Do you remember being a child and seeing your teachers out at the local grocery store? It was absolutely jarring, right? As a child, you thought, don’t they live at the school? In the same way, many senior leaders lock themselves in the corner office. Employees never see them—and never connect with them—expect on a business level. As CEO, I feel it’s my job to be visible to my employees, not only as a leader, but also as a human being. How do you do this? Here are three ways below: Walk the halls I learned this lesson from my father, John. Dad worked at Phillips Petroleum and in 1975, he was sent to run a manufacturing subsidiary. His job was to turn operations around at two brick factories. The general manager who ran the brick company was never on-site. In fact, he ran operations from a suite of country-club-like villas miles away from the industrial complex. He was described as aloof and dictatorial, and drove to the office in the latest model company Jaguar when he was required to be there. My dad operated differently. Upon arriving on site, he moved his office from the adjacent town onto the cramped, factory grounds. He took away the fancy company cars and gave everyone, himself included, the same Ford sedan. But most distinctly, my dad walked the factory floor daily. He talked casually with the workers, alternately telling jokes, bonding over a beer or two, and asking for their opinions about manufacturing issues. Productivity and morale improved and the company, once in danger of being shut down, was able to take control of their own destiny. Each day, I try to get out of my office and walk the halls. I take time to say hello to my employees in the hallways and in the break room. I ask them how their families are doing—their spouse, their kids, their pets—and what they did that week. I ask how the program we just completed went and if there was feedback. I casually check-in. By walking the halls, I’m able to build relationships. CEO’s, by the nature of our work, can find ourselves cut off from our employees in ways that make us unapproachable. By being visible and chit-chatting, I hope my employees feel that I’m available whenever they need. Be social and sociable I run a small company, so I know this isn’t feasible for everyone, but there’s nothing I love more than sitting down in our breakroom and having lunch with our employees. The conversation is about a variety of things, but it’s always entertaining. I also get to see employees who I don’t usually see because of the location of my office. During the recession, we saved money on our holiday party by holding a potluck supper at my house. When times improved, the suggestion of returning to a catered event at a nice restaurant was emphatically overruled. Everyone loved getting together in my home where they see the complete me, along with the dog, pictures of my kids and—when looking for the corkscrew—see that the boss has a "junk drawer" too! And no matter the social function, make that extra effort to connect with those you don’t often interact with at work. Listening to and telling personal stories in a personal setting builds bonds of teamwork and increased engagement. Get on social media Employees—not just the younger ones—are on social media. They are active on Facebook pages and will share big stories to their own personal networks. I’ll be honest, I’m not the best when it comes to social media, (throw me a bone and follow me on Twitter) but I understand its power. We don’t do business with any of the people below, but I do appreciate how they authentically engage with their communities on social media. Tom Erickson, Acquia Acquia CEO Tom Erickson personally answers almost every review made about his company on Glassdoor. What impresses me most is Tom’s transparency is that he even takes the time to answer the negative ones. He explains his positioning, talks about future opportunities, and thanks employees for their feedback. Employees—and prospective employees—see that the CEO is listening and let know their voice is heard. Santa J. Ono, University of Cincinnati University of Cincinnati President Santa J. Ono has a unique ability to genuinely connect with his students, alumni, faculty, and parents and bring the Bearcat community together—all via Twitter. If you scroll through his feed, you will see his replies to students inviting him to attend games, lectures, plays, and more. Yes, his tweets tout the university’s research achievements, but it’s when he reaches out to upset students to see if they can come to a solution together that really hits the mark. Santa took the helm in 2012 and enrollment grew to 42, 656 in 2013, and 43, 691 in 2014. I’m not sure if Santa’s tweeting is having a direct effect on this growth, but one thing is for sure, something’s working.   Don’t be an email that your employees just send a report to. As a senior leader, get out of your office and show your human side. The post Do Your Employees See You…as Human? appeared first on Ariel Group.          CommentsSean, I agree. Many times I have had those jarring moments of ... by Mary LahtiRelated StoriesDo Your Employees See You…as Human?Flying Unfriendly Skies: 6 Ways to Manage ChangeThe Employee Engagement Equation 

