One of the most important factors for organizations to succeed in today’s competitive landscape is the speedy launch of new products. The time-to-market of new products is critical to survive and succeed. Furthermore, the life cycles of most products are getting shorter due to rapid advances in technology. On the other hand, if your sales employees are not rightly trained on your products, they will not deliver the right message to your potential prospects making it a competitor’s gain. These factors are making it critical for organizations to impart quick and effective product training. Therefore, choosing the best training medium goes a long way in effective and quick knowledge transfer. In this blog, I will share with you a few methodologies that our clients have adopted to impart quick product training, that complement their classroom training sessions. 1. E-learning Courses ELearning courses are flexible and allow learners to access the information about product updates and features anytime, anywhere. You can make online courses very interesting and effective. Using suitable instructional strategies such as scenarios and simulations, learners can be trained easily on the features of even highly complex products. With the advent of rapid authoring tools, you can quickly develop courses and update content. A 60 minute, highly interactive online course can be developed in about 3 weeks. This makes eLearning the ideal format to deliver product training, and our clients successfully "synchronize" training with their product launches using this efficient medium. 2. Webinars Webinars are ideal tools to educate sales people about the features and benefits of products in a flexible manner. Webinars hold the attention of learners for longer periods of time. Live webinars can be recorded and made available on-demand breaking the shackles of time and location as learners can access them whenever and wherever they want. One of our clients, a precision weighing equipment manufacturing company develops lot of webinars to deliver training to a large audience at low cost. They translate the webinars into multiple languages and make them available to their internal sales, customer service staff and customers. 3. Mobile apps We live in an era of mobile devices. These incredible handheld gadgets can be used to provide Just-in-time (JIT) support to learners in a very efficient manner. For example, while repairing an automobile, a mechanic can instantly get the needed information or some tips by accessing a bite-sized module on the product, through an app installed on his Smartphone. Or, a sales representative can quickly brush-up his product knowledge by accessing the concerned module on his mobile. E-learning, Webinars and Mobile apps are ideal to deliver quick and effective training to your sales team. I will be sharing with you some more ways of delivering just-in-time knowledge in my next blog. Stay tuned to the second post. Have anything to say! Please do share. Related PostsWhy is Product Training Important and Who Needs it?Strategies for the Growth Stage of Marketing eLearning7 Tips To Create Effective Sales Training Courses For Gen Y Workforce - An Infographic

Traditionally, Learning and Development teams have taken an inward-looking approach to measuring their effectiveness. They have analysed the things that matter to them, such as feedback on training courses, time spent on training courses, numbers of attendees on courses and so on. The problem in gathering this data, is the fact that it has very little relevance to the business. Why? Because the business wants to know the impact its investment in learning and development is having on business outcomes, not how successful a training course has been for those who attended it. So how do you figure out the effectiveness of your Learning and Development function? To what extent are you able to demonstrate that you are adopting modernised learning approaches that deliver the outcomes the business needs: improved productivity, engagement; revenue and agility? Data is Vital to Success Data is vital; it provides the evidence you and your team need to understand impact and drive performance. An invaluable source of external, credible data is performance benchmarking - this provides robust, genuine and independent evidence on Learning and Development’s performance; the effectiveness and impact of the learning process. It enables organisations to reflect on their own performance and see how they compare against peers and top performing organisations. However, in likeness to internal data-gathering, organisations are failing to grasp the opportunity on offer. Towards Maturity’s research shows that only 23% actively benchmark their learning strategy and practices against others in their industry, compared to 41% of top performing organisations. Only 17% actually use that benchmarking data for performance improvement, compared to 35% of top learning organisations. So how can organisations use benchmarking to review their effectiveness? Let’s start by defining it. Benchmarking is the process of comparing key performance indicators for one organisation with the indicators of others who are considered to represent the industry standard or best practice for that field. Business benchmarking focuses on 2 aspects: Key Performance Indicators (or KPI’s, comparing outcomes) and performance benchmarks (comparing activities). This is nothing new; businesses have been benchmarking since the early 1990’s in order to develop new strategic direction and improve performance. Since 2003, Towards Maturity have been demonstrating effective practice benchmarking principles to help Learning and Development departments do the same. Our benchmark helps organisations review their learning strategies, including the role of technology-enabled learning, through the application of our framework of effective practices. We define the Towards Maturity Model™ on six areas that we call workstreams, against which we measure the maturity of all organisations