Howard Errey is a psychologist with an interest in innovation. He works as a Senior Coordinator, Digital Learning, for the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University and blogs here. Here Howard shares a fascinating journey into the world of virtual reality and 360 video to offer an immersive learning experience.The ProblemAt RMIT […]

We’ve talked about microlearning before (Microlearning - What Is It and Why Use It? and Uses for Microlearning Infograph), but what was not emphasized was the growing use of micorlearning. In an article by Educators NZ, they state: In fact, among five emerging types of learning (microlearning, massive open online courses (MOOCs), flipped classes, gamified learning, and microcredentials), microlearning shows the highest rate of adoption - and arguably the greatest potential for growth. Check out the complete article: Educators NZ - Microlearning: The e-Learning method taking off around the world.

We’re well into 2016 by now, and with that comes the first bump in the road of the year. Many of us kicked off the new year with grand aspirations of breaking bad habits, building new healthy routines, and generally bettering ourselves. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, we’re already starting to feel our resolve crumble and our confidence waver. Some of us may have broken our resolutions already, and are struggling to get back on the wagon. If you’re feeling a little low because of your broken New Year’s resolutions, this post is for you! We’ve rounded up some of the best literary quotes to respond to everything you’re feeling. 1. If you’re feeling bad because you messed up yesterday (and the day before, and the day before that…): "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." - Ralph Waldo Emerson 2. If you’re feeling like you’re struggling to keep up your resolution for another day: "Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way." - Charles Bukowski 3. If you feel like you can’t seem to change and you think "oh well!": "If I didn’t care for fun and such, I’d probably amount to much. But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn." - Dorothy Parker 4. If you’re overcome with frustration because you aren’t hitting your New Year’s goals: "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward." - Kurt Vonnegut 5. If you’re making progress but feel like you’re not getting results: "I have learned that everybody wants to live on top of the mountain, without knowing that true happiness is obtained in the journey taken and the form used to reach the top of the hill." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 6. If you struggle to stick with your resolution everyday, and it doesn’t get any easier: "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E. B. White 7. If you’re driving yourself crazy with all your New Year’s rules: "Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time." - Haruki Murakami 8. If you’re not sure whether to just give up: "Some people when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give up." - Roald Dahl 9. If you’re wondering why everyone else is doing better than you: "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." - Ernest Hemingway 10. If you’re being too hard on yourself: "I try all things, I achieve what I can." - Herman Melville 11. And last but not least, in case you needed reminding: "You are your best thing" - Toni Morrison - What’s your favorite literary quote when you’re feeling down about yourself?

I’ve always found my early morning hours to be my strongest "thinking" hours. And apparently I’m not alone! The first hours of your workday are the most productive, according to psychologist Ron Friedman.  "Typically, we have a window of about three hours where we’re really, really focused. We’re able to have some strong contributions in terms of planning, in terms of thinking, in terms of speaking well," Friedman told Harvard Business Review. "If we end up squandering those first three hours reacting to other people’s priorities for us . . . that ends up using up our best hours and we’re not quite as effective as we could be." Likewise, Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job" states "Successful people understand the importance of having control over their mornings and know how to use that time wisely." So, what is the best way gain control over your morning hours for peak performance? 1.  Don’t schedule meetings during this first part of the day if you can help it. You’ll be more effective and better able to focus on the subject of the meeting later if you’ve had a chance to plan and structure your day versus just jumping in. 2.  Avoid distraction. If possible, focus on one thing you really need to do and put off opening your inbox for one hour. If that’s not possible, deal with necessary emails and voice mails, but set others aside for later. You know which ones are truly important and which can wait awhile. 3.  The quiet hours of the morning can be the ideal time to focus on an important project without interruption. Take time to strategize on large projects and break them down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Look at the end goal or result and work backwards. Think of the necessary steps it will take to reach that goal and write everything down. Estimate timing for each step so that you have a realistic view on how long it will take to complete. Our brains are often better able to do some deeper thinking in the morning before the disruptions of the day begin. 4.  Look at the large picture and prioritize goals for the day - the morning hours are peak time for planning and organizing. Set up a good calendar system to list projects, tasks and due dates and use it! Taking care of yourself throughout the rest of the day is just as important: 5.  