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., I would like to take a moment to give thanks. Thank you, Internet gods, for creating email and for making it good. Thank you for the ability to communicate without having to speak a word. Thank you for allowing me, as an introvert, to type key strokes rather than return calls. I admit it. I’m not as comfortable speaking in meetings as I am at the keyboard, which could be tricky working for a company who believes in people interacting generously and communicating well. Email is on the less-effective end of the communication spectrum. Great for speed, but there is no real interaction. At "send," an email goes into the ether. It is only coincidence that someone might receive it in real-time. And it’s more likely for one to communicate badly via email than to communicate well. Hasn’t it happened to each of us? Minus body language, facial expression and vocal inflection, our email tone has been misinterpreted or we have misinterpreted someone else’s. A short-length email seems rude or CAP LOCKS excitement just seems like yelling. And, of course, there’s the negative impression spelling and grammatical errors leave on a recipient, whether due to our haste or auto-correct "helpfulness." But in a global business landscape where our clients are on the other side of the world and our colleagues may sit in their home office — rather than the office next door — sometimes email is the best mode of communication that we have. To make the best of what we’ve got, I recommend these tactics: Focus on the email that you are writing rather than the check mark you’ll make on your to-do list once the email is sent. We are all busy and sometimes need to fire off a lot of email in a short period of time. Regardless of how much time you have — or don’t have — do your best to be present and "in the moment," paying full attention as you write. Whether a long or short note, you reduce the risk of errors and misinterpreted tone. Take a moment to offer something about yourself — a moment in your weekend, a moment with your children — and inquire about the other person. It doesn’t have to happen with every email, every time. But when time allows, take the time. You will find that these small personal stories, over time, help build good virtual working relationships. In an email, you only have your words to convey thoughts and feelings. Choose them wisely. If you’re stuck, enlist the help of a colleague to proofread and give you feedback. It’s an easy, low-risk way to gauge how your message will land. In a business setting, all of the exclamation points in the world will not substitute for the right phrasing and an emoji, while acceptable in some instances, is not worth a thousand words. It’s okay to be yourself in your email. Speak in print as you would in an in-person interaction. If you are using an email template and there is room to personalize it, do so. You are a human being, not a robot. So is your recipient. Let your emails reflect that. Have thoughts about this? Start typing! Want more tips on how to construct a work email? Read Harvard Business Review’s Essential Guide to Crafting a Work Email. The post Electronic Presence: How to Have Presence in Email appeared first on Ariel Group.          CommentsTerrifically practical Christine. A good reminder to myself. by Josh BAs a regular recipient of your Emails, you certainly practice ... by Richard RichardsRelated StoriesDo Your Employees See You…as Human?The Virtual Coffee Break: The Importance of Relationship-Building Moments in a Virtual WorldHow Sales Presence Impacts Clients 

There’s a new type of speech plaguing America. No, it’s not the latest politician standing atop the soapbox. It’s a way many Americans, especially women, speak called vocal fry. Vocal fry, according to Naomi Wolf, is the "glottalization in the back of the throat." It is a creak, growl, or a croak in the voice, which gets the voice to the lowest vocal register. The speaker speaks with barely enough breath to finish a sentence, causing them to appear apathetic to both their message—and their audience. You can watch this short video from Faith Salie about vocal fry here. I had the opportunity to interview Liz Callahan about vocal fry earlier this year. Read her tips below and you can watch the full interview with Liz Callahan below.* -Stephanie St. Martin Fact: The way you speak can hurt your career. In the early 1990’s, Americans were told to avoid using "likes" and talking "up" at the end of sentence. Yes, talking in the Up-speak trend (or the speech of a Valley Girl) was not kind to your career. Now-a-days, it’s vocal fry. Think of this is way: If "like" is associated with Up-speak, then the implied "whatever" is the same to vocal fry. Millennial women, especially, suffer from this behavior. They mimic the behavior they see on television, and often use vocal fry to show gravitas. As a result, it seems they are too entitled to devote energy to whatever this conversation is about. Picture a woman who, although bright, is speaking with vocal fry. The problem is that she doesn’t have the breath to get out her message. As a result, she appears