatty. YouTube introduced a new type of Card called the Poll Card that you can attach to your videos that allow you to ask your audience questions and they can respond by selecting an answer. This might be a great option for teachers looking to gather quick formative feedback from students during a video lesson. Continue reading to learn more about this new feature!How it WorksHere is a an example video that utilizes the Poll Card feature. I created a simple math lesson on the "order of operations" to demonstrate how the poll card might be useful in a video lesson. Go ahead and watch the short video and answer my poll questions.Click to watch the video.You'll notice that, as soon as you answer, your shown a percentage of how others have responded to the poll as well. And you have the ability to change your answer at any time. You can also go back and watch the video again later, and still change your answers.As the creator of the video (the teacher), I can access the response data. The data will show me how many total responses there are, how many responses per answer choice, and a percentage breakdown of the answer choices. It does not show you who specifically answered, so you wouldn't be able to track it back to individual students.Class BenefitsTeachers are always looking for quick and efficient ways to gather feedback and data on student progress. This new Poll Card can be another tool in your data collecting arsenal. Even though it doesn't provide data on individual students, it can give a quick snapshot into how your class, as a whole, is doing with a lesson or concept. When you create your next video lesson, give the new Poll Card feature a try!Also, if your students are creating YouTube videos for a project, the Poll Card feature might be a great way to encourage audience participation and interaction with the video.Let me know in the comments! How might you use this with your class?

The 70/20/10 framework is one of the most popular learning and development models used today. The framework breaks down the major avenues for which a learner acquires new job skills. According to this model, 70% of what an employee learns comes from on-the-job training, 20% from peer learning, and 10% from formal learning. Included in the video is practical advice for how you can incorporate the 70/20/10 framework in your organization, but I have summarized it below for you: 10% Formal Learning Decrease the duration of formal training to a minimum Use Formal learning to provide structured learning in a "fail safe" environment 20% Peer Learning Create incentives within the company that support and encourage collaboration Allow social learning to grow organically 70% On-the-Job Learning Provide a structure for immediate and comprehensive feedback Create relevant information that can be consumed at the moment challenges arise For those that have started incorporating the 70/20/10 framework, you would agree the list above is far from exhaustive, but it is a good guidepost for those that are just starting down this path. About the author: Nolan spends the majority of his time performing marketing research in the L&D industry to help understand the most common and pressing challenges of the industry.  He uses this information to help formulate cutting-edge learning solutions that are designed to maximize business performance and return on investment. The post Breaking Down the 70/20/10 Framework appeared first on .