Give yourself a break when you need one. Our bodies follow "ultradian rhythms," or cycles that last 90 to 120 minutes during which our bodies become fatigued and need a break. When you notice signals such as yawning, hunger, or brain fatigue - give yourself a chance to step away from your desk and eat, walk or stretch. Pushing through these cycles or rhythms only results in lower efficiency and substandard work. Work that you might just have to re-do tomorrow morning! 6.  Plan for the 2-3 o’clock energy dip. Most of us have a time every afternoon when our energy levels dip. If you can’t sneak away for a twenty minute nap (a favorite of mine), then have a list of "lower priority" tasks that you might be able to complete while you are not at your best. Keep in mind that when we are tired, our creative juices often flow. We are in a more relaxed state and that allows our minds to wander, to wonder, and to create. So, if your work allows it, take on a more creative task during this mid-afternoon slump! 7.  Unplug at a set time every day. There will always be work to do. But you can’t always be doing work. Give yourself time to unplug and do something FUN. Spend time with family or friends or curl up on the sofa and read a book. Maybe THIS is the most important time of the day after all! By putting your morning in order and paying attention to your peak performance times throughout the rest of the day - you’ll be more focused and feel a bit more in control every day! Sources: https://hbr.org/2015/03/your-brains-ideal-schedule http://www.businessinsider.com/how-successful-people-spend-their-first-hour-at-work-2014-3 http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254531            

When we started out on our LearnUpon journey three and a half years ago, it was difficult to tell where our first paying customer might come from, let alone where we’d get 500 of them. Thankfully, a close friend introduced LearnUpon to David Marshall of Marshall ACM in London and even though he already had an LMS, David decided to give us a go to see what else we had to offer. Today, three and a half years later, Marshall ACM have over 219,000 users on LearnUpon. We soon welcomed our first US customer, when Logan Weaver in EMMCare decided LearnUpon would be a good fit for their LMS needs. Even though we continue to be headquartered in Dublin today, the US is by far LearnUpon’s biggest market with over 300 customers accounting for 60% of our overall customer base.   Along the way, we’ve had many homes, from the kitchen table to the office our friends in the NDRC put us up in for over a year. Robert Baker kindly let us bunk in with RedHills for a while, until we eventually got our first "proper" office in Baggot Street. We still laugh to ourselves when we think back to Shane’s first day, when he sat opposite me in a 2m x 2m room (box?!) sharing a desk while we waited a couple of weeks for our real office to be ready. No doubt Shane wondered why he left publicly listed Glanbia, with their 6,000 employees, to join this tech startup! As the team grew with the hiring of Caroline and Caoimhín, we soon had to move into our current home on Leeson Street, where things are once again cosy (to say the least). There’s now 20 of us in the Dublin office, thanks in no small part to the "Smaller Desks" project implemented last September. It’s great for team building and getting to know your colleagues! We are getting ready to move again, hopefully next month, into a new office which will give us the space to continue to grow the team to 60-70 people over the coming years.   It’s been an exciting couple of years. When our most recent customer was invoiced yesterday to officially become our 500th, it felt great to think about how we’d managed to grow LearnUpon’s customer base from zero in three and a half years. In some ways, maybe I should be surprised. But then I look around our Dublin office at 10pm any night of the week and I see a hive of activity - 2 or 3 Account Managers heading in to demos, Carrie or Michele returning from a customer success call, and of course our amazing Customer Support team doing what they do best. And chances are some of the marketing and ops teams will also be in putting the finishing touches to the latest blog post or reviewing a lease agreement. When most other companies are gone home for the day hours earlier, LearnUpon is buzzing with a brilliant team all looking to deliver the best customer experience possible. At midnight, the support team will head home but not before Dave comes online in Sydney to take over the support desk. And I know over in Belgrade Des and his team are coding away on the latest set of features which will soon be live on LearnUpon. Is it any wonder we’ve grown to 500 customers based in 12 countries so fast? Today LearnUpon is used by global brand names like Mars, PING, DocuSign, Bojangles, Deliveroo, and many more.   And for me the really exciting part is we’re only getting started. With such an amazing team and so many super cool features planned for release, I’ve no doubt we’ll be announcing our 1,000th customer before long. Only last week, Des gave me a sneak preview of a major project we’ve planned for release in a couple of months time, when I saw what the guys have planned I was so excited I literally couldn’t sleep that night as my mind raced with all the possibilities this upcoming release would bring. More on Project X soon.   I’ll finish by saying a massive thank you to each and every one of our 500 customers. Without your support and feedback we wouldn’t have the best LMS in the market or provide the best customer support in the world.   Brendan, Des and all the team at LearnUpon. P.S. Below is an infographic that Alex, Caroline and Antoinette pulled together providing some interesting stats on our journey to 500 customers.     View a png of the infographic here.   Try LearnUpon free for 30 days .learnupon.com Agree to Terms of Service Start my free trial The post LearnUpon welcomes its 500th customer appeared first on LearnUpon.