that benchmark. Below, we unfold these workstreams, which reflect the characteristics of more mature organisations. It is important that benchmarks remain relevant and as future-proofed as possible, which is why we continually ask leading thinkers and practitioners in Learning and Development to sense-check our benchmark. This is critically important in an ever-changing world. Your effectiveness as an Learning and Development team must measure up to the current business context, not the business context of five years ago. The Towards Maturity Model™ Defining Need Mature organisations are more likely to align learning to business strategy, ensuring that programmes are relevant to both business and individual requirements. Learner Context Mature organisations are likely to have a greater focus on understanding the context of the learner, their motivations and environment. Work Context What are the work environment factors that might influence success? What needs to be changed? How should we go about it? Mature organisations ask these kind of questions. Building Capability Mature organisations target the changing needs of their learning and development professionals to ensure that they are to be equipped with the right skills, resources and reputation to effect change. Ensuring Engagement Mature organisations have proactive strategies for involving critical stakeholders who influence behaviour change. Demonstrating Value Mature organisations will be proactive in identifying the value their learning technologies are adding to their organisation. The Towards Maturity Model™ helps L&D leaders adjust their practices to align with these six effective workstreams identified through extensive research on over 3,500 organisations since 2003. We know that reflection is an essential part of learning; by using the framework of the Towards Maturity Model™ to reflect on the effectiveness of your learning strategy, you will learn what is working, what isn't and why. This generates insights that will have value for the wider business in terms of measuring outcomes. It will also help you make better decisions, which will help you become a more effective Learning and Development team or leader. The Towards Maturity Benchmark™ is a useful tool to help you understand how effective your Learning and Development strategies are and how you compare to peers and top performing learning organisations. If you are keen to find out how effective your Learning and Development team is, make sure you benchmark this year: it’s open until 31 July. More than 3,500 organisations have taken part to date, so there is plenty of data for you to benchmark against. Start Your Benchmark This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How to Create and Manage Reports with Docebo LMS The worst thing you can do when delivering training, especially online, is forget about reports. No matter how good your T&D strategy is, you can’t assess the outcome of your activities without reports - they are without a doubt the best way to get the "pulse" of your elearning project. By analysing parameters such as attendance rate, completion rate and other key indicators that can vary, you will be able to understand which part/s of your elearning strategy is performing better and which is not. This kind of data it’s obviously useless if there is no follow-up. The information collected through LMS reports will be fundamental to assessing and improving on training outcomes. Success relies on correct execution, analysis, optimization and iteration, and the key to optimization is to have sufficient data to understand what works and what doesn’t work for your learners. The Docebo LMS offers an extremely flexible reporting tool that will allow you to closely monitor the performance of your learners and the efficiency of your training materials in order to ultimately provide the best learning experience possible. The post How to Create and Manage Reports with Docebo LMS appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

"A major challenge we face today, therefore, is to create a desire in people to learn; and to foster and facilitate this desire throughout their lives." - Bryn Holmes(Author, eLearning Concepts and Practice, 2006) John, a trainer in a manufacturing company has given his new employee a PDF document that explains the working process of a piece of equipment. The new hire started reading it after the work hours. There was no one to guide him or clear his doubts. He was left all alone. There was nobody to help him understand the content. Do you think the new employee could effectively participate in the next step of the training process? Do you think he could understand the content effectively without help or guidance from the training manager or colleagues? Obviously, the answer is a big No! Similarly, in an online learning environment, when you leave the learner alone without guidance and external support, he may not participate in the learning process effectively. In this info-graphic, I would like to share some best practices that you need to adopt to make your employees participate in the online learning process actively. Hope you find the post useful. Please do share your views. Related PostsLevels of Content Chunking in E-learningGuidelines for Content Chunking to Design Effective Online CoursesTips for L&D Professionals on Fostering a Learning Culture

Google for Education Video Tutorial: Teacher Tips- Using Google Forms to Instantly See Student Feedback This Google for Education Video Tutorial presents Google Forms and how the Notification feature is set up and how it works. The post Google for Education Video Tutorial: Teacher Tips- Using Google Forms to Instantly See Student Feedback appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