disengaged and underwhelmed, leaving her audience also underwhelmed by her message. As a professional, leaving that type of impression - with your coworkers, boss, or a client — when you speak should be alarming. How can you counteract vocal fry? By your presence. Here are some tips: • Add energy and breath to your voice to make your audience feel more connected. An audience will perk up when your energy does: they want to hear what you’re saying because they are connecting with your words. If you speak in vocal fry, it will interfere with this connection because you leave the impression that not only don’t you care about the information, you also don’t care about the audience. • Posture helps. If you are slumped in your chair (despite the fact you’re trying to have a conversation about something you consider incredibly important) and respond in a lower register with no breath, your words will be lost. All your audience will hear is, "Oh my god, I do not have the energy to deal with that right now." Sit up straight. Feel your feet on the ground. Be more present to the conversation. • If you hear yourself make that awful growl, use your belly breath. It’s a good tool in your presence arsenal is your belly breath. Use it whenever you feel your breath becoming short and your voice not carrying. *Before you judge MY performance, know that I was on the job for only one week when we did this…you should see my virtual presence now: it’s stellar! The post How to Fight Vocal Fry appeared first on Ariel Group.        Related StoriesElectronic Presence: How to Have Presence in EmailExpress Yourself!Political Debates: Where Presence Speaks Louder Than Words 

Mediocrity, noun : the quality of something that is not very good : the quality or state of being mediocre : a person who does not have the special ability to do something well I don’t normally use this forum for expressing my thoughts on politically charged topics, but this particular one is bothering me … Continue reading →

  Schools are the most important learning grounds to prepare your children for the future. The future is more clearly getting digitized and it’s high time that we ensure our children learn technology from an early age. In order to do this, you need to ensure your children go to the right schools. Teachers should be in a position to incorporate technology to improve the learning experience in classroom. A right school should be able to answer questions of how, where, when and what technology it plans to teach children.Good educational technology should prepare its students to become better entrepreneurs, innovators, self-starters, independent thinkers and be able to solve problems. As parents you have a major role to ensure you give your children the best education. Here is how to begin the edtec discussion:   Is technology a top priority in the school and what specific goals does the school have? The school should be able to explain how technology is of top priority and what measures are in place to ensure that the school is in the front line as far as technology in learning is concerned. Parents should look out for specific ongoing or start up projects, for example measures should be in place to ensure that all teachers are well trained on technology.   How is information communicated? It’s of importance to find out how the school conveys information to the parents and community so as to be in the look out. Some modes of communication could be through email, the school website or through social media.   What type of devices will the child be exposed to and what is the access type? As parents, you will be required to know the type of devices your child uses in school so as to make efforts to provide the same at home. Every student should have easy access to technology devices.   Are there policies against cyber-crimes and are parents educated on how to raise digital children With the rising rates of cyber-crimes, it’s important to ensure that strict rules are put in place to curb cyber-crimes. Parents should also be educated to ensure there are no loop holes at home as well.   Are children allowed to bring personal devices and if so, what policies are in place? Parents should get information on whether to allow their children to come to school with personal devices and what rules to enforce, and should discuss the same with their children.   Does the school support a child with particular interests on coding? The school should have forums to expose students to things like coding. This will ensure that they improve on skills like innovation and problem solving.   How does technology ensure a better future for my child? The technology used in the school should be relevant and fit into the learning system.   How can I help at home? The school should have a platform for parents to continue teaching their children at home.   In this digital age, technology is important and so is the teacher. Technology has not come to replace the teacher but to act as an enhancement to learning. Technology is here to stay; so let us all embrace it and especially for the young generation.   The post EdTech Questions Parents Should Ask Schools before Admissions appeared first on Fedena Blog.