[Post by Arden Rose, Account Manager at GeoMetrix Data Systems Inc.] Hosted by the Brandon Hall Group, HCM Excellence is just a week away in Palm Beach, Florida. This event brings you a fresh-and-expanded 2016 Conference Program that empowers you to be the most effective strategic leader you can be. Sessions provide a fresh way of thinking about the challenges that lie ahead. Thursday’s keynote features acclaimed thought leader Bonnie St. John, who will provide both inspiration and new tools for success with her thoughts on "High-Performance Resilience." For more information visit HCM Excellence16

You work hard on your safety & health/EHS program at work. You give it a lot of thought, you spend a lot of time on it, and you care a lot about it (and about the people and environment it’s intended to protect). But how do you know if what you’re doing is effective? How do you know if it’s working? How can you measure your own performance? One thing you can do is to keep track of the number of incidents at work. Things like work-related fatalities, injuries, or illnesses. Or chemical spills to the environment. As a group, these are known as lagging indicators. They’re called lagging because they tell you about things that have already happened. Lagging indicators have their place, and they’re important to track. But they have their limits, too, and it’s helpful to track other stuff as well in order to truly measure the success of your EHS program. As you may have guessed, we’re "leading up to" the subject of leading indicators here, and the use of leading indicators for EHS measurement. What are they, in general? What are some good examples? What’s the point of using them? How can you get started using them? Those are the kind of questions we’re going to address below. Convergence Training is a training solutions provider with a strong EHS offering. Check out our learning management systems (LMSs) and our EHS e-learning courses, or just contact us for more information or to set up a demo. You can also download this FREE Guide to Effective EHS Training while you’re here. EHS Leading Indicators for EHS Performance Measurement Let’s start by giving some general information: What a leading indicator is What an EHS leading indicator is Why you should monitor EHS leading indicators Some types and examples of EHS leading indicators What Is a Leading Indicator? A leading indicator is something that gives you an idea if something else will or might happen in the future. They’re not a guarantee that something will happen in the future. But as the name implies, they indicate that the future event may occur. For example, you commonly hear leading indicators discussed when the news is talking about the national economy. These economic leading indicators give us a way to anticipate what the national economy as a whole might do in the future. Some examples of economic leading indicators include manufacturing activity, retail sales, building permits, the housing market, and new business start ups. You can see how analyzing these leading indicators can help you predict if the national economy will grow, slow, or even contract in the future. And that’s one of the primary benefits of leading indicators-they help you anticipate and predict. What Is an EHS Leading Indicator? Now that we know what a leading indicator is in general, let’s turn our attention to what an EHS leading indicator is. According to the National Safety Council (and their Campbell Institute), EHS leading indicators are: "…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) So at the most fundamental level, an EHS leading indicator is a predictive tool you can use to identify and then eliminate or control risks that might otherwise lead to incidents and injuries. What Are Some Characteristics of Good Leading Indicators? That definition above gave you some good insight into what an EHS leading indicator is, but let’s look at this more closely. According to the NSC, an EHS leading indicator should have the following characteristics: Actionable Achievable Meaningful Transparent Easy to communicate Valid Useful Timely (2) When you select the measures you want to use for your own EHS leading indicators, keep these tests in mind. If you’ve selected a metric to act as an EHS indicator that you’ll measure, it should stand up to the tests above. Is It Important to Measure and Monitor EHS Leading Indicators? What Experts Say If leading experts in the field told you it was important to track EHS leading indicators, would that be enough for you to do it? Because according to a study published by the National Safety Council that surveyed industry members, it’s important. Check the graph below. (3) Sixty-one percent of the companies surveyed said the use of EHS leading indicators was "extremely important" and another twenty-eight percent said "very important." That’s an impressive combined total of eighty-nine percent who give a LOT of importance to the use of EHS leading indicators. Even the other companies say it’s "moderately important" or "slightly important." Admission-I’m not really sure what it means to be "slightly important," but I guess it means it’s still important (apparently "not at all important" was an option and nobody selected that). Reasons to Measure and Monitor EHS Leading Indicators But maybe you’re not the kind to do something just because experts say it’s a good thing to do. Maybe you need some reasons and some convincing. That’s a good thing, and we’ve got some reasons for you below. The primary reason to use EHS leading indicators is because they give you a chance to prevent a problem before it happens. To put that another way: "…leading indicators are designed to give advanced warning of potential problems so that preventive actions can be taken. Additionally, they help to reveal the weaknesses in an organizations’ procedures or employee behavior before they have a chance to cause real harm." (3) That seems like reason enough. What’s not to like about doing something that will help you prevent a problem? But that’s not all that measuring and monitoring EHS leading indicators can do for you (and your company). In addition, monitoring EHS