Attend a Free Virtual Talent Leadership Forum

I’m on the mailing list for the Aberdeen Group (www.aberdeen.com), one of the leading providers of fact-based research and best practice industry reports.   They are advertising a free virtual Talent Leadership forum on December 9th from 10am - 5pm EST. This forum will bring together the top leaders in human capital management with Aberdeen's research offering insights into Best-in-Class talent and workforce management practice.

This virtual forum offers the opportunity to not only hear world class speakers focusing on the challenges HR and Talent management executives face every day, but will have the opportunity to interact with them.  The forum will be a series of presentations exploring the following topics:

  • The Talent Acquisition Lifecycle: From Sourcing to Onboarding
  • The Engagement/Performance Equation
  • Integrating HR and Talent Management: Data, Systems and Processes
  • A look Ahead: The 2011 HR Executive’s Agenda

Check out the registration link for more information. http://summits.aberdeen.com/index.php/virtual-forum.html



Free summertime webinars

Summertime is here and there are lots of opportunities to learn new ideas and catch up on some of the latest trends in learning and development.

Training Magazine's online website has a number of free webinars including:

Tuesday, July 13, 2010: Project Team Triage. Join Lou Russell to learn about ways to facilitate project team discussions quickly and effectively, and improve your project throughout before it’s too late.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010: Creating a High-Performing Workplace with Games, Social Media, and Virtual Worlds. Join Anders Gronstedt to learn how the future of learning is about online conversations and communities, podcasting on the go, and shared immersive-3D virtual-worlds experiences.

Thursday, July 15, 2010: Active Contributors in Social Learning: Helping Learners Acquire Motivation and Skills. Join Dr. Ray Jimenez to learn how the growth and success of social learning and mobile learning are accompanied by a new type of learner - the Contributor and how theyrequire a new set of skills and motivation to become active contributors.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010: Faster, Cheaper, Better: Really Rapid Instructional Design. Join Sivasailam Thiagarajan “Thiagi” and Tracy Tagliati as they show you how you can replace the traditional systematic instructional design model with a continuous, concurrent, creative, co-design approach to designing corporate training materials faster and cheaper to produce more effective transfer to the workplace.

Thursday, August 12, 2010: Emerging Challenges in Learning: Proving the Business Value. Join Jeffrey Berk to learn about the major challenges leading organizations face in measuring the value of learning and development. 

If you’re not already a member, all you need to do is sign up at http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com.  Once you're signed in, click on the Home page to view the list of free webinars.  The site also includes links to archived webinars if you've missed past sessions.

 

ASTD is also sponsoring a free webinar that is facilitated by NetSpeed Learning Solutions:

Tuesday, July 20th 10am PST: From Blah to Aha! Ten Best Practices for the Virtual Classroom. Learn about ten best practices to help you move from Blah (boring, talking head presentations) to Aha (engaging, interactive classroom facilitation).

Space is limited so if you're interested, register at http://www.netspeedlearning.com/webinar/bestpractices/

New learning management article available

We've recently posted an article called 'Inside Learning Management' to the documents area of the site. We've found over the years that it can be pretty confusing when you're first considering getting into e-learning and learning management, so we put together this article to try to demystify some of the product types and tools out there. We've included an outline of the planning process for installing a learning management system. Check out the article and see if it can be of help to you.

We've also created a worksheet to help you figure out what you need from your new tool - if you'd like a copy of it, drop us a line and we'll send it on over.

Do you know what the top eLearning sites are?

I was catching up on my subscription blog reading today and came across an interesting blog post on one of my favorite learning blogs, the eLearning Technology blog by Tony Karrer .  He wrote a recent article that answered a question he had been asked..."What were the biggest traffic sites in eLearning that were not vendor specific".  After some research he came up with what he believes are the top five sites.   Check out his blog article on Thursday, May 20, 2010 called Top eLearning Sites?: eLearning Technology. You might be surprised at the results.

New Case Study: Software company’s management turnover reduced with new manager orientation program and assessment

New employee orientation programs are an essential part of any hiring process. A well planned and effectively administered new employee orientation program results in lower employee turnover, increased productivity and improved work quality. This translates into happier employees and a healthier bottom line.