The Power of Stories "Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a king…" "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…" Most of us grew up listening to stories of faraway lands with knights in shining armor rescuing beautiful princesses from monsters and space stations destroying planets. These stories have elements of mystery and intrigue associated with them, which makes them interesting. However, the types of stories we use in trainings are a lot different from fairytales. The theme is never too mysterious and unknown, in fact; the closer the story is to our lives, the more effective its impact on the learner. Elements of an Effective Story The human race has used stories for thousands of years to personalize knowledge. We remember stories much better than content explanation. Research shows that from a very young age, we understand the basic structure (the beginning, middle, and end) of narratives. However, the ability to be a good storyteller is not inborn; you can always learn it. Lead your listeners by creating suspense and curiosity; use verbal pacing through pauses and varied speaking rates; and prepare and plan your stories. Gone are the days when creating ‘forced’ real-life scenarios was considered an effective strategy in making the audience feel connected to the training content. Today, sessions designed for ice breaking, warm-up, wrap-up, and context building are increasingly using suitable stories and anecdotes to engage the learner throughout the instructional process. To ensure the effectiveness of your story, you need to choose one that has a clearly defined single concept, a well-developed plot, and well-formed dramatically appealing characters. Most importantly, the story should be suitable for all your listeners and relevant to your instructional content. While telling the story, it is extremely important to have a proper beginning, which introduces the characters and the conflict; the body, in which the conflict leads to the climax; and the end of the story that shows the resolution of the conflict. Once you finish the story, stop. Do not feel that you have to explain everything. Let your listeners think about the story, and derive their own meaning from it. Presenting with Stories Have you ever wondered why during the majority of presentations you find yourself lost in a sea of content and have to struggle to make sense of PowerPoint slide after slide overflowing with information? Even the most carefully researched and analyzed efforts meet cynicism or dismissal in this form. Yet we could easily engage listeners on a new level if we do away with drab PowerPoint slides and learn to tell good stories instead. Stories are how we remember; we forget bullet lists and graphs. Too often presentations try to sweep all the difficulties, the villains, and the struggle under the carpet. We prefer to present a rosy (in other words, fake and boring) picture of the world. What we should do is position problems in the foreground and then show how we can overcome them. When you tell the story of your struggles against real adversaries, your audience sees you as an exciting, dynamic person or organization. Emotions Move People to Action We need to understand that in order to get a required result or bring about a desired change, we cannot rely on the belief that people are inspired to act by reason alone. Therefore, the most powerful solution is to unite an idea or concept with an emotion. The best way to do this is by telling a gripping story. Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes. It begins with a situation in which life is in balance and everything is fine. Then, an incident takes place that throws life out of balance for the central character. The story continues to describe how the central character’s expectations clash with an unforgiving reality in an effort to restore balance. Gear Stories to the Audience To ensure that your stories effectively engage participants, it is important that you know your audience. If you do not know you audience, you do not know which stories are appropriate or how to optimize them. Next, try to engage your audience’s emotions by using powerful images and appeal to as many of their senses as possible. You need to teach clearly and directly through the story. If you think about the best inspirational speeches that you have heard, there is a lesson at the end of them. The speaker first draws us in by telling us a story, which uses familiar situations we all understand, and helps the audience relate to the speaker as a human being. Only after hearing the story are we receptive to the lesson entailed. Uses of Storytelling In any learning environment, storytelling can be one of the most powerful instructional techniques in your repertoire. It can help you get learners’ attention and as a result, aid with the retention of course information. You can use storytelling at the beginning of, during, or at the end of training but every time you use it, you need to know the purpose in order to have the greatest impact. Stories at the beginning of a training discourse help set the tone and establish rapport. During the discourse, you can use stories to create a link between the old and the new or complex concepts/ideas and hence, hold the attention of the learners. Finally, you can use stories at the end of your discourse to aid in retention of the information. Another interesting fact about storytelling is that you can use it to not only tell about the past but also, effectively project the future by creating scenarios of possible future events. However, to ensure that your story is not boring and predictable, you should avoid telling a beginning-to-end tale describing how results meet expectations. Instead, display the struggle between expectation and reality, in all of its wickedness. Guidelines for Effective Storytelling There are certain guidelines that you can follow for making your storytelling session as effective as possible: Involve the learner in your storytelling to create a connection. Make sure the story is relevant to the subject matter. If it is not, resist the urge to tell it, however interesting it may seem! Check your story for anything that may make someone uncomfortable (In other words, avoid stories that accidentally make fun of a culture or belief.) Make the story short and to the point. Even an extremely good story that goes on for too long loses steam. With careful thought and planning, storytelling can be a powerful tool to grab learners’ attention, engage them throughout the instructional process, and help with the retention of information. So, start weaving interesting stories to enhance your instructional skills! About the author: Sana Rashid Siddiqui, with a Masters Degree in English, has been working as an Instructional Designer and Training Needs Analyst for more than a decade. She is a British Council certified master trainer and has worked with prestigious elearning and publishing companies to create the most effective learning solutions for different training/teaching delivery media. She firmly believes in free knowledge sharing and is an active volunteer for Times of India’s ‘Teach India’ campaign and Bharat Learn’s curriculum design and implementation. An avid nature and music lover, she gives vent to her innate creative abilities through poetry. The post Storytelling: A Never-Failing Technique appeared first on .