leading indicators allows you to: Monitor and evaluate the performance of your EHS program Encourage a safety culture Create continuous improvement effort for EHS Communicate results of your EHS efforts (4) So all told, the use of EHS leading indicators is recommended for the reasons listed below. Types of EHS Leading Indicators There are lots of different metrics that can be used as EHS leading indicators. These include things like: Observations of safe or unsafe behaviors Reported near misses Audits, including audits performed, the number of overdue audit items, and the length of time it takes to close action items resulting from audits EHS training, including training for workers, managers, and executives (total completions, percentage completed, average test scores, etc.) EHS-related meetings Non-compliances/infractions Incidents (injuries/illnesses/other events) Incident investigations JHAs performed Employee safety suggestions received Employee safety suggestions acted on There’s no single "master list" of EHS leading indicators that every company uses. Instead, each company selects the ones that work best for their needs and circumstances. To help you come up with your own list, you can think of EHS leading indicators as falling into one of three categories. These include behavior-based, operations-based, and systems-based indicators, as shown below. Here they are explained in a little more detail: Behavior-based EHS indicators are related to the behaviors and/or actions of individuals or group of people. Examples might include safety walkarounds by EHS personnel, on-the-job safety observations by employees, and the ratio of positive to negative safety observations. Operations-based EHS indicators are related to the function of a company’s machinery and operations. Examples might include the number of new trainings for operators, the number of regulatory inspections without findings, or the number of defects found in equipment. Systems-based EHS indicators are related to the EHS management system. Examples might include the number of reported near-misses, the number of completed safety/EHS trainings, the number of corrective actions, and the number of safety inspections and audits. (5) When coming up with your own EHS leading indicators, it may help you to start by thinking of these three categories and make sure you select some indicators to measure performance in each category. Can You Give Me More EHS Leading Indicators? The National Safety Council (and their Campbell Institute) has created several great guides on the use of EHS leading indicators. One of them, titled Practical Guide to Leading Indicators: Metrics, Case Studies & Strategies, includes a very long list of leading indicators that might be helpful for your company to measure. Click this link, download the guide (it’s a PDF), and check out the list on pages 14-18. They include a large number of specific metrics in each of the following categories: Risk assessment Hazard identification/recognition Risk profiling Preventive and corrective actions Management of change processes Learning systems EHS management systems Recognition, disciplinary, and reinforcement program Leading indicator component evaluation Communication of safety Safety perception survey Training Compliance Prevention through design Leadership engagement Employee engagement and participation Area observations/walkarounds Off-the-job safety Permit-to-work systems Equipment and preventive maintenance (6) On the other hand, if the list above is enough to get you started or pointed in the right direction, great. Let’s Talk More About Near Misses Near misses are an interesting issue within the discussion of lagging and leading indicators for EHS. Interesting and controversial, that is. Because there are people in (at least) two camps about whether or not they’re leading indicators and/or whether or not they should be used that way. The Argument FOR Using Reported Near Misses as Leading Indicators The report of a near miss, followed up by corrective action, may help prevent a "real" incident from occurring in the short- or long-term future. As a result, some believe near misses are an effective EHS leading indicator that might be useful to measure. The Argument AGAINST Using Reported Near Misses as Leading Indicators An increase in reported near misses may mean there are more hazards in a workplace. But on the other hand, it might just be that people are being more observant, or that they feel more free to report near misses (without negative personal consequences-like being blamed by their boss). Or maybe they feel reporting a near miss is more likely to lead to a positive corrective action. Because the reasons behind near miss reporting can get murky like this, some suggest that near misses are not an effective EHS leading indicator and they recommend against using near misses that way. A Possible Compromise On Near Misses: Lagging or Leading, Depending on Circumstances The National Safety Council/Campbell Institute’s Elevating EHS Leading Indicators: From Defining to Designing has this to say about near misses: "The issue of near misses remains an ongoing debate in the world of occupational safety and health with each side possessing valid arguments. One answer that straddles these two opinions is that near misses an be considered both leading and lagging depending on how they are treated. If the intent is to treat near misses as actual incidents, especially when it comes to mandatory reporting, the near miss itself can be seen as an event with negative consequences and considered more of a lagging indicator. If the intent of tracking near misses is to find weaknesses in a safety management system and improve organization  safety performance, then near misses become more leading in nature." (7) This seems reasonable to me, but of course you can make your own decision. Using Lagging AND Leading Indicators We’re focusing on leading indicators in this article. So much so, you might get the idea that there’s no reason to track lagging indicators. But that’s not our intention. Let’s turn our attention to lagging indicators briefly. Don’t Forget Your EHS Lagging Indicators