Heading into an Internet dead-zone over the holidays? Have no fear! There are many things you can do with Google without connecting to the World Wide Web. Chrome Offline Gmail AppUsing Maps without a Connection  Save a copy on Apple devices and on Android Files Accessible Offline Install the drive app Play a Game! Just use the spacebar to start after losing connection.Listen to MusicChrome Calendar AppPlan for When You're Offline Permanently  Choose what happens when you can no longer use your account: www.google.com/settings/u/0/account/inactive Preload DocumentsAccess Documents Offline on Mobile  Open the document > Settings > Keep Offline Find Chrome Offline-Capable AppsDid you know EdTechTeam does a 1:1 with Chromebook Workshop? Visit edtechteam.com/request for more info.

Our members are weaving the threads of education every day with people of all ages across the country. They are involved in improving lives and the overall well-being of our communities. With over 4000 members strong, NCCE would like to introduce you to a few peers. Every month we will take a snapshot of active NCCE members and find out what they are doing to make a difference in technology education. In it Together: NCCE Members Making a Difference Learn more about the leadership and members who contribute to Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE). NAME and TITLE: Morgen Larsen, Teacher-Librarian & Technology Instructional Coach at Greenacres Elementary School SCHOOL DISTRICT: Central Valley School District, Spokane Valley, WA NCCE MEMBER SINCE: 2011 * Share with us - what is one new initiative you are working on in your district? I am the Social Studies Special Curriculum Project Lead for Central Valley School District. This school year, one goal of this project is to create Open Educational Resource (OER) curriculum for social studies in fifth grade. We are currently in the process of modifying and vetting digital resources from the Stanford History Education Group (sheg.stanford.edu/rlh), Library of Congress (loc.gov), and the New York State K-12 Social Studies Resource Toolkit: Grades 5-8 (engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-k-12-social-studies-resource-toolkit-grades-5-8) for instructional use in our district. We are purposefully aligning the social studies curriculum so it complements English Language Arts, Common Core State Standards in an intentional and purposeful way. Currently, the Central Valley School District is piloting these OER lesson plans in five different elementary schools. Data from this pilot will be utilized to strengthen the curriculum and further the deployment of OER throughout the district. * What is one strategy you use to have a more productive workday? I utilize multiple email and calendar accounts for separate parts of my life. I have separate accounts for work/school, personal life, and educational consulting. I schedule everything into my digital calendars. I have the ability to look at each of my digital calendars separately, but most often I show all of them together. I also have all of my accounts synched to each digital device that I use. That way I don’t have to log into separate accounts to check email. Everything is one click away and in the same location. * Name one thing your "Mama always told you"? "Learn from your mistakes, and live your life without regret." * When you "unplug" - what do you like to do? Read, sashiko, sew and take cooking classes. * Where was your last training for NCCE? Tell us about it? I presented "Reading like a Historian: Using digital primary sources for inquiry based learning" at the Washington Library Media Association (WLMA) conference in Yakima, Washington. Participants learned how to utilize primary sources documents available through the Library of Congress (LOC.gov) and Washington State Digital Archives (digitalarchives.wa.gov/) to create inquiry based lessons for students in grades 4-12. Thank you! We are excited to highlight our trainers and appreciate ALL you do for NCCE! The post NCCE Member Highlights: Morgen Larsen appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

In some recent articles, we’ve been looking at issues related to determining if your training program is having a desired positive effect, determining how big of a positive effect it’s having, and communicating that information internally within the training department but also externally with others in your workplace. For example, in our last article that touched on these issues, we looked at a way to evaluate the movement of a key performance indicator (KPI) after a training program was held. In that same article, we also noted that although it’s great if you initiate a training program and see a KPI (or several KPIs) that the program is intended to effect respond in a positive manner, that’s not the whole story. Because there are other factors that may have influenced that KPI at the same time. And if that’s the case, who’s to say that the newly implemented training program truly deserves all the credit? Or how much of the credit it does deserve? And that introduction leads us straight to the point of this article. Today, we’re going to explain a few methods of "isolating the effects of your training program." What this means is determining how much of that desired increase in the KPI your training program was responsible for-if any. Convergence Training is a training solutions provider. We make several different learning management systems (LMSs), offer many different libraries of e-learning courses for