I rarely see my friends.I have aging parents who require a great deal of care, and it's difficult to find the time.I often check email or get calls for work outside of normal business hours.The relationships I have with family, spouse or friends are difficult right now.I don't sleep enough or well, so coffee (or other caffeine) is my best friend all day. Last night we were invited to a basketball game at the last minute. I've been busy and my first thought was how fun it would be to go home and do nothing. When work get's exhausting, we disconnect. I am saddened by people who are unable to walk away from their desk at a reasonable time, and sometimes I'm one of them. Sure, everyone has times when there's an extra load of work, but the 12+ hours of work a day as a norm is not healthy, not productive and always a choice. I had a great time at the game. The Economist looked at the data from OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and found that the more productive workers were those who spent less time in the office. Lifehacker takes it one stop further and puts an actual number on how many hours we work before we begin to see diminished results - it’s about 30 hours.Who is the Enemy? According to one of my favorite writers Steven Pressfield, in his great little book Do the Work, there are three enemies: Resistance (aka our self): fear, self-doubt, procrastination, addiction, distraction, timidity, ego, self-loathing, perfectionism… okay that's enoughRational thought: using logic to help you hide from your best selfFriends and family who tell you that's just the way it has to be Your Resistance  conversation often goes something like this: Everyone else is working long hours so I have to as well. Why? What will really happen to you? You could get fired... and end up in a more sane place. You could get your work done with more quality and focus and model how to have a life to others.  What if I leave and no one notices? What if I'm not needed? If the work you are doing is irrelevant you are not needed, regardless of how many hours. Better question is what would make you needed in a positive way? What if I lose this job and the awesome salary I have? Trading money for hope and health isn't good for anyone, your place at work or you. Back in my baby programmer days, we didn't work much because it was the acceptable culture. You worked on one project at a time with a dedicated team, and sometimes you waited. You went on half hour breaks twice a day and over one hour lunches. You rushed off to play in softball and bowling leagues, or grabbed a beer with friends. And we were really bored. There wasn't enough to do. Somehow we've swung completely the other way, and we've got to help ourselves and team find the middle. As a leader, I have days that I'm off kilter and unclear, just like you do. It always seems to follow a period of intense activity, not just work stuff but also includes things I love. To stop and listen is a gift I find difficult to practice. My head, heart and health pay me back and stop me when I ignore quiet. As a leader, I must model and help my learners and my team remember to stop, listen and appreciate. I must also model asking for help from others, so I can also see the light of servant leadership driving  hope.  Here are some other ideas: Just like on projects, if I'm clear what my purpose is in my work I am better at weathering the frustration. Why does the job exist? What does it bring to the world? Why does it matter? I teach workshops to people all over the country, but I like to believe I help people get from where they are to where they want to go. I rarely hear how it turned out. When people do share with me what they've kept from our discussions, my heart sings. Better yet, knowing that it is happening can help me handle the insignificant distractions of email, airports and grumpy people. Use a quick email to challenge everyone to reply all with something they've learned from someone else that has improved their sense of purpose.  Steven Pressfield warns us that Resistance is always there, waiting to strike and hold us back. Any act that gets us thinking about our higher work (purpose) will always bring Resistance to us. Ask every one on your team to find a Steven Pressfield quote on the web and post it on their cube somewhere where others can see it and ask about it. Challenge each member of the team to build a Purpose Statement and proudly post that next the  Steven Pressfield quote. The rule is it has to have three verbs and a noun (a few connecting words are okay as well).  Mine is I ignite, affirm and sustain learning in self and others. Share yours as an example before you challenge your team.Schedule our Power of YOU online or live workshop for your team and invite the people you'd like to work more closely with to attend as well.

Is the fact that your organization already developed eLearning content and owns a Learning Management System enough to consider shifting from eLearning to mobile learning? Maybe not, but it’s a good prerequisite and this is normally the case. Very rarely do we encounter organizations that proceed to the development of online training material for mobile learning, without having "passed" through the eLearning experience.

Allison Miller is a member of eWorks’ team of accredited consultants, and a regular contributor to eWorks’ blog. Allison is passionate about providing learners with the knowledge and skills that they need in order to succeed in the world of work. And this means all learners - whether they are straight out of school or […]

Traditionally, sales organizations launched new products at massive sales events. Expensive, onsite events. Lots of travel, time out of the field and lots of easily forgettable brouhaha about new products. This format, while exciting at the time, left many holes in training effectiveness: products change rapidly, new products are formed more than once a year, a single training event does not produce long-term effects. Fortunately, multimodal learning has replaced the single event. While many companies may still have a large annual sales event, the actual learning may be delivered in many ways, continuously over time. All good changes that contribute to better retention, faster time to market and true just-in-time access. We had a client in the Medical Device manufacturing industry who had a complex set of challenges. Their sales teams were distributors, not company employees. They asked them to attend product classroom sessions conducted by product subject matter experts. Sometimes, they had great attendance, other times, not so much. And, the training varied between facilitators in spite of best efforts otherwise. But the biggest challenge was the lag between the introduction of new products and getting a fully trained sales force. Now, we all knew that adding an online multimodal learning program would alleviate most of these concerns. But, the client was concerned about creating custom eLearning that was as effective as the classroom option. They had several hands-on exercises that helped explain the product and they were uncertain that experience could be accomplished in a multimodal learning format. Well, not only did KMI Learning create simulations of these exercises but added additional features to enhance the learning and retention. We also offered a gamification option where sales reps could compete for higher scores and awards. Now, sales reps could take the training whenever it was convenient or necessary for them. The client could see how the learners performed through testing and assessments and could roll-out new product training much more quickly. So, that covered the product training but what the skills needed to sell the product? Sure, understanding the product is a necessary first step in selling that product, but it is not enough. How does that product stand up against competing products, what are your prospects’ pain points, how does your product address those pain points? Obviously, sales skills training is essential to arm your sales teams with the appropriate knowledge to answer these questions. So in collaboration with our client, we created an entire series of courses to align sales positioning skills with each product. These skills modules shared competitive information, common client objections, and solutions to these objections. Multimodal learning provided a unique opportunity for sales reps to "practice" best behaviors without damaging any relationships. Simulations of real-life situations were safely and realistically demonstrated and the sales rep employed the skills learned within these simulations. Practice truly makes perfect. Let KMI Learning help your sales teams become perfect, too. The post Multimodal Learning Always Beats Your Traditional Product Launch appeared first on KMI Learning.