Traditionally, some companies have focused solely or too much on lagging indicators such as injuries and illnesses. And there are some problems with that. For one thing, at many companies, the injury and incident rates (these are lagging indicators) are already quite low. It’s difficult to get them down further, so tracking just lagging indicators doesn’t give much information about the performance of the EHS program. Secondly, if you’ve got a low incident rate and even a minor incident or a small number of incidents do occur, the changed rate may make the EHS performance look much worse than it really is. And finally, focusing solely on lagging indicators can create give people an incentive to "game" the system. If you’re sole focus is on lagging indicators, and people’s future employment, promotions, raises, and performance bonuses are at stake, what happens when there’s a recordable incident? Isn’t there the possibility that people won’t actually record it? You bet there is. So those are a few of the issues of tracking only lagging indicators or giving too much emphasis to them. But we don’t want you to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Just because you should increase your focus on leading indicators doesn’t mean you should quit measuring lagging indicators. Experts Tip: Track Both Leading and Lagging Indicators The best practice is to track some lagging and some leading indicators. That’s not how it works at all sites and organizations, as you’ll soon see. But it’s a good practice. Here a breakdown of the percentage of companies  tracking lagging indicators, leading indicators, or both at the site-level. (8) And here’s a breakdown from the same companies, showing if they’re tracking lagging indicators, leading indicators, or both at the corporate level. Note that there ratios are different than those at the site-level above, and that nobody reported using only leading indicators at the corporate level. (9) The "blend" of lagging and leading indicators that you use at your company will be up to your company. Likewise, it will be up to your company if you use the same blend at the site level that you use at the corporate level, if each site has the same or different measures, and how (or if) you "roll up" the indicators at the department/site/region or district/corporate level. Expert Tip 2: Link Leading Indicators to Changes in Lagging Indicators Remember that an EHS leading indicator is supposed to have predictive powers. Meaning, if you’re tracking EHS leading indicators, you should be able to use your data to accurately predict what your EHS lagging indicators will do. So, if your EHS leading indicators are trending in a positive direction, then your lagging indicators should also trend in a positive direction. This ability to be able to "link" or connect the performance of your leading indicators with your lagging indicators is important. Here’s now the National Safety Council (and the participants of a survey they developed) puts it: "The vast majority of respondents stated that having the ability to tie changes in leading indicators to stronger or weaker performance on injury rates and other lagging indicators is very important (64%) or extremely important (21%). In a follow-up question, survey respondents were asked if they were able to establish a statistical relationship between leading and lagging indicators and, if so, how they were able to do so. Six out of thirteen respondents (46%) were able to definitely state that they have found a statistical link between leading and lagging indicators…The methods used by organizations to measure this relationship was limited to finding a general trend or a temporary association between leading and lagging metrics (e.g., sites with higher volume of near miss reporting or fewer behavior-based safety observations have lower injury rates.)" (11) So according to the NSC and their survey: It’s important to try to link leading and lagging indicators It’s possible to link them Common linking methods include general trends or temporary associations The NSC/Campbell Institute document titled Practical Guide to Leading Indicators: Metrics, Case Studies & Strategies includes several case studies that show organizations like Cummins, Honeywell, NASA, USG, and Fluor doing just that. It’s worth checking out if you’re interested in more details. Working with EHS Leading Indicators at Your Company We’re going to stop here, but there’s still more to be said about leading indicators for EHS performance. Notably, how to begin doing it-which ones to select, and how to manage and refine what you’re doing over time. We anticipate writing another article that covers some of those issues in the future. But we also welcome any of your comments in the section below. Especially from people who have experience and (presumably) success doing this. Until then, thanks for reading. We’ll catch you next time.   Notes: This article drew a lot of information from three documents created by the National Safety Council and their Campbell Institute. We think the articles are excellent and we encourage you to download and read them in full (they each average over 20 pages, so it takes a while to get through them and one benefit to our article above is its relative brevity). Here’s where you can find them: Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators (first of three) Practical Guide to Leading Indicators: Metrics, Case Studies & Strategies  (second of three) Elevating EHS Leading Indicators: From Defining to Designing  (third of three) (1) Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 2. (2) Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 2. (3) Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 8. (4) Practical Guide to Leading Indicators: Metrics, Case Studies & Strategies, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 4. (5) Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 8. (The list above was based partly on the list in this NSC document.) (6) Practical Guide to Leading Indicators: Metrics, Case Studies & Strategies, Campbell Institute/NSC, pp. 5-7. (7) Practical Guide to Leading Indicators: Metrics, Case Studies & Strategies, Campbell Institute/NSC, pp. 14-18. (8) Elevating EHS Leading Indicators: From Defining to Designing, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 10. (9) Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 10. (10) Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 8. (11) Transforming EHS Performance Measurement through Leading Indicators, Campbell Institute/NSC, p. 15.               The post Using EHS Leading Indicators for EHS Performance Measurement appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