workforce training, create custom training solutions for our customers, have apps for mobile learning and mobile performance support, and more. Contact us to find out more information or to set up a demo. And since you’re here, please feel free to download any or all of these free guides: Guide to Effective Manufacturing Training Guide to Effective EHS Training Guide to Online MSHA Training Guide to Writing Learning Objectives How to Demonstrate The Effects of Your Training Program: 3 Options OK, let’s set the scene. Business leaders came to you with a  business problem, and they were looking for a training solution. You performed a training needs analysis and determined that yep, training could help. You asked the business leaders what business goal the training would support and the key performance indicator (KPI) that tracks progress toward that business goal. You designed and delivered the training. And after the training was held, there was a positive movement in the KPI that tracks progress on the goal you were trying to affect. Sounds good so far, right? Well, we agree, it does. So at this point, you’ve got a few options: Do nothing Stand tall and take all the credit Analyze the situation and see how much credit your training program really deserves Let’s take a quick look at each of these options: Do Nothing You can do nothing. But if you do nothing, you and the other members of the training department won’t know if the work you’re doing is effective. And presumably, you want to that, right? In addition, the business leaders won’t know if the training department is carrying its weight. Maybe they’ll just assume you are and place their trust in your assurances and hard work. But then again, maybe not. Maybe your department won’t get as much money next year if you don’t present some evidence that you’re having a positive effect on business goals. Maybe you won’t be able to hire that much-needed new trainer, or maybe you won’t get the funds for that new e-learning authoring tool you wanted. Or maybe the head of another department will make a persuasive case that something he or she did at the same time really deserves all the credit for the positive change. Remember, training rarely happens in a vacuum, and there will be other things that might have influenced the positive change, and other people will be trying to take credit for it-rightly or wrongly. So maybe doing nothing isn’t the greatest option. Stand Tall and Take All Credit for Progress Toward Business Goal/Desired Change in KPI Another option is to do no analysis but try to take credit for the entire change. Let’s look at a simple example, illustrated with the graph below. Let’s say you were tasked with creating a training program that rolled out in July, 2015. The relevant KPI to track to see if the company made progress toward a desired business goal in this case was net profits. And as you can see in the graph, net profits began an uninterrupted upward trend after the July, 2015 implementation of your training program. So you COULD do no further analysis, take the graph above to your business leaders, and say the positive trend in net profits is entirely due to your new training program. And MAYBE they’d buy that. Hey-maybe it’s even true. But there are some downsides to this approach. First, you wouldn’t know if what you’re saying is really true, and so you wouldn’t know if your training program was effective or not. And we still really believe that deep down, you want to know, because you want to have a positive impact and you want to duplicate those techniques and do it again and again. And second, there’s the risk that the business leaders WON’T buy what you’re selling. Maybe they won’t believe you. And since you’ve got no real data to back up your claims, you may lose some credibility here. And that’s not what you want to do. Analyze the Situation and See How Much Credit Your Training Program Really Deserves (aka, Isolating the Effects of Your Training Program So if your first option was to do nothing, and your second option was to do no analysis and try to take all the credit, then your third option is to do some analysis, try to determine how much of the positive movement in the KPI was due to your training program, and then present that information to your business leads. There are a few benefits of this. First, it will help you and your training team really know what’s going on. How well are you doing? When are your efforts really helping (and when you know this, you’ve got a better chance to study whey and then copy it to create future successes). And when are your efforts not helping, or not helping as much as desired? This is good information-we all benefit from reflection, self-evaluation, and continuous improvement. And second, it will give you credible information that you can take to the business leads to show the positive effect your training program is having. You won’t have to present half-baked data, you won’t have to risk your credibility, and you just may earn their respect, appreciation, and continued or expanded funding for future projects. We’ll show you a few ways of doing this in the next section. Isolating The Effects of Your Training Program: Another Step in Determining the ROI of Training What you’re trying to do-separate the positive effects that your training program had on a KPI from the effects of other factors that may have contributed to the positive movement in the same KPI-is sometimes known as isolating the effects of your training program. The book Return on