The Learning Dispatch

MicroAssist's Linda Warren presenting at E-Learning Symposium 2013 - Austin

Submitted by admin on Fri, 12/07/2012 - 12:30

Linda Waren, MicroAssist E-Learning ID MicroAssist's Linda Warren is going to present on What makes Good Public Facing Training at Texas's premier E-Learning Conference. E-Learning can be designed for employees in your organization and it can also be designed for people who never step foot on your premises. In fact, E-Learning is a great strategy when you want to influence people outside your organization by improving their knowledge of something you care about and/or changing their behavior in support of your organization’s goals.

In her session Linda will examine how does public facing training differ from internal/employee training? analyze multiple examples of public facing training to determine what is effective and what needs to be handled differently from the way it might be handled for internal training.

E-Learning Symposium is an interactive conference designed to help professionals and key decision makers learn how to execute E-Learning programs within their organizations. This event is created for professionals who manage and design web-based education programs in healthcare, government, higher education, energy, and corporate settings. E-Learning Symposium brings industry experts from Texas and beyond to share their knowledge on of-the-moment topics, processes, and technology within the E-Learning world.

Webinar Recording: Why Public Facing Training?

Submitted by sanjay on Sun, 05/19/2013 - 10:31

Linda Warren, MicroAssist's lead instructional designer, will be presenting What Makes Good Public Facing Training at E-Learning Symposium 2013 in Austin. Register now.

First Impressions: Books Are Judged by the Cover

Submitted by lwarren on Thu, 05/16/2013 - 09:48

Linda Waren, MicroAssist E-Learning ID

Why do people say, “You can’t judge a book by its cover?” We make snap decisions all the time and those decisions are based on the first impression, which metaphorically speaking, is the book cover. Books by Chip Heath and Dan Heath got me thinking about their high impact book covers and how important first impressions are to online training.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

For the uninitiated, Chip Heath and Dan Heath are the authors of Made to Stick, Switch, and Decisive. I was fortunate enough to attend a talk by Dan Heath last week and, of course, that got me thinking about his books. The intriguing covers set the expectation that what is inside will be interesting, high quality, and valuable. Take a look at the covers.

Register for E-Learning Symposium 2013 - Austin - Save $50

Submitted by admin on Sat, 05/11/2013 - 15:53

Linda Waren, MicroAssist E-Learning ID MicroAssist customers can save $50 by using discount code CAA13B

MicroAssist's Linda Warren is going to present on What makes Good Public Facing Training at Texas's premier E-Learning Conference. E-Learning can be designed for employees in your organization and it can also be designed for people who never step foot on your premises. In fact, E-Learning is a great strategy when you want to influence people outside your organization by improving their knowledge of something you care about and/or changing their behavior in support of your organization’s goals.

Managers Leverage Their Most Valuable Asset by Finding the Value in Training

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 04/23/2013 - 15:15

by Brandy Sommer

Managers have a great responsibility to their companies, employees and clients. It’s an unending challenge to balance client, organizational and employee needs. One potentially overlooked, but powerful tool managers can leverage to encourage employees and boost company expertise is developing a strategy for ongoing training.

When a manager responds to employee accomplishments by suggesting training, he/she demonstrates that employees are viewed as valuable assets to the company, worthy of investment.

This can:

Reinforce company values and desired behavior throughout the organization;
Secure employee retention by building morale, mutual trust and respect;
Initiate a cycle of improved efficiency, accuracy and confidence in daily activities that ultimately translates into elevated credibility in the marketplace and direct value to clients.

Training goes beyond reward. It becomes a stepping stone to ongoing success. Look for ways to incorporate this powerful tool into your organization.

How to Make the Most of Your Time on the Titanic

Submitted by krossi on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 15:24

by Kelly Rossi

Oh, the ill-fated project. You know what I mean: the one your boss’ boss wants you to manage although it makes no sense, the project you think you may have seen in a Dilbert cartoon or an episode of The Office. It comes across your desk, and you wonder if you’re the only one who can see that everyone is boarding the Titanic. And yet, you’ve been elected project manager, so you don your captain’s hat and set sail…

At some point, almost everyone has been there. Here are a few of my personal insights into keeping your chin up even when you think the ship’s going down.

You = Valuable

At the risk of sounding like a motivational speaker, I will ask you for a moment to recognize the importance of You. When I say this, I’m not referring to you as a human being. I’m talking about the You who is a value-add on projects; the You that your team and stakeholders need; You the asset.

As we all know, assets have value, and things with value should be guarded. Right?

So my first survival strategy is a simple two-part harmony:

Recognize that you bring assets to any project, and
Guard them because they’re valuable and will be needed again.

Think of your assets like a good kitchen knife. Keep them sharp, and they will serve you time after time, but if you’re not active in their preservation, they’ll be useless when you need them next.

This is the basic premise for all my strategies. Over the years, I’ve personally identified what keeps me going, project after project, and I protect those things as I would anything of importance. For me, they are optimism, focus, confidence, and heart.

Optimism

Free Webinar: Grab Customer Attention with Training

Submitted by sanjay on Mon, 03/25/2013 - 10:54

Sanjay Nasta

Government organizations such as Texas Department of State Health Services and companies like Home Depot and IBM are discovering an important secret. Training is a powerful medium to influence behavior, build trust and grab the attention of customers and key business alliances beyond the boundaries of their own organizations.

Join Sanjay Nasta and Linda Warren for an online webinar:

To learn why training doesn't just belong in the training department.
It is a powerful tool for Marketing and Sales to drive customer behavior.
To identify who to target for your public facing training,
To discover fresh insight about what can be accomplished through public facing training.

For compelling examples of public facing training, don't miss Linda's full presentation at E-Learning Symposium 2013 Austin.

When: April 10, 2013, 12:00 noon - 12:45 pm
Where: Online Webinar

Metrics that Matter - Thoughts from a West Texas Road Trip

Submitted by sanjay on Mon, 03/18/2013 - 23:13

Trip Computer Recently, my wife and I rented a minivan for a family trip to Taos, NM. The dashboard computer for the vehicle supplied a mind boggling number of metrics including arrival time at destination, trip mileage, miles to empty, average miles per gallon, instantaneous miles per gallon, etc.

On the ten hour drive through the monotonous scenery of West Texas I got a bit bored and started trying to optimize some of the results reflected by these metrics. I modified my behavior--accelerating slowly, anticipating slowdowns and letting go of the accelerator instead of braking and managed to get the minivan to deliver 21 miles per gallon--not bad for a vehicle loaded with six adults, a five-year-old and a lot of luggage.

Custom e-Learning: The New Marketing

Submitted by jmccarthy on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 14:17

Have you thought about ways you could increase your influence and improve your business by offering training to people who have a connection to your organization, but do not work there? The audience could be surprisingly large — partners, customers, prospects, the public. Many organizations are already taking advantage of this strategy to increase their reach.

The New Marketing.pdf

Introduction to WAI-ARIA with Rich Schwerdtfeger, IBM CTO Accessibility

Submitted by sanjay on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 00:12

As many of you know MicroAssist is passionate about creating accessible web sites and accessible E-learning. Hiram Kuykendall, MicroAssist's CTO, champions the accessibility effort in MicroAssist. He has led MicroAssist's application team to win three AIR awards and has been the chair for AIR Interactive.

Recently, Hiram had a conversation with Rich Schwerdtfeger, CTO Accessibility, IBM Software on the WAI-ARIA (ARIA) software development standard for web based applications. WAI-ARIA defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies.The goal of this podcast is to introduce the ARIA standard to the software development community in hopes of raising general awareness and furthering adoption.