Sunday, June 27, 2010
Training in the Workplace
The American workplace is rapidly changing. In the past, workers went to their jobs to perform a task. Now, the workplace is changing into a place where workers both work and learn, as companies transform themselves into learning organizations. Companies are joining high schools, trade and technical schools, colleges, and universities in assuming responsibility for the education of the American workforce. As learning organizations, companies provide ongoing work-related training to all levels of employees, offer a variety of information and resources, encourage the exchange of ideas, and reward employees who acquire new skills.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
9 ways of Staying Current in Training
There are many different ways to stay current in today's training. These are some of the ones that I found that seemed to be pretty interesting.
1. Reflect
It’s hard to find time to really reflect on things. Most of us have schedules that send us from one meeting or task to another. Taking a few moments to think about the sessions you taught gives you a chance to look back in retrospect and learn things that might be useful. What sessions had the highest attendance? What sessions had the most involved audiences? What active learning exercises seemed to be most effective? What would you really like to avoid doing again in the future? Some of these reflective sessions have helped me see changes that I should make, even when I wasn’t planning on making them.
2. Look at Feedback
Many of us make sure to collect feedback after teaching a group. Some of our organizations collect this feedback for us. In other cases, there might not be formal feedback, but rather follow up emails, nonverbal cues during the session, or some other source of information to help you learn about what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes this information matches what we remember, sometimes it might be different. Combining the feedback provided by the students with your own reflections can make for a powerful larger picture of what worked and didn’t.
3. Share with Others
Once you have a clear picture of what worked and didn’t for your training, it can be helpful to have conversations with other trainers. Often, you can get materials that make it possible to make changes without having to reinvent the wheel each time. Sometimes your training peers might not be within your own organization. You might have a few people that you chat with about training at your business, but you can also share stuff with other entrepreneurs on Twitter or Facebook.
4. Look at the Plan
You need to consider thinking about what has happened in your training sessions. It’s also useful to think about where we need to take our training in the future. Knowing where you want to be, as an institution, can help you recenter the types of things you’re training to make sure people know what we (as a larger group) have agreed we need to know. It’s also a nice time to look at the mission statements of the organization to get a sense of how training sessions are fitting into that public statement of what the group is doing.
5. Consider Shifting Needs
Just as you might need to recenter your training to the strategic plan or mission statement of your library, it’s worth thinking about the shifting needs of the audience you train. Though many of the sessions that you might have offered in the past would still be useful in some settings, hopefully your staff is already caught up on those issues. There might be topics that you haven’t offered training on that everyone else is getting. Or there might be new and emerging technologies that shift all of our needs into a new area. Thinking about these shifting needs can help you think about the topics to train on in the next year. Combining this with a good needs assessment can help for planning sessions that are really useful to your audience.
6. Get Topic Ideas
It’s never to early to be scouting for topics! Chatting with other trainers, reading blogs, thinking about presentations you’ve seen, and participating in social media can all provide inspiration for training. I know many of us keep lists of potential topics so that we have a pool of things to choose from depending on the needs of the organization at any point in time. This is a good time of year to look at that list and clean it up a bit. What’s outdated and shouldn’t be included? What’s obviously missing?
7. Attend Training Sessions
Not only can you learn about a topic in a training session or presentation, but you can also learn about how other trainers train. You know once you go to some of these sessions sometimes they want you to participate in some sort of activity like taking a class in your particular training. Most of the time people would say the best part of the class was the assignment to go out and observe a number of different training sessions. Seeing the variety of approaches, styles, and personality types will help you understand a lot about what you want to do in your next training session.
8. Plan to Stay Current
With the aid of the internet and social media, resources and groups come and go fairly quickly. It’s worth taking a little time every year or so to think through what organizations would support your training, what conferences would be nice to attend, and if there are any people you want to connect with in the training world. Even if you can’t afford to participate in the formal groups at a given time, there’s a good chance there’s an online option for following and participating in the discussions, and these groups can help you get new ideas for topics and training activities.
9. Make Notes!!
Throughout all of this, it’s helpful to document things. You might want to make notes of what worked for you this year and what didn’t. You might include new ideas for topics, training activities, groups you’d like to get involved with, or presentation ideas you come up with for conferences.
So which one do you think would be the best for staying current?
1. Reflect
It’s hard to find time to really reflect on things. Most of us have schedules that send us from one meeting or task to another. Taking a few moments to think about the sessions you taught gives you a chance to look back in retrospect and learn things that might be useful. What sessions had the highest attendance? What sessions had the most involved audiences? What active learning exercises seemed to be most effective? What would you really like to avoid doing again in the future? Some of these reflective sessions have helped me see changes that I should make, even when I wasn’t planning on making them.
2. Look at Feedback
Many of us make sure to collect feedback after teaching a group. Some of our organizations collect this feedback for us. In other cases, there might not be formal feedback, but rather follow up emails, nonverbal cues during the session, or some other source of information to help you learn about what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes this information matches what we remember, sometimes it might be different. Combining the feedback provided by the students with your own reflections can make for a powerful larger picture of what worked and didn’t.
3. Share with Others
Once you have a clear picture of what worked and didn’t for your training, it can be helpful to have conversations with other trainers. Often, you can get materials that make it possible to make changes without having to reinvent the wheel each time. Sometimes your training peers might not be within your own organization. You might have a few people that you chat with about training at your business, but you can also share stuff with other entrepreneurs on Twitter or Facebook.