How To Transform Faculty Into Fully Online Educators  I am an Instructional Designer who teaches a fully online professional development seminar that focuses on Instructional Design principles for developing and delivering fully online and blended courses. As the 6 week seminar wraps up, one of the final assignments I require faculty to complete is a reflective learning journal. With permission from the faculty who participated in the seminar, I present a few excerpts from their journals that support and highlight best practices I have developed at my university for faculty development. 1. Provide Opportunities For Collaborative Learning From Peers.  Design your training so that faculty are engaging in learning experiences that they can implement into their own online courses. For example, one of the projects in the seminar requires faculty to develop a learning unit that they will actually use in their own fully online or blended courses. All participants are required to submit this assignment to their respective group’s discussion board and provide peer review for each other’s work, using a rubric that I developed. The quotes below explain what insights faculty can gain by this kind of exercise. One instructor’s journal entry states: "I appreciated the openness of the class members to gently criticize each other and make suggestions to improve the quality of our assignments and understanding of those assignments. This really reinforced the use of the discussion forum and the ability to provide peer-review to each other regarding what had been submitted." His classmate reveals an initial feeling of uneasiness but saw the benefit of the activity when she discloses the following: "As for the peer review exercise: I admit that I was a little nervous about having others critique my work. However, my classmates —neither of whom I knew before this class— both offered constructive feedback that was right on target. I found the whole exercise so useful that I plan to use a similar approach in my own graduate classes." This assignment gave faculty a hands-on example of how they could integrate online groups within a course as a means for peer review. It also functioned as a nice way for faculty to experience how students could provide instructional scaffolds to each other in an online learning environment, so that online discussions can be more engaging. 2. Train Faculty Online: Place Faculty In The Seats Of Students.  Insight into the student experience is gained when professional development is given fully online. This is summarized by a participant who notes the following: "I think the best faculty development workshops require us to view our courses and practices from a student’s perspective. Many of the assignments in this course challenged me to rethink my approach to moving course content online and how this approach would impact students of diverse skill levels and experience." His peer reflects on the importance of instructor feedback. She states: "I really valued the feedback I received on my assignments and again, being in the student’s seat, I really could see how crucial descriptive and appreciative comments from the teacher are!" In my experience as an Instructional Designer, faculty are sometimes trained in group settings in a room with multiple computers and a teacher workstation. Although faculty are developing skills for using the various features of a Learning Management System, they are not truly experiencing online teaching and learning. The implications of the above quotes are tremendous; when faculty are placed in the seats of students for professional development purposes, it can influence the design, development, and delivery of their courses. 3. Develop Faculty’s Multimedia Skills. Instructional Designers teach faculty about how to use multimedia resources, such as YouTube, for the enhancement of online courses, using video created by others. However, we should provide faculty with training on how to create their own media. This Instructor writes about his blended course and how he was able to immediately use what he was learning about podcasting from the training seminar I teach. He states: "Practicum Assignments: These gave me a very good opportunity to develop rudimentary skills in each of the areas that were covered. (...) An additional bonus with the podcast was that with the snow days that we had, I was able to utilize that with students in one of my courses this semester." His colleague concurs, whose course was also not fully online: "What I particularly found helpful were the practicums. (…) This course introduced several new options. In fact, following the most recent snowstorm, I used Camtasia to create a lecture [capture] for a course I was supposed to host. As this course had been repeatedly canceled [due to inclement weather], this program was a phenomenal option. Having immediate access to this program made it so easy for me to solve a true problem in my course." The professors’ comments make it very clear that assignments given in professional development sessions should not be busywork. In each example, these instructors were able to develop their own multimedia to meet the specific needs of their respective classes. Although it is convenient to use multimedia developed by others, an instructor may not find a video or podcasts that thoroughly covers the topic and of course. By having gained multimedia authoring skills, these participants are no longer reliant on what others have produced. They can now make contributions to various online multimedia repositories. 4. Modeling Examples Of Teaching Presence. A common term in eLearning is teaching presence, which is "The design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes" (Anderson et al. 2001, p. 5). As the facilitator of a professional development seminar, model good online teaching presence through your engagement with faculty. I did this by providing video feedback to faculty using Jing and Camtasia Studio screen capture software. This faculty member reflects on the feedback I gave her as an example of instructor presence: "I really valued the feedback I received on my assignments and again, being in the student’s seat, I really could see how crucial descriptive and appreciative comments from the teacher are! I liked, especially, Sabrina, getting feedback from you in Camtasia and being able to access it. I think this would work super well in my writing classes to go over student drafts and I am considering doing some of this semester!" Students can experience isolation in an online environment by not seeing an active teacher presence. By modeling how one can give video feedback, I provided an example for the instructor of how she can make her presence felt by her online students. 