In an earlier post, we gave an example of how you could use online training tools as part of the MSHA Part 46 New Miner safety training requirement. That post got a lot of attention, so we’re circling back to do the same basic thing for MSHA Part 46 New Task(s) training. What we’re going to do is give some ideas of how you can use online tools-a learning management system (LMS), e-learning courses, and other online learning activities-as part of the training you deliver for Part 46 New Task training. What we’re not going to do is try to tell you that you should use only e-learning courses for your Part 46 New Task training. We recommend a "blended learning" approach in which you use a variety of different kinds of training. For example, you might have your workers do some reading, watch an e-learning course, attend some instructor-led training in a classroom setting, and do some task-based procedural training in the field. So let’s get to it. Convergence Training is a training solutions provider. We offer a learning management system (LMS) specially designed to deliver MSHA Part 46 safety training and create the MSHA-required documentation of that training; e-learning courses for mining safety and general EHS training; and much more. Contact us for more information. You might also be interested in our FREE Guide to Online MSHA Part 46 Training, which covers a lot of additional information about online solutions for Part 46 training. What Is MSHA Part 46 New Task Training? MSHA is short for the Mine Safety and Health Administration. They place mandatory safety training requirements on mine operators (and others). Those include Part 46 and Part 48. For the purposes of today, we’re interested in Part 46, which are "the mandatory requirements for training and retraining miners and other persons at shell dredging, sand, gravel, surface stone, surface clay, colloidal phosphate, and surface limestone mines." To learn more about Part 46, you can read our larger article about Part 46. One of the requirements in Part 46 is to provide appropriate safety training before a miner performs  a new task on the job. As the regulation states it: "You must provide any miner who is reassigned to a new task in which he or she has no previous work experience with training in the health and safety aspects of the task to be assigned, including the safe work procedures of such task, information about the physical and health hazards of chemicals in the miner’s work area, the protective measures a miner can take against these hazards, and the contents of the mine’s HazCom program. This training must be provided before the miner performs the new task." So our goal in this article is to introduce you to some online training tools you can use to provide this new task training. Examples of Online Training Tools for MSHA Part 46 New Task Training Those online tools you can use for Part 46 New Miner training include: A learning management system (LMS) for administering the training (assigning, notifying employees, delivering, crediting/tracking, reporting, and more) e-Learning courses on MSHA/mining safety training and general EHS Other online learning activities (we’ll explain this shortly) We’ll cover each of those in that order below. MSHA/Mining Safety Learning Management System (LMS) A learning management system, or LMS, is a software application you can use to administer your training. This means: Assigning Delivering Notifying Crediting Reporting Creating all necessary MSHA Part 46 training documentation More Watch the video below for a better idea of how an LMS can help you administer your MSHA Part 46 training, and of course the New Task training that’s included in Part 46. The LMS isn’t just for e-learning courses. You can use the LMS to administer may different types of training, including: e-Learning courses Other online activities, such as online quizzes Instructor-led classroom-style training Daily or weekly safety meetings OJT training performed in the field Written materials (such as Word documents, PDFs, and PowerPoint presentations) Videos Webinars Offsite training with third-party training consultants or MSHA/OSHA agents Conferences More The e-learning courses (and some other types, as you’ll see) can be delivered online through the LMS. But even the types of training that can’t be delivered online, such as instructor-led training in a classroom, can be administered online with the LMS. That means you can still assign instructor-led training to miners, have the LMS notify miners of the assignment, use the LMS to credit the miners for completing the class, see the miner’s completion status in reports, and capture that training in the documentation that MSHA requires for Part 46. e-Learning Courses for New Task Training Now let’s turn our attention to e-learning courses. You can use one or more e-learning courses, in addition to other forms of training, to create a blended learning solution for your new task training. Miners can perform any number of tasks on the job, so we’ll just give two examples below. That will give you the idea and you can go from there. We took these example courses from our mining safety and general EHS training libraries. Example 1: e-Learning Courses on HazCom and Chemical Hazards for New Task Training You may remember that Part 46 says the training could cover "information about the physical and health hazards of chemicals in the miner’s work area, the protective measures a miner can take against these hazards, and the contents of the mine’s HazCom program." So if there are hazardous chemicals at your mine site (and there most probably are), this HazCom/GHS course