4. Look at the Plan
You need to consider thinking about what has happened in your training sessions. It’s also useful to think about where we need to take our training in the future. Knowing where you want to be, as an institution, can help you recenter the types of things you’re training to make sure people know what we (as a larger group) have agreed we need to know. It’s also a nice time to look at the mission statements of the organization to get a sense of how training sessions are fitting into that public statement of what the group is doing.
5. Consider Shifting Needs
Just as you might need to recenter your training to the strategic plan or mission statement of your library, it’s worth thinking about the shifting needs of the audience you train. Though many of the sessions that you might have offered in the past would still be useful in some settings, hopefully your staff is already caught up on those issues. There might be topics that you haven’t offered training on that everyone else is getting. Or there might be new and emerging technologies that shift all of our needs into a new area. Thinking about these shifting needs can help you think about the topics to train on in the next year. Combining this with a good needs assessment can help for planning sessions that are really useful to your audience.
6. Get Topic Ideas
It’s never to early to be scouting for topics! Chatting with other trainers, reading blogs, thinking about presentations you’ve seen, and participating in social media can all provide inspiration for training. I know many of us keep lists of potential topics so that we have a pool of things to choose from depending on the needs of the organization at any point in time. This is a good time of year to look at that list and clean it up a bit. What’s outdated and shouldn’t be included? What’s obviously missing?
7. Attend Training Sessions
Not only can you learn about a topic in a training session or presentation, but you can also learn about how other trainers train. You know once you go to some of these sessions sometimes they want you to participate in some sort of activity like taking a class in your particular training. Most of the time people would say the best part of the class was the assignment to go out and observe a number of different training sessions. Seeing the variety of approaches, styles, and personality types will help you understand a lot about what you want to do in your next training session.
8. Plan to Stay Current
With the aid of the internet and social media, resources and groups come and go fairly quickly. It’s worth taking a little time every year or so to think through what organizations would support your training, what conferences would be nice to attend, and if there are any people you want to connect with in the training world. Even if you can’t afford to participate in the formal groups at a given time, there’s a good chance there’s an online option for following and participating in the discussions, and these groups can help you get new ideas for topics and training activities.
9. Make Notes!!
Throughout all of this, it’s helpful to document things. You might want to make notes of what worked for you this year and what didn’t. You might include new ideas for topics, training activities, groups you’d like to get involved with, or presentation ideas you come up with for conferences.
So which one do you think would be the best for staying current?
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Training Technology Evolving
Back in the day training was done by simply this is what you do now do it. Since the years have pasted there have been many improvements of the training world. Hardware started coming out to make things a little more simplier to train people like the computer. The computer was created so people could create software to make training easier. Then once all this happened it did nothing but evolve, simulators, games, e-learning, teleconferencing, etc... Once the new technology came out many companies were able to save alot of money on training because they were able to train people in quantities and not one at a time. The reason for this is because companies needed to get more people on the floor to do the job as fast as possible. Simulators, I think are the best thing ever invented because look at all the benefits of it. The army uses them all the time due to the fact that you can have more casualties on the battlefield just by doing training excersizes. The army really took advantage of the simulators because they could train people within a safe and secure place. This was an opportunity of a life time for soldiers. Also in that time frame video games came out and was able to train people in a sense for amry related tasks. So in your opinion which one do you like the best hardware, software, or simulators?
CSC actually provided the army with games here is the article
http://www.csc.com/ca_en/ds/11414/17069-csc_provides_u_s_army_flight_school_xxi_training_capability
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Training Systems and E-learning
As we all know that the difference between software and hardware is that you actually can touch hardware but software is just simply looking at the text on this screen. When it comes to training systems hardware you get more hands-on with the training and therefore it can mean a variety of things, like how do you learn the best. Do you like reading the training and then doing it yourself or would you rather get a hands-on experience with it so it will be natural when it comes to the real thing. Training software can be useful if you are a visual learner because as I mentioned earlier you can see software but not touch it.
As the new generation approaches more and more, innovative technology based training systems are being developed. We have seen more technology go into training systems which it helps diversify software and hardware based training. As time progresses, e-learning and training systems will be more technology based because of the fact of new developments, like simulators or games that convey a training method. The army is growing there technology field with advancements in the training area dealing with flight simulators and even using video games to train them for the field of battle. Analyses of training systems indicate that there will be more expectations that training systems will serve as a positive hope to maximize the potential of each person. This will result in increased importance on research to identify abilities required to perform more complex jobs. Also, research on basic skill and support programs to permit unskilled youth to enter the world of work will be required for the future of training systems. In addition, there will be a need for research on training to further help future managers and leaders work with members of a more diverse work force. Finally, the implications of these changes suggest that we need policies that consider research and development on retraining as a national need to help all individuals maximize their individual talents.
As the new generation approaches more and more, innovative technology based training systems are being developed. We have seen more technology go into training systems which it helps diversify software and hardware based training. As time progresses, e-learning and training systems will be more technology based because of the fact of new developments, like simulators or games that convey a training method. The army is growing there technology field with advancements in the training area dealing with flight simulators and even using video games to train them for the field of battle. Analyses of training systems indicate that there will be more expectations that training systems will serve as a positive hope to maximize the potential of each person. This will result in increased importance on research to identify abilities required to perform more complex jobs. Also, research on basic skill and support programs to permit unskilled youth to enter the world of work will be required for the future of training systems. In addition, there will be a need for research on training to further help future managers and leaders work with members of a more diverse work force. Finally, the implications of these changes suggest that we need policies that consider research and development on retraining as a national need to help all individuals maximize their individual talents.
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