Investment (ROI) Basics, written by Patricia Pulliam Phillips and Jack J. Phillips and published by The Association for Talent Development (ATD), provides a pretty comprehensive overview of training ROI analysis. It dedicates an entire chapter to the issue of isolating the effects of a training program, and suggests three possible techniques. They are: Analysis Technique 1: Be a Scientist and Create a Control Group Remember high school and all the talk about the scientific method and creating a control group before running an experiment? Well, you can do that with your training, too, and set up an experiment to measure the benefits of the training. The idea, as shown below, is to set up two groups of employees for comparison. The first group of employees won’t get your training (at least not right away). The second group will get your training. When the training program is over, you’ll measure the performance of each group (and/or the relevant KPI) and see how effective your training was. Here’s the group of employees you’ll use as a control group (they won’t get the new training): And here’s the group of employees who’ll get the new training: That’s the basic idea. You probably run this kind of experiment all the time in your everyday life, so it’s probably familiar to you and we won’t belabor the point. However, here are a few things to keep in mind. Other than the fact that one group receives training and the other does not, the two employee groups should be as similar as possible. Other than the difference in receiving/not receiving the training program, both groups should be under the same set of working conditions/environments/influences. As shown in the image above, it’s not necessary to create a measurement before the training (although you might want to). You can use this method in situations where it’s OK to withhold the training from one group of employees. That’s not true in all cases, however-for an extreme example, you won’t withhold critical safety training that could reduce the chances of an incident, injury, illness, or death. It’s best to run this type of experiment so that the two groups of employees don’t "contaminate" one another. For example, if you train one group, and the workers in that trained group work side-by-side with the workers in the control/untrained group, you can assume that the training message will "seep out" from the trained employees and to the untrained employees. This will influence the behavior of the untrained employees and mess up the results of your experiment. If your training program has a long roll-out period, and you’ll introduce it to some employees well before you introduce it to others (largely for logistic reasons), you can use that lucky coincidence to take advantage of a "built-in" control group-monitor the performance of the early trainees and compare that to the performance of the later trainees. In a sense, creating experimental and control groups like this is the "gold standard" for isolating your training program and seeing it it’s helping your company reach business goals. However, there are many cases where it’s unethical (such as withholding critical safety training), unfair or unwise (such as when it sets some employees at an unfair disadvantage or places them in a confusing situation), or simply impractical to do this. Analysis Technique 2: Perform a Trend-Line Analysis Another option is to perform a trend-line analysis. Here’s how that works. Let’s assume you’ve been tasked with creating a sales training program. The business goal it support is to increase sales. The KPI will be the average number of widgets sold by sales people each month. Here’s how it works. First, get the monthly sales figures for the six months leading up to the training program (shown in the graph below in the solid blue line). Next, create a trend analysis that shows what the sales totals might have looked like if the trend had continued and there were no training (shown in the graph below in the dotted blue line). Then, mark a point on the graph that represents when the training program was held (shown in the graph below with the solid vertical red line-July, 2015). Next, show the average monthly sales that could have been expected if the pre-training trend had continued and no trend had resulted. And finally, plot the actual sales figures for the months following the implementation of the training program (shown in the graph below with the red dots). You can now make a convincing case that the sales training program is responsible for the increase in sales represented by the space between the solid green horizontal line (the monthly average of the pre-training trend) and the red dots (actual sales), or, breaking that down into single figure, an increase from 97 widgets sold by each salesperson per month to an average of 111.3 widgets. And here’s what it looks like: If you’re going to use this method, remember that it’s based on two assumptions: All factors that influenced the trend before the training program must continue after the program as well No new factors were introduced These assumptions may not always be true, but if nothing else, this gives a quick and dirty estimate that’s better than doing nothing. In addition, you may want to use forecasting methods that predict changes instead of relying on a consistent trend. Of course, that assumes your company has forecasting skills, which some do and some don’t, but it’s worth a consideration. Analysis Technique 3: Rely on Expert Estimation Finally, a third technique is to use