would be a sensible addition to just about every new task training program. And if your miners will be working directly or near chemicals, this Working with Chemicals course is also a good addition to a new task training program. Example 2: e-Learning Courses on Working On or Near Water for New Task Training Because many mines are located near water, largely for transportation purposes, an e-learning course covering general safety when working on or near water is a good addition to many new task training programs. Other Types of "Online Training": Online Documents, Quizzes, OJT Training Tools, Videos, and Webinars You just saw some examples of e-learning courses your miners can complete online. Now, let’s take a quick look at some other kinds of training that you can deliver to miners online. These include: Electronic versions of written documents (or PowerPoint presentations) Online quizzes Online activities for teaching safe work procedures Videos Webinars More We’ll discuss each further in the sections below. Electronic Documents for New Task Training You probably deliver training material to miners in written format from time to time. This may include Word documents, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, or similar written materials. Your LMS will let you deliver electronic/digital versions of these materials to your workers online. This allows your workers to view the material online at any time, confirm that they’ve read and understood them. And the online system automatically creates a completion record for this training which you can report on at any time. Online Quizzes The LMS will also include a tool you can use to write your own quizzes that miners can complete online. These can include common question types like multiple choice, true/false, and even matching or drag and drop. You can create your own custom quizzes any time you want to see if workers have understood some training. Maybe after they’ve read written training material, or after they’ve attended instructor-led training, or after they’ve completed some training in the field. With an online quiz, your miners can read the questions, answer them, and receive feedback for each question. The LMS will record their answers and let them know if they’ve passed or failed (you select the passing score). And of course the LMS will store all completion records. Online OJT/Job Procedure/Skill Instruction, Demonstration & Evaluation You’ll often give OJT training to your miners in the field. Many times, this will include a training them on the steps to follow to safely perform a job task. A lot of times, this kind of training is conducted with the user of a paper-based checklist. The checklist includes the steps of the task, the miner gets "checked off" on each step when he/she performs them correctly, and both the miner and the trainer sign the checklist, which is then filed in a file cabinet. With an online system, you can put your checklist in an electronic format and do all the "checking" and "crediting" electronically. Below is what a checklist like this would look like. Note that we’re showing it being used on a mobile device for field verification, which is very handy. Don’t have wireless connectivity out in the field? Don’t worry, you can still do this and then sync your mobile device when you’re back at the office and have a connection. Videos You can also deliver videos to your miners online as part of new task training. These may be videos you shot yourself with your own video camera or phone. Or maybe they’re videos from MSHA or the Chemical Safety Board (CSB). Here’s an example of a video you could import it your LMS, assign to workers, and let them complete online: Online Webinars You may also deliver training to workers using a webinar. The webinar will be delivered online, obviously, and your can use the LMS to administer other aspects-assignment, completion tracking, reporting, MSHA documentation, and more. Conclusion: Online Training for MSHA Part 46 New Task Training Requirements By now, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea of how you can use online learning activities to make up some of the training requirements for the MSHA Part 46 New Task training programs you’re required to provide at your mine site. We’d be curious to know what you’re own experiences are. What are the tasks that you provide this kind of training for at your mine? What types of training do you use to provide that training? What are some of your success stories, and what are some of the frustrations or challenges you face repeatedly? Let us know if you have any questions, too. Drop a comment below in the comments field and we’ll be sure to respond. And don’t forget to download the free guide to online MSHA compliance tools below for an even bigger-picture view of how you can use online tools for Part 46 training.   The post Online Options for MSHA Part 46 New Task Training appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

  Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in the string of interviews for the release of the new Minecraft Education Edition and I’ve been eagerly anticipating how others would respond at the today’s news of its summer 2016 release. By now, attendees at the BETT conference in London have experienced a sneak peek into the future of Minecraft in the classroom. I imagine that they were excited about the internal camera block, student portfolio, interactive map and single file export. I also imagine that they were as excited as I am about not having to set up a server anymore or about students being able to download and play at home. For a second, they were probably okay with the pricing model of $5/user and then they walked away, did the math and connected with the fact that where minecraftedu was a one time seat license fee, this new Minecraft Education Edition is a yearly subscription per student and teacher. In a climate where schools barely have money for paper, this can get quite pricey. Now…hear me out on this next part and I mean this coming from someone in a high poverty rural community without accessible devices for every student. Don’t get caught up on pricing. I always said