By Tom Myette

There is a treasure trove of knowledge in your group or agency. Do you tap it? Do you ask colleagues to teach other colleagues what they know? In his book Leaders as Teachers, author Edward Betof advises that organizations create leaders as teachers programs, sharing the knowledge of their senior executives, top managers and in-house experts to fully benefit from their top people’s expertise and savvy. This can be as simple as lunch & learn sessions or as sophisticated as what P&G does, which is to provide course authoring tools to all of its employees and encourage them to create online courses. The courses are vetted and chosen, then released to the workforce. The results speak for themselves. This approach results in faster, more relevant, better courses and at far less cost. Not long after P&G pioneered this approach, it became a business model for several online universities. Udemy, for example has over 500,000 students taking free and inexpensive courses, but as impressive, they have thousands of instructors, people like you and me who create courses on things we know about.

Coaching and mentoring in government is an underutilized learning resource. Participants in this week’s webinar, “Training on a Zero Budget” indicated that for many, coaching and mentoring has been the most effective learning arrangement in the past, yet less than %5 indicated that coaching and mentoring programs exist in their organization’s training and development approach. Within these organizations, there are mangers and supervisors that can make an enormous difference if they devote time to coaching and providing feedback. Yet, it’s hard even for supposed leaders to lead, they’re too busy doing the things they should be coaching their teams to do. But the first job of a leader at any level is to support those they lead. To leverage the collective strengths of the team to accomplish a focused objective. Mentors are different, every organization should have a formal mentoring program. Especially in government where there is so much knowledge at risk with retirements.

 

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By Tom Myette

There is a treasure trove of knowledge in your group or agency. Do you tap it? Do you ask colleagues to teach other colleagues what they know? In his book Leaders as Teachers, author Edward Betof advises that organizations create leaders as teachers programs, sharing the knowledge of their senior executives, top managers and in-house experts to fully benefit from their top people’s expertise and savvy. This can be as simple as lunch & learn sessions or as sophisticated as what P&G does, which is to provide course authoring tools to all of its employees and encourage them to create online courses. The courses are vetted and chosen, then released to the workforce. The results speak for themselves. This approach results in faster, more relevant, better courses and at far less cost. Not long after P&G pioneered this approach, it became a business model for several online universities. Udemy, for example has over 500,000 students taking free and inexpensive courses, but as impressive, they have thousands of instructors, people like you and me who create courses on things we know about.

Coaching and mentoring in government is an underutilized learning resource. Participants in this week’s webinar, “Training on a Zero Budget” indicated that for many, coaching and mentoring has been the most effective learning arrangement in the past, yet less than %5 indicated that coaching and mentoring programs exist in their organization’s training and development approach. Within these organizations, there are mangers and supervisors that can make an enormous difference if they devote time to coaching and providing feedback. Yet, it’s hard even for supposed leaders to lead, they’re too busy doing the things they should be coaching their teams to do. But the first job of a leader at any level is to support those they lead. To leverage the collective strengths of the team to accomplish a focused objective. Mentors are different, every organization should have a formal mentoring program. Especially in government where there is so much knowledge at risk with retirements.

 

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By Tom Myette

Online learning is no longer experimental. In its 2011 Survey of Online Learning, the Babson Survey Research Group reported that the number of students taking at least one online course has now surpassed 6.7 million. According to the authors of the research, online enrollments are now growing at a rate ten times faster than the rest of higher education. It is no surprise, therefore, that 65% of higher education institutions now say that online learning is a critical part of their long-term strategy. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Education issued a Report in 2010 that indicated, “Students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the same material through traditional face-to-based instruction.” The report also indicated that, “Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements have a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction…”

Free or inexpensive online learning is becoming ubiquitous. The Khan Academy offers more than 3,000 free video courses, you can access thousands more, sometimes for a small fee, on iTunesU. Coursera has almost 3.5 million students enrolled worldwide and 350 courses ranging from Data Science to Emotional Intelligence. As we’ve seen though, free or low cost isn’t the only reason to take advantage. Online learning is at least as effective as classroom learning and it renders time, location, tools and scale almost completely irrelevant. In other words, you could go one of these sites and sign your whole agency up for a course, you probably wouldn’t spend a dime and, if the learners are disciplined, you might find that the instruction and the learning gains are better that if you had spend hundreds of thousands on a traditional course.