We've just added a case study to our site that describes how a North American social networking software company adopted a new manager orientation program that improved employee morale and reduced their management turnover rate and associated costs. The orientation program and assessment tools we created for the client provided a solid foundation for employee success and improved the company’s bottom line. Read all about it here.

Organizations of all sizes can benefit from a new-employee orientation program - contact us to learn more.

New mobile library launched!

We've excited to announce that we've just launched a series of mobile content modules. It's called the "Instant Sales Skills Mobile Library", and it was developed to help busy on-the-go sales people expand their skills or refresh their knowledge on key topics wherever they are and whenever they want. We think this is the type of content that's ideal for distribution using smartphones - bite-sized chunks that are easily absorbed and turn a few minutes of down time into productive time. The library is currently designed to run on BlackBerry devices using the Chalk Pushcast Software platform, and we hope to launch it soon for other devices and platforms. Check the topics out and see what you think!

Free training webinars

On February 20th, 2010, Training Magazine announced that it would be closing its doors.  It had been one of the most well respected publications in the training industry.  I remember even in the early days of my career eagerly awaiting the next edition of my subscription to Training Magazine.  But the good news is that Training Magazine is back and their online site is up and running again at www.trainingmagnetwork.com.

Glad to see them back, I was checking out their online site and found a number of free webinars being offered.  If you’re not already a member, all you need to do is sign up at http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com.  Once you're signed in, click on the Events/Resources tab for the list of free webinars.  The site also includes links to archived webinars as a bonus!

One of my personal favorite presenters is Thiagi (Sivasailam Thiagarajan, Ph.D.). He offers a free monthly webinar on the Training Magazine site. Many years ago I sat in a two-day simulation gaming workshop and have been a fan of his ever since.  He has a wonderful sense of humor and a wealth of knowledge to share!  Don't miss him.  His next free webinar is called “Jolt Participants into Awareness and Action” on June 15th.  Check it out here http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com/profile/show/1984



One company's move to a blended learning solution

Everywhere I turn now, I see articles, blog posts, threaded discussions, tweets, seminars and much more about using social media. More and more learning professionals are now looking at new or more impactful ways of incorporating social media in learning. 

Stephanie and I recently came across an interesting TELUS case study that highlights the process they used to pilot a new approach to learning that integrates social and informal components, including webcasts, videos, blogs, microblogs and wikis. The interesting part of this approach is that they used Microsoft Sharepoint Server 2010. Dan Pontefract, Senior Director of Learning for TELUS said “the social networking elements drew us to SharePoint Server 2010” and that “the company’s three-year plan is to move to a situation in which formal learning accounts for just 50 percent of its total learning budget”.

As the popularity of social media takes hold in the learning community, Stephanie and I are seeing more companies with traditional learning offerings like face-to-face training become interested in adopting a more balanced blended learning solution that includes eLearning and social media. In fact, we are currently working with a company that has asked us to recommend a more blended learning solution for their 30,000+ employees.

Interested in reading the TELUS case study? Check it out here.

Break your presentations out of the box

How many times have you sat through a page-turner presentation that almost put you to sleep?

How many times have you been guilty of delivering something along these lines yourself?

As much as we may want to liven things up when we're conducting face to face training or sharing information with colleagues, ditching the presentation slides is not really an option - there is value to having something displayed on a screen to guide participants along. The unfortunate thing is, most of the software we use to create presentations follow this same page-turning slide format that can become monotonous after a while, despite our best efforts. 

I recently came across a tool that takes a totally different approach to presentations that impressed me quite a bit. Prezi frees us from the 'slides' metaphor for displaying content. Instead imagine adding all of your content to a large canvas, where your presentation view allows you to move around the canvas, zoom in and out and rotate the perspective. You can easily show the big picture, zoom in on details and make connections between different elements in an eye-catching way. It's really something best grasped by checking out some of the presentations people have shared on the Prezi website. The bonus is it's free to use under the public license, and pretty reasonable for the other license options, too.

Take a look and see what you think - maybe Prezi can help you liven up your next presentation!