that If I had it my way, I would send every kid home with a copy of minecraft as I know first hand how powerful of a program it is and can be. It’s just never been financially feasible to do so. At $5/student (even lower with volume pricing), we can now do that. In addition, we pay yearly subscription fees for programs like Discovery Education, Brainpop and a nice collection of content based assessment tools…programs that our students barely access. (That’s an entirely different story) At least with DE, kids can download media to remix in projects but if we value creative learning, minecraft should be a choice too. In other words, perhaps we should consider what we value and what matters to our students. I’m not saying that we should not have math/science/reading programs but we should consider that perhaps if we look at how kids learn differently, in lieu of multiple choice, we might see progress in ways that we are unable to imagine. That was my experience with Minecraft anyway. Is Minecraft for You? I read an article in the Wall Street Journal where the writer quoted the senior policy analyst of the NEA saying basically that Minecraft was a supplementary tool that could not fit the bill in the classroom and should simply be an after school program. (Clearly, he is dead wrong on this) I have no idea if the senior policy analyst of the NEA has ever actually been a classroom teacher but I imagine that if he were, he taught with desks in perfect rows and classrooms as quiet as a mouse. If he used any technology at all, it was provided by the text book company and deviating from that would have been a sin. In addition, I imagine that if he were to look for apps for teaching, he would have insisted only on those that provided complete and total teacher control because heaven forbid kids learn something that wasn’t itemized in the standards. Basically, Minecraft is probably not his thing and if this describes your classroom or the culture of learning in your building, it’s probably not for you either. …Unless, you are willing to give up control, give students choice in how they show/share learning or simply accept that sometimes kids just need access to create amazing things, whether they use it in the classroom or not… I will tell you that in my school district, we will struggle with having computers for kids to use Minecraft in school. We utilize a virtual network and right now, we are exploring options to add graphics cards to our servers. We have minecraft via ipad, but it won’t be compatible with Minecraft Edu Edition just as it isn’t with Minecraft EDU. I’m still going to put it in my budget to provide Minecraft for all of our students, grades 3-8. I’m doing it because even if teachers aren’t entirely ready, kids are. The fact of the matter is that to start, it’s not about teaching teachers the mechanics of how minecraft works but the mechanics of asking more thought-provoking questions that lead to ideation and creation. It’s about empowering teachers to see that there is value in expression and for many of our kids, Minecraft creates pathways towards that. In year 1, we may only have 10 teachers across the district who actively include Minecraft in instruction but we’ll have a district of kids who know that it is available to them. Perhaps, like tonight, our kids will help our teachers get there sooner than later. Intro to Minecraft Session, faciliated by students, using Minecraft PE  

In my last blog I talked about three tips to help you stay on track to achieve your New Year’s resolutions. Now that you are a few weeks into the process, you might be struggling a little bit, so let me make another suggestion. Over the years, I’ve realized that the people who have the most trouble accomplishing goals and sticking with resolutions are the people who are the busiest. The problem with these people is that too often they go through the motions of day-to-day busy work instead of focusing on the most important things first. You have probably heard the theory that we all have two selves—the external, task-oriented self that focuses on getting the job done, and the internal, thoughtful, reflective self that considers things before acting. The task-oriented self is the first to wake up in the morning, of course, and is only focused on task achievement. You read email while you are eating breakfast, then jump in the car, head to the office and start attacking your to-do list in order to get everything checked off before you go home. It’s so easy to get caught in this kind of activity trap—you’re so busy doing urgent but unimportant tasks you don’t have time to think about the important goals you may have set. So how do you get out of this trap? How do you help yourself focus less on task achievement and more on goal achievement? I suggest that in the morning, instead of jumping out of bed and right into task achievement, you enter your day slowly and thoughtfully. Take 20 or 30 minutes to think through what you really need to accomplish for the day. Remember how I suggested you write down your New Year’s resolutions and read them every day? Now is the perfect time. Look at your resolutions to see where they can fit into the day’s plan. Entering your day slowly gives you the opportunity to plan your day out so that you can both accomplish your tasks and fit in time to work toward your resolutions. Then, at the end of the day before you go to bed, jot down a few notes about your day in a journal. If you don’t want to take the time to write in a journal, at least give yourself the gift of thinking about your day for a few minutes. What did you do during the day that was consistent with your New Year’s resolutions, and what got in the way? Soon you’ll be able to spot both positive and negative patterns so that you can make changes in your schedule to get yourself back on track toward goal achievement. You might be thinking, "I don’t have time to spend twenty minutes in the morning to plan and more time at night to reflect." But I guarantee that if you take that little bit of time, you’ll set yourself up for success in achieving your goals—and your New Year’s resolutions. And you know what? You’re worth it!