 

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By Tom Myette

Brittany Ballenstedt, who writes Nextgov's Wired Workplace blog, references a new report by the Government Accountability Office and rightly points out that many federal training programs are duplicative, costly and/or ineffective, and that governmentwide virtual training may be agencies’ best solution to centralizing training and saving money.

According to Ballenstedt, the report found that while many agency chief human capital officers are implementing some leading practices to determine the best mix of training for their employees, many are not making decisions that support more cost-effective training investments or prioritizing training so that the most important needs are met first. Many CHCOs also do not have information on component or sub-agency training programs, resulting in duplicative training investments, GAO found.

The Office of Personnel Management also has a role in ensuring agencies roll out training programs effectively, but much of this guidance and accountability is absent, the report states. OPM has an opportunity, however, to help other agencies streamline training programs, in part thanks to a training model OPM has administered for the HR community, GAO found. HR University – a website currently administered by OPM – already has saved $14.5 million as a result of sharing the best HR training governmentwide.

“Several agencies and OPM officials reported that HR University could be expanded to provide mandatory training and serve as a model for centralizing training in other occupations or functional areas, which could save millions more and help standardize training,” GAO wrote. GAO recommended that agencies compare the benefits of different delivery mechanisms, such as classroom vs. computer-based training, to determine the most cost-effective and efficient delivery. The Veterans Health Administration, for example, moved from conducting in-person or audio meetings to providing training online for one of its leadership training programs, resulting in cost savings, more consistent curriculum and greater employee access to training, GAO found.

 

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By Tom Myette

In the Spring of 2012, it was revealed that agency officials at the General Services Administration had spent excessively at an over-the-top Las Vegas training conference that featured mind readers, bicycle giveaways and extravagant receptions. Now the agency is using that lapse in judgment as a catalyst for an effort to train other employees on conference etiquette, a topic that will serve as one of the first courses of its new virtual training program set to launch this year, according to Lauren Concklin, a marketing analyst with GSA.

“GSA underwent a huge travel mistake in the last year, and this is also another reason why we want to modernize our training,” Concklin said, noting that the goal of virtual training is to reduce travel mishaps and help agencies realize efficiencies and cost savings. The agency has teamed up with the online learning platform Blackboard to provide Web-based training to federal employees across government. A manual and in-person process for registering for and attending classes is moving online, allowing feds to register, pay for and attend classes via Internet. The Blackboard platform also provides tools such as discussion boards to collaborate, Concklin said.

GSA plans to launch its first online course, “Travel Basics,” through Blackboard in January, Concklin said. Another course – “How to Attend a Conference” – will go live in February or March, she added. “Thanks to the big mistake we had in the last year, GSA is using that as an opportunity to say, ‘here’s what we did wrong,’ and helping other federal agencies to learn from our mistakes,” Concklin said. “So ‘How to Attend a Conference’ is one course that’s going to be piggybacked off that theory.”

The new online platform also is enabling GSA to offer training in a more creative, game-like setting. “There is a difference in the way generations like to be trained, but one thing we know for sure is that the old click-style of PowerPoint training isn’t always the most effective, especially when it comes to training employees on things like travel,” Concklin said. “Doing it in a more integrated, creative way is more engaging.” GSA is also trying to push a capability that will establish more uniform tracking of training courses for federal employees. This will involve a new system that will push out to agencies a tracking feature that enables training courses to automatically be updated in an employee’s personal file once completed, Concklin said.

GSA also hopes the new online training platform will provide federal employees with greater personal choice on training courses and allow employees to keep up with training, even despite travel and training budgets being cut by 30 percent. “Federal agencies are realizing that their people need to be trained on certain topics, and travel is definitely one of them,” Concklin said. “And by opening the door to these platforms, it’s giving us the opportunity to greatly reduce the price to our federal agencies and allowing more employees to take training and take moretraining in one year.”

