Recently we profiled one of our publishers, Ryan Tillman of Breaking Barriers United, and highlighted his work via webinar and an introductory article about his accomplishments.

In this article, we’re expanding the conversation and diving deeper into Ryan’s mission, goals, and the meaning of empowerment in the Black community.

What does Black empowerment mean to you?

To me, Black empowerment means taking control of your life, despite being black – despite the color of your skin. 

This may sound contradictory to the idea of black empowerment. But here’s what I mean: 

I was raised to be proud of who I am – to be proud of being an African American male. I learned about my history growing up – about my culture and my roots. And I learned there was a lot of oppression towards Black people. When I learned that, it was hard – realizing that man, I can’t believe my ancestors had to go through that simply based on the color of their skin. But at the same time, it was inspirational, because I learned that no matter the color of your skin, you can rise and overcome. 

I love the fact that I’m Black because it makes me unique; it allows me to bring perspectives from another culture. I also think the empowerment part of it means we can go out there and be strong. We can be like Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman and other Black ancestors that went ahead of me to pave the way.

How does the work you do with Breaking Barriers United and with OpenSesame help to empower the Black community?

I think it helps empower the Black community because it gives them hope that they can do something that’s not within their realm. And what I mean by that is if you look at law enforcement right now, there’s not a lot of diversity within the profession. It’s more than what it used to be, but it’s not as diverse as it could be. 

It’s also about the Black community’s perception of how they view law enforcement. They see us as the enemy. They see us as the oppressors – as an extension of slavery, some might say, which isn’t true. The work that I do with OpenSesame and with the Black community allows people to change the way they see law enforcement – when they see a Black police officer and hear from my experiences, their perception shifts.

At the same time, I think that we can improve as a profession. By creating elearning courses through OpenSesame as a Black police officer, not only am I helping change the way people view law enforcement, I’m also able to educate people about it at the same time.

What’s an example of how you’ve changed the Black community’s perspective through your work as an officer?

I had an interesting conversation a few weeks ago with a guy who’s a convicted felon. We start talking, and he starts sharing about his life. He’d been in and out of the criminal justice system for years – been arrested, sent to prison. So we’re talking and like I said, he’s just spewing his heart out to me, telling me everything about himself. This is before he knew what I did. 

So we got to that part in the conversation where he asks what I do. I tell him I’m a cop and his eyes get huge. He’s like, “Man, I can’t believe I told all this information to a cop!” And then we continue the conversation. At the end, he says, “You know what, Ryan, one of the things that I respect about you is that you didn’t bat an eye when I was telling you everything. As a matter of fact, you didn’t cast any judgment. There was no shift in the conversation where I felt judgment coming from you.” And I just said, “Well, that’s because we’re all humans. Every one of us has made mistakes. Who am I to judge?”

I just go out there and try to be myself. I’m Ryan Tillman – Corporal Tillman, not Popo Tillman. In doing this I’ve been able to develop relationships with people and change their perspectives.

And this happens all the time. People approach me and tell me how I’ve changed their viewpoint – a side I hadn’t seen before. This is my ultimate goal.

How have you changed hearts and minds through the workshops you give in BBU? 

I’m always transparent. I talk about where I came from, why I became a police officer. And I always address the elephant in the room upfront. I start by asking, “Who doesn’t like police officers?” Not surprisingly, most or all hands go up. Then, throughout my presentation, I educate them about law enforcement: what it is, why we exist, what we do in our roles. 

And then we role-play. The students go through scenarios where they have to make decisions as a police officer in the field. It’s an eye-opening moment for all of them – they’re like, “Wow, this was very hard!” And that’s done in a static environment, where it’s not real. I ask them to imagine the decisions that real police officers make daily where it’s not static, where it’s not fun and games – where it’s life or death. 

By having these conversations and working through these scenarios non-judgmentally, we’re instrumental in challenging perceptions. 

Anything else you’d like others to know? 

You can accomplish whatever you want to accomplish. You may have to take risks, but there will be rewards. Get out of your comfort zones; explore the treacherous waters in order to get to the other side of that ocean. Because when you get there, there will be an abundance of whatever you want – success, or whatever it is – as long as you’re willing to take the plunge and swim through.