5. Provide Faculty With Practical Skills For ADA Compliance. Technology can meet the needs of busy adults, by providing eLearning opportunities in asynchronous formats. However, the development of these courses can sometimes form barriers for those with disabilities. A necessary ingredient to faculty development is not only helping faculty to understand disabilities and ADA compliance, but also giving them skills to make their courses more accessible. This need is exemplified in the two journal excerpts below. One instructor writes: "Part of the challenge with accessible courses is creating them; easy access to the technology and support staff to teach us how to use it helps alleviate those challenges. This course gave me some new tools that I am enthusiastically using as a result of the instruction I received." This is elaborated by the instructor’s classmate who states: "The course materials and activities really raised my consciousness about practices that faculty can undertake to improve accessibility for all. It was a bonus to learn through first-hand experience that it's actually quite easy to create ADA-compliant Word documents, podcasts, and other course content that helps make classes truly accessible." As faculty across the globe are asked to integrate technology into their teaching practices, more and more there will be a need to pair this integration with compliance so that all students are given an equal chance to learn. Professional development can stimulate instructors to reflect on their pedagogy and become more self-aware about their engagement with students. It is not an arduous hurdle that administration directs faculty to leap over but is actually a useful vehicle to the educator for developing a new set of instructional strategies. Resources Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D. R., & Archer, W. (2001). Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5 (2).  Retrieved from http://cde.athabascau.ca/coi_site/documents/Anderson_Rourke_Garrison_Archer_Teaching_Presence.pdf This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

E-learning is the continuous process of learning through electronic media. Instructional design is a systematic process of learning, and this learning facilitates achievement of the intended goals. Many think that instructional design is all about using technology, but this is not the case. As instructional designers, we discover new strategies and techniques for creating extraordinary courses. Our biggest challenge is to keep the learner engaged throughout the course. Often, the content of the course is considered the most important aspect of instructional design; however, presentation styles are also essential. Thus, designing visually appealing and eye-catchy courses is the primary objectiveof an instructional designer. In this blog, I’ll share a few dos and don’ts which will help design better online courses. Dos Use graphics: It is always important to select the right kind of graphic which complements the text. Adding relevant images wherever possible helps in explaining ideas, concepts or statements. Each image added should have a specific purpose relevant to the content being taught. Use graphics near text: Use graphics to teach a concept as it is a great way to help the learner learn easily. However, if the graphic ‘dominates’ the text, the learner loses interest in the course. Therefore, a proper balance between text and graphics should be maintained. Make sure that the graphic is always near the text. Don’ts Do NOT explain the graphic and text: It is a best practice to teach a self-explanatory graphic using only audio. DO NOT explain the graphic in combination with the text and audio. Effective learning happens only when the graphic is explained using explanatory audio alone.  AVOID using complementary visuals: Avoid using irrelevant visuals, text and audio which do not teach anything. Ensure that the text is clear and concise and avoid lengthy paragraphs, to facilitate good learning. Since all eLearning courses use graphics, text and audio to deliver content, keep these dos and don’ts in mind before developing online courses. Related PostsGuidelines for Content Chunking to Design Effective Online Courses4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesDesigning Screen Layouts For eLearning Courses

In my last blog, we have seen how E-learning, webinars and Mobile apps can be used to impart product training. In this blog, we will look at some more methods. 1. Blending learning Blended learning methodologies are very useful to impart hands-on training on products in a cost-effective manner. Especially if your need is to train your employees on products that are complex and when learners need to gain mastery over intricate concepts. One of our clients, an Oil and gas company wanted to train employees on new product machinery to be used in an oil-rig. So, they used classroom sessions and workshops to train on the underlying concepts and handling of the equipment. Then, eLearning modules containing simulations were offered to the trainees to practice the steps of handling the machinery. Bite-sized sessions were used as ready references to the concepts learnt before the employees actually get down to work. 2. Videos Videos can be used very effectively to impart product training. They are perfect tools to explain the functioning of products. They come handy in situations where the working of the products cannot be demonstrated live. Videos can be used to educate people about the features of a product, its advantages, its handling and any precautionary measures that need to be followed while using it. Videos can also be embedded in eLearning courses to enhance their efficacy. Our client, a global leader in manufacturing creates technical videos of 5 to 6 minutes on their high-profile analytical instruments to train their sales and e-Marketing teams, thereby helping them reach out to more prospects. 