 

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By Tom Myette

Forward-thinking companies of the 21st century are affecting a change in the way they approach the investment in a learning management system (LMS). Jerry Roche of Government Elearning! notes that no longer is the LMS just an efficient and effective means to educate and train employees. It has become a more versatile tool, capable of being extended to all aspects of an enterprise, from partner programs, supplier/vendor/contractor channels and distributor networks to franchise networks and customer support channels. The delivery of training, licensing and certification programs to these “external” channels increases partner, supplier, distributor and customer satisfaction and product usage.

In short, an LMS can now achieve business goals and objectives in ways not considered as little as five years ago. This trend toward diversifying the function of an LMS from being solely employee- centric is becoming known as “extended enterprise” learning. By offering the benefits and convenience of the LMS, enterprise partners can quickly have access to tailored content that is controlled by the organization. Customized content, based on the unique needs of the learner, can be accessed, which completely personalizes the learning experience.

To those ends, your learning organization must also take on added responsibilities, including but not limited to:

>> tailoring information based on user profiles

>> providing a means to integrate training and commerce (in this case, e-commerce)

>>creating custom, multi-level registration processe

>>opening up social media connections, using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitteraccounts

>>publishing both learning and product catalog

>>improving brand image and customer satisfaction.

Perhaps the most important benefit of developing and delivering information to audiences outside your organization is improving communication and productivity with those external “partners” and shareholders. You also provide consistent training, education and enablement to all those people on a 24-7 basis, 365 days a year if necessary. That, in turn, can eliminate excess training costs while accelerating time-to-market. Roche asks, “You want to streamline reporting by obtaining consistent data collection?” Consider an extended enterprise LMS. “You want to convey consistent training materials and information on a timely and/or scheduled basis?” Consider an extended enterprise LMS.

 

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By Tom Myette

Companies that have mentor programs report a 77% increase in retention, which translates directly to the bottom line because the estimated cost of losing an employee, and recruiting, selecting, and training a replacement, is 1.5 times their annual salary. Combining mentoring with coaching increases productivity by 88%.

As e-Learning is a relatively new field, finding a traditional mentor who has significantly more experience, years on the job, or years in life is not as easy as it is in more established work arenas. However, a mentor relationship doesn’t have to be a formal or traditional one. It can range from being a casual arrangement for the duration of a project, to a formal long-term arrangement with regular meeting times. Use technology to connect with mentors remotely, accomodating busy schedules, and executing tasks collaboratively.

Many in the field feel that informal mentoring is just as effective as formal mentoring if not more effective. If your organization does not have a formal mentor program, find an informal mentor. A mentor might help in the following ways:

• Making a job or career change
• Seeking a promotion or raise
• Navigating the politics or unwritten rules of a team or organization
• Building a better relationship with a challenging boss or teammate
• Optimizing performance on a project

Whether you’re struggling with a difficult situation or have a goal in mind, you are strongly encouraged to seek out some guidance from a trusted colleague. Select a mentor that you respect as successful and who has experience that is relevant to your need. The research suggests asking someone you know personally and whose company you enjoy to be your mentor. The experience will be more engaging.

 

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By Tom Myette

The popularity of smartphones and tablets in the workplace has increased the interest in mobile learning. But with the mobile landscape constantly evolving, many organizations are asking themselves if now is the right time to take the plunge, or if they should wait for more stability. Tim Hildreth, contributing author to Learning Solutions magazine, notes that “Based on the lack of standardization between device platforms, it is impossible to cater to the needs of every operating system. It is important to thoroughly evaluate each device’s capabilities.”

When deciding on what strategy makes the most sense for your company, Hildreth offers five questions that you should ask:

What does “mobile” mean?

While some correlate mobile learning with smartphones and tablets, others associate it with portability. By broadening the discussion to overall portability, more diverse and attainable devices come into play, including laptops and media players.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Mobile is only one component of an overall learning strategy. It is important to keep your audience in mind, as well as the types of learning you want to focus on.