To learn more about Ryan and his work, check out our previous article, webinar, and OpenSesame’s Breaking Barriers United courses.

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Social distancing combined with a high rate of change has truly made 2020 the year of virtual learning. Change just keeps coming and with it the pressure to train employees and customers alike on new knowledge, skills, and procedures. There’s tremendous demand for just-in-time online training in small nuggets that tell people exactly what they need to know to do one specific thing right now. When it’s the same thing everyone else has to do (like learn how to wash your hands really well), off-the-shelf training provides an ideal solution. But when it’s something specific to your company or even your department, there’s no such thing as off the shelf.

For custom content, you could partner with a company that specializes in developing custom training. They can work with your internal experts to create exactly what you need and get it into your learners’ hands in just the right format. At Obsidian Learning, we do this all the time with our customers, so we know the advantages and disadvantages of this arrangement. One of the big disadvantages is how long it takes to get internal approval to use an outside vendor if you don’t already have a partnership in place. You might even have to issue an RFP. When it comes to an urgent training need, who has time for that?

Without external help the burden to create fast, effective online training usually falls on in-house subject matter experts. But experts in a field are often not experts in training—especially in training online; especially in training online effectively. Even learning professionals may find themselves out of their depth, needing to refresh or extend their skills around virtual training development and delivery.

Effective virtual and face-to-face learning share many of the same requirements, including designing for the audience, setting clear learning objectives, structuring, and right-sizing deliverables appropriately, clear presentation, and reinforcing learning. But there are also unique challenges and opportunities when it comes to virtual delivery and the many virtual deliverables available: videos, animations, infographics, step-by-step instructions, web-based training, live virtual events, and more.

No one has to reinvent the wheel on this. Obsidian’s Virtual Learning series provides targeted training modules to guide your employees in creating their own virtual training nuggets and programs. 

Monica Savage is President of Obsidian Learning, which creates both off-the-shelf and custom learning solutions. The Obsidian Virtual Team Building series offers a program to help people connect, thrive, and be more productive while also having fun. Our Virtual Learning series guides employees tasked with creating their own virtual training. Our library on Open Sesame expands weekly as we pivot with you to meet today’s challenges. 

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It’s complicated and it takes effort. But remember, the size of the prize is big. If you want an outstanding and exceptional high-performing organisation you need to climb that mountain.

According to Abraham Maslow, satisfying the need to belong is a prerequisite to developing self-esteem and confidence, which in turn is a prerequisite for self-actualization, the motive to realize one’s fullest potential. These higher-order needs require a social context, which is why belonging supports self-esteem in Maslow’s pyramid. The need to belong is driven by evolutionary factors. It is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.

Why is belonging important? 

Throughout history, the idea of belonging to a ‘tribe’ or a ‘people’ has helped us to protect and define ourselves. Belonging helps us feel: 

• • valued, needed, and accepted by others 
  • safer 
  • that our beliefs are valid 
  • that our efforts are worthwhile 
  • comforted by being with others who share our interests and values.

BetterUp recently found: Employees with a high sense of belonging take 75% fewer sick days than employees who feel excluded. These sick days equate to almost $2.5 million worth of lost productivity each year, per 10,000 workers.

• • Excluded employees have a 50% higher rate of turnover than employees who feel they belong, costing organisations about $10 million annually per 10,000 employees.
  • Employees see a 56% in job performance when they feel like they belong, resulting in a gain of $52 million per year for every 10,000 employees.

In addition, workers’ careers benefit from belonging. Individuals who felt highly connected at work received twice as many raises and were 18 times more likely to be promoted in a six month period than people who felt excluded.

Finally, BetterUp conducted online simulations of exclusion in team settings and found that excluded people were 25% less productive in working toward their team’s goals.

According to the Harvard Business Review, more than 40% of people feel emotionally and physically isolated at work, a finding that transcends gender, age, and ethnicity. 