3. E-books E-books are widely used by companies to impart training to their staff. They can be used very effectively used as process and product manuals, user guides, etc. They can be accessed very easily and conveniently through mobile devices such as iPads and are very useful to deliver comprehensive knowledge of the product. For instance, our client, a manufacturer of automotive spare parts, creates engaging flip books and eBooks with detailed information of their products to its sales employees as well as customers instead of boring manuals. We thus see that webinars, videos, mobile apps and eBooks are some useful media to equip your sales people with the needed knowledge about your products, quickly and effectively. Hope you find this information useful. Do share if you wish to expand this list. We would love to hear your views. Related PostsCreative Ways to Present Click on Tab Interactivity in E-learning Courses - An InfographicAre you Ready for eLearning with the Right Infrastructure?4 Ways to Integrate E-learning and Classroom Training - An Infographic

How To Quickly Deliver High Quality eLearning Here are 3 strategies to help you quickly deliver high quality eLearning: 1. Reuse branded themes. Look for opportunities to create eLearning themes that you can use over and over. This will help save time and money as you build more projects. It also makes the development process more efficient and easier for your entire team. How to reuse branded themes: Use an eLearning authoring tool that provides ready-made themes that you can customize with your own branding. These themes will already be built to industry standards and include design best practices that will save you heaps of time. Some tools like Elucidat provide responsive themes that will automatically adjust to different mobile and tablet devices. Set up your theme and brand the first time, then just focus on the content for future courses. This will speed up eLearning content development because you won’t have to spend any time designing your eLearning. Pick a tool that provides Master courses (or Master templates). Master courses are reusable courses that you can use to quickly build new projects. All changes made to a Master course are automatically synced with the linked projects. This saves your team lots of repetitive work, since they don’t have to manually make changes to each project. Master courses also make localization projects much more efficient. You can quickly create courses in different languages and empower reviewers to comment on and collaborate directly inside the project. 2. Use cloud-based collaboration tools. Stakeholders will need to review your projects at some stage in the development process. This is often where your work runs into some snags. How do your stakeholders manage the review and feedback cycles, track changes, and monitor version control? These tasks can be particularly challenging if you have multiple stakeholders and reviewers working on the project. How to enhance stakeholder collaboration: Make sure everyone reviewing the project has access to the most up-to-date version. The best way to ensure people are working on the current project is to use a cloud-based eLearning tool that automatically manages updates and keeps the project current. Use a system to track and manage review cycles and changes. eLearning software like Elucidat incorporates this functionality to help you track updates. For example, Elucidat has an easy-to-use comment tool that lets team members, subject matter experts and stakeholders add notes for the rest of the team. You can quickly see what changes or additions have been made and who made those changes. Is it time to throw away that frustrating spreadsheet you use to track changes? Sign off on changes inside the project itself. This makes it easy to keep the updates and the tracked changes together in one place. Never again will you need to use another tool to manage the review process. 3. Reduce maintenance time with Rapid Release republishing. As an eLearning manager, you’ll likely need to factor in time for maintenance of content and projects. This is especially the case if your company requires annual updates to your compliance courses. How to speed up eLearning maintenance: Use an authoring tool that enables authors to push updates out directly to their Learning Management Systems. This is a serious time saver. No longer do you need to make the changes, republish the project, and then upload it again in the Learning Management System. Elucidat’s Rapid Release™ republishing feature enables you to quickly update content in your Learning Management System without having to download and upload files to SCORM each time. Changes are processed straight to the Learning Management System - no need for republishing, packaging, or redeploying. Conclusion: Embrace new technology.  Embrace new technology that can help you design great-looking eLearning and increase the efficiency of your authoring team. Tools that make the development process more efficient will help you reduce the time it takes to develop eLearning projects. In turn, this will help you to control costs and deliver high quality eLearning, faster. Next step: Discover more ways to deliver eLearning faster by signing up for Elucidat's eLearning Time-savers course This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Litmos LMS Tutorial: Course Library in Litmos LMS This Litmos LMS Tutorial explains the Course Library in Litmos LMS and presents tips on how to use it. The post Litmos LMS Tutorial: Course Library in Litmos LMS appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.