What devices will you support?

Based on the lack of standardization between device platforms, it is impossible to cater to the needs of every operating system. It is important to thoroughly evaluate each device’s capabilities.

Do you have the necessary organizational support?

Your approach needs to align with your IT department’s capabilities and company’s mobile device policies.

How does it fit into your existing learning strategy and ecosystem?

To be successful, you should evaluate the current LMS framework, overall learning program’s goals, company’s learning culture, and if the workforce is a good fit for the mobile lifestyle.

 

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By Tom Myette

Meeting the challenges of delivering mobile content can appear to be a daunting task, especially since technology capabilities are expanding worldwide, particularly in the mobile communications sector. However, by developing an approach that meets your company’s unique training delivery needs, you can move into the mobile training space with confidence. Experts estimate that about 30-40% of the workforce accesses content via mobile devices. Talent management professionals know that making training programs accessible encourages employees to with program goals and delivers an edge over competitors.

These facts pose a challenge for learning development professionals. They need to stay ahead of the curve by delivering training content in the field where their employees can readily access it. However, few have the time or budget to approach mobile learning as a separate initiative from their current training programs, reinvent the wheel on content, and integrate mobile training delivery into existing programs. Plus, the wide range of options available for creating and implementing a truly mobile training experience can be confusing.

According to Skip Marshall of Learning Solutions Magazine, as you move toward a fully integrated mobile-learning-content strategy for your company, you can minimize the confusion by focusing on three components that are vital to the process:

Assess the device options available, taking into account what types of mobile devices your workforce or customers currently use and whether you’ll need to deliver content to users in the field. If your training program contains Flash presentations, make sure you can deliver it on platforms that don’t support Flash delivery, and keep in mind that performance can vary significantly even on Flash-enabled devices.

Define the user experience you need to achieve, taking into account factors such as device screen sizes and the types of content you’ll be pushing out to participants, including levels of interactivity. To encourage user participation, you’ll want to make sure you have the capability to deliver a seamless user experience regardless of device type and screen size.

Factor in special considerations that are unique to your training management needs, such as regulatory compliance issues, user locations, and bandwidth considerations. Make sure your mobile learning modules are SCORM / AICC compliant so that you can easily expand your learning material repository.

 

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By Tom Myette

Technology is ubiquitous in our lives today. But what does that mean to the classroom as we’ve known it? Just one use of technology – the virtual classroom – can expand the reach of learning professinoals beyond physical spaces. Virtual classrooms and similar technologies give us the opportunity to connect instructors and learners in a synchronous online environment, regardless of their location.

To help you learn more about how to make the best use of virtual classroom technologies, The eLearning Guild is offering a free eBook, 129 Tips on Using Technology in Virtual and Physical Classrooms. While this book was mentioned last week in the Top Stories, it is highlighted again this week because of the tremendous value it can add to an organization. It is a free downloadable resource that can add a significant amount of value to those working in the innovative learning field. The eleven experts included in the book provide top tips in six primary categories. Learn more about:

• Using Virtual-classroom and Virtual-world Features Effectively. Find 46 tips from the experts to take advantage of all the virtual world has to offer.

• Instructional Design and Presentation Tips for the Classroom. The tipsters offer 56 tips to help you ensure good instructional design and solid presentation skills in the virtual classroom.

• Pros and Cons of Virtual Classrooms and Virtual Worlds. Sometimes you just need to know if using a virtual classroom is the right approach, and these nine pros and cons from the experts can help you decide.

• Pros and Cons of Physical and Blended Classrooms. Physical and blended classrooms also have their challenges. Get five pros and cons to help you make the most of your learning model.

• Games for the Classroom. Gamification is all the rage in eLearning today, and the tipsters share three quick ideas for using games effectively in your learning initiatives.

• Mobile and Social Learning for the Classroom. Learn 10 tips from the pros on how to capitalize on the opportunity that mobile and social learning provides to your classrooms.

 

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