Dave McFarland Senior Manager of Content Portland, Oregon He/His For Dave McFarland, arriving at Senior Manager of Content for OpenSesame in early 2020 was the culmination of a teaching, design, and video production career. Dave has a discerning eye for the highest quality educational content and diverse voices. Today, he uses his experience to assemble… Read more »
Given Black History Month’s origin of commemorating notable accomplishments by Black Americans in the United States, the recent historic election of Kamala Harris as the first female, Black, and Asian-American Vice President of the United States is an unprecedented achievement. Vice President Harris joins the ranks of historical Black figures whose pioneering feats not only… Read more »
1. Get leadership buy-in Establishing and nurturing a learning culture is an ongoing process that requires long term support (and work) from the leaders in your business. These are the people who will be implementing and reinforcing training initiatives, so they have to care about this as much as you do. Talk to them. Show… Read more »
Properly training your employees not only ensures that everyone is working to their full potential but it also helps your company retain talent. According to the National Research Business Institute, 23% of employees leave due to a lack of development, opportunities, and training. Implementing elearning can be a solution for these issues. A recent ILX… Read more »
Hiring people is exhausting. You have to write the ad, screen out all the crazies, conduct a bunch of interviews, realize in the process that you weren’t 100% at screening out all the crazies – and then, after all that, you finally make your choice and revel in the knowledge that you’ve found the best… Read more »
Stating The Obvious Diversity. It can mean different things to different people. One thing is for sure though, it’s a must-have for businesses these days. It’s a no-brainer that diversity brings more viewpoints and solutions into the workplace, but it also goes beyond your current workplace. Thanks to communication technologies, business interactions have become more… Read more »
Humans are creatures of habit, especially habits that make our lives and daily tasks easier. But habits and technology are often at odds with each other. For example, in the 1980’s, business executives were reluctant to trade their paper rolodexes for computerized contact databases. Every advance in technology, from color monitors, to email, to cloud-based… Read more »
We are experiencing an employee engagement crisis: only 13 percent of employees globally are engaged at work, while the rest are either neutral or, worse, actively disengaged. Despite an overall increase in budget toward improving this, many organizations are still having limited success in increasing employee engagement. With a troubling overall lack of engagement and… Read more »
In a recent OpenSesame webinar, Claude Werder, VP and Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, discussed how the effectiveness of soft skill training is changing as new technologies, content types and delivery methods develop. Here are the strategies that Werder shared to understand your organization’s soft skill needs and how to prioritize content and delivery… Read more »
1. Based on your organization’s goals, what skills are needed? Align training with organization goals to establish a successful learning program. According to a Brandon Hall group study, 70% of companies that tie training to goals see an increase in profits. But, how can an organization actually do this? The first step is to examine… Read more »
Mobile learning – and the rise of mobile dominance, in general – is a topic that most learning and development (L&D) professionals have heard of. In fact, mobile learning is now so critical to online corporate training success that it has become an eLearning best practice. However, the majority of organizations do not support mobile… Read more »
Creating killer course content is only half of the battle when it comes to designing an eLearning course. You also need to present your content in a way that addresses the key tenets of user experience: aesthetics, usability, accessibility, performance and levels of human interaction. Establishing a good user experience means your course is much… Read more »
Unfortunately, all too often sales representatives rarely achieve those desired C-level sales. A recent Forbes article explains, “eight out of 10 executive buyers consider the sales meetings they take to be a waste of time” and believe that representatives do not demonstrate an adequate knowledge of their buyers business. Perhaps this is not purely the inherent… Read more »
Approximately 69% of L&D professionals say that talent is the number one priority in their organizations. However, recent research by Deloitte Human Capital Trends shows that reinventing careers and learning was rated by executives as the #2 most important business issue. Josh Bersin, founder and Principal of Bersin by Deloitte, draws the following observation from… Read more »
Thanks to technological developments and the widespread adoption of mobile devices, learner needs are not the same as they were a few years ago. Learners have naturally evolved as new technology is introduced into both their personal and professional lives. The question is: how have these changes impacted learner needs? In an infographic entitled ‘Meet… Read more »
There are Master Chefs among us, yes, but some of us didn’t always know how to cook, or how to cook properly. Fortunately, two elements have made excellence in cooking something that is accessible and achievable for all of us. One element lies in the fact the best cooks all around the world have made… Read more »