experts to make an estimate of how much influence the training program had. Those experts may include the employees who went through the training program (they are often the best source of information for this), and/or their supervisors, managers, and business leaders (who sometimes are aware of other factors the employees are not aware of). The basic idea is this: Begin by creating a list of factors that could have influenced the positive change (training, new ads, new season, good weather, etc.) Ask assemble your experts (or distribute questionnaires/surveys to them) Ask them provide an estimated percentage of the impact each factor had on the overall improvement (for example, 50% or 30%) Ask them to provide an estimated percentage for how confident they are of that first estimate (for example, 90% or 80%) Multiply the two percentages together to created an "adjusted percentage of improvement share." Here’s what that might look like in a very simple version (the table below shows the estimates by one person): You now have some data you can present to business leads. Sure, it’s an estimate. No, it’s not going to be 100% estimate. But the information is based on input from experts, not just the training program. And people are used to having to work with estimates in business-it’s better than stabbing in the dark. Plus, you’ve built in a margin of error by adjusting for confidence of the estimates. Doing this, and coming in with a lower estimate, will gain you and your figures credibility. Conclusion: How Do YOU Isolate the Effects of Your Training Program? We hope that gets you headed in the right direction on this phase of the "ROI of Training" quest. If you’ve done some of this before, or if you have some tips to add, please add them in the comments section below. If you’d like to learn about this in more detail, we can recommend the book we already reference and another by the same another. Return on Investment (ROI) Basics Measuring ROI In Learning & Development: Case Studies from Global Organizations In addition, the ATD has other books on Training ROI as well. Just click that link and search their bookstore for "ROI" and you’ll find at least a few more. Good luck! The post Determining Training ROI: Isolating the Effects of Your Training Program appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

Shelby Fox has kindly shared her lesson plan based on Christmas. Take it away, Shelby… Talking about holidays and cultural practices can be quite interesting as holidays come up. It also gives both the teacher and student a chance to learn more about the other’s culture and learn about the person on a more personal level. […] The post Christmas Lesson Plan for ESL/EFL Teachers appeared first on Teaching ESL Online.

Universities and colleges have a history of preparing past generations to take their place in the industries and scientific disciplines on the planet. Ivy league universities had as an important mandate the task of producing the "captains of industry" who would carry on the tradition of leading the corporate world which was steeped in the industrial economy. Their main objective was to create wealth. This was especially important in the Americas with the rise of such men as JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. How they created that wealth was the distinguishing tipping point. This picture was mirrored in other industrial economies of the time.Credit: www.dayshare.org  The term ,"captains of industry",  was coined by Thomas Carlyle in his 1843 book titled:"Past and Present". To that end, these universities sought to attract the top economic, scientific, and business minds to act as educators and mentors to these up and coming leaders. Due to the competition among universities and colleges to acquire the most talented minds, the concept of tenure was offered as a means of securing their loyalty to the institution.The reason it is important to understand these traditions is so that we can recognize how deeply the industrial model mindset is in the life blood of universities. This is also a pointer to the reason of why there is such a high level of institutional inertia when it comes to changing the model of education that universities and colleges operate under.De-Programming Education FacultiesFrom these halls of higher learning comes a demonstration of what may be termed the "trickle down effect" of this industrial mindset with an important difference. In order to fuel the drive of industry, workers were needed who would learn to conform and all follow the same pattern for effective production. To enable this to happen educators also needed to be harnessed to train the future workers.The world has since changed. Since most major universities have faculties of education responsible for the training of teachers, if the university is still adhering to the industrial model mindset then it will be the same situation for the faculty tasked in training educators. De-programming these faculties is now essential if we are ever to have teachers who have a renewed purpose to be agents of change and creators of new knowledge and skillsets.It means de-programming  minds and preparing them for a new mindset that is going to have an exciting impact on their careers as educators and on students as agents of change in their respective societies.  As we continue down this path, one should not underestimate the very positive impact these collaborative networks will have on the business culture.Next ...the relationship between this network and the others.