For a business to maintain its edge, all players in an organization need to perform their jobs at optimum levels. When things aren’t going well, management often looks to the training team to boost employee job performance and correct the problem. Business performance issues aren’t always training issues It is almost axiomatic for management that all performance improvement problems can be solved through training. As learning and development (L&D) experts, we[…]
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Elearning Spotlight: Texas Vaccine Education Online
Online Training for Public Health: Educating on Immunizations for 7 Million Children in the State of Texas Developing online training is rewarding for many reasons, not the least of which is that we get to work on some amazing elearning projects and cover a variety of topics. When an elearning project positively impacts our surrounding communities, the rewards are even richer. One of our favorite training projects educates multiple sectors[…]
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Pulling together a new hire training is a challenge most trainers will face at least once in their careers. It isn’t always a simple task. Deciding what to put in and what to leave out and making sure new employees are getting the information they need to do their jobs, all while trying to build and maintain their enthusiasm, can be daunting to say the least. Yet new hire training that[…]
READ MORE about New Hire Training: 5 Keys to Developing Training with FinesseLearning and Development: Why Hire an Outside Company?
Why hire a learning and development company? You don’t need to. That’s kind of important to point out. Companies perform training functions internally all the time. They develop and deliver employee training, they create and deploy training for their customers, they write and distribute training for their channel partners. They may have a training department or they may leverage internal resources. And it can be effective. And yet… even very[…]
READ MORE about Learning and Development: Why Hire an Outside Company?Is Video or Text Better for Learning Retention?
During our recent webinar, “Reaching New Audiences through Online Training,” one attendee asked, “Do people retain training better, same or not as much with video versus reading?” I wanted to poke around in the research before answering. It turns out that the research doesn’t offer a very clear answer. As can be the case, different studies show different things (ever wonder if butter is good or bad for you?). Individual studies[…]
READ MORE about Is Video or Text Better for Learning Retention?Your Perfect Elearning Development Shop: An Individual or a Team?
When you’re considering a new elearning project, how much thought do you give to the size of the instructional design shop that you’re engaging for elearning development? One Person or a Team? There are several questions when designing learning—do I do this in-house or should I outsource? Should our training be instructor-led or self-guided online? Something else? The question of team size—an individual or a group—often gets overlooked. It shouldn’t.[…]
READ MORE about Your Perfect Elearning Development Shop: An Individual or a Team?Questions to Ask Before Developing Training In-House
Over the last seven years working with program managers, I have found that they are terrific at looking at the “big picture” of their programs, but they sometimes need help evaluating available resources for creating training related to those programs or the related projects. “Should I create the training in-house?” This is a question that program managers might think about. Developing training with available staff resources is certainly an option.[…]
READ MORE about Questions to Ask Before Developing Training In-HouseLearning Fundamentals: Which Training Methods Work Best?
So you need to train someone to do something. What are your options? There are several different training methods and a number of variations on each. Essentially, I usually group them in three areas: instructor-led training, webinars, and elearning. Under instructor-led, we can place the standard classroom learning environment. There’s an instructor, with students in the room with the instructor. The instructor can be the classic sage-on-the-stage, or the more[…]
READ MORE about Learning Fundamentals: Which Training Methods Work Best?Welcome to Our Redesigned Website
Welcome to our new look! For almost thirty years, we’ve been dedicated to sharpening skills and teams through talent development, as well as to harnessing ever-evolving technology in purposeful ways. Now, we’re pleased to apply that mindset to our digital presence. We’ve taken advantage of responsive tools and creative design so we can better present ourselves—and our services—to both our community of customers and to new visitors. Microassist was born out[…]
READ MORE about Welcome to Our Redesigned WebsiteDilemma: Training in an Era of Budget Constraint
Traditional Training Has a Lot of Peripheral Costs but Failure to Train = Catastrophic Liability As an agency head, I was constantly coping with the ebb and flow of funding. Sadly, the latter years saw more ebbing than flowing. Budget reductions and unanticipated shortfalls necessitated a relentless cycle of reprioritization, force reductions, equipment replacement, schedule modifications, reductions in services, deferred purchases, consolidations, and all the other things that executives do[…]
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