Create allies at work

A powerful preventative solution BetterUp found through their simulations was the addition of an ally to the team, defined as “someone who acknowledges and includes you.” With an ally in place, active exclusion by others had no impact on the person being left out, counteracting the 25% productivity loss seen in excluded people who had no ally.

Our program Career IGNITE is designed to create just that. It enables you to create Structured Inclusive Mentoring. Learn more here.

Maureen Frank is a disruptor! She challenges leaders and organizations to get real about inclusion and diversity. She comes to the world of inclusion and diversity from a strong commercial background. Her focus is on ROI and results – not just ticking boxes for the sake of it. Check some of the stories out at www.emberin.com.

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Employees can’t perform at their best if they don’t feel their best. Poor work-life balance, low nutrition, over-exhaustion, and a lack of stress management could all contribute negatively to employees’ productivity and ability to engage at work.

Burnout is costing some companies billions of dollars every year due to rising healthcare costs, turnover rates, absenteeism, and presenteeism—when an employee comes to work but underperforms due to stress or other health-related issues.  

Thankfully, companies can boost the success of their employees and their organization by adding employee wellness training into existing learning strategies. A dynamic and holistic approach to corporate wellness can result in:

Remarkable ROI

A critical meta-analysis on the costs and savings associated with employee wellness programs revealed an average ratio of 6:1 return on investment. Medical costs fall by about $3.27 and absenteeism costs fall by about $2.73 for every dollar spent on employee wellness programs.

Increased productivity  

One survey measured about a 10 percent increase in productivity and participation due to corporate wellness programs that helped employees improve their diet and exercise habits. This was a small study, but it has big implications for companies looking to improve their operational productivity through health policies.

Happier, healthier employees

Supporting employee wellbeing not only improves a company’s bottom line, but it also expresses corporate care for employees. The Care Study, a survey designed to study the impact of employees’ perceived care from employers, revealed all of the following benefits for employees who feel cared for: 

• • They intend to stay with the organization significantly longer
  • They’re more likely to recommend the organization as a great place to work
  • They experience less stress
  • They’re significantly more engaged
  • They’re less likely to experience burnout
  • They feel more included at work

Tackle corporate wellness with the Everyday Wellbeing series on OpenSesame

The Everyday Wellbeing series from Maestro is a 10-course curriculum that teaches your team the well-rounded habits that make up a healthy lifestyle, including hydration, nutrition, exercise, and sleep. Everyday Wellbeing introduces the basic science of these wellness principles and provides clear strategies for how your team can integrate them into their own life.

These courses meet employees where they’re at, help them establish their own health goals, and provide next-steps for moving forward. Each module provides a few action items and printable job aids so it’s easier than ever for learners to start making progress toward a healthier lifestyle.

About the Author

We’re Maestro. A team of talented individuals who love using design and technology to solve problems. We’ve partnered with OpenSesame to design learning that helps people and brands perform beautifully. Learning that’s intentionally crafted to inspire growth in your business and in the life of each person on your team. Visit meetmaestro.com to learn more.

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I was reminded of this when I spoke at a conference for users of a highly specialized and technical piece of software. Standing in front of an international audience of process engineers and manufacturing control managers, I wondered how my message would resonate with them. Would they dismiss business relationship building as just another “soft skill?”

My worries were unfounded. The audience was interactive, enthusiastic, and engaged (everything a speaker could hope for, in fact). Several audience members approached me afterwards, eager to share their own relationship building success stories.

Relationships Drive Success

As a specific and measurable job function, business relationship building is often ascribed to the sales and marketing team. Of the conference attendees I spoke with, however, few were directly responsible for managing relationships with clients or customers. Instead, they talked about building connections and maintaining relationships with people across all stages of the manufacturing cycle, including:

• • Vendors
  • Consultants
  • Partners
  • Coworkers
  • Bosses
  • Employees

I heard stories of engineers collaborating with marketers to produce operator-friendly communications, plant managers taking time to appreciate employees for a job well done, and technical support staff going above and beyond during large-scale installations. (Maintaining good relationships up and down the supply chain is mission critical when you are dealing with expensive and complicated software installations. These are long-term commitments that are not easily unraveled.)

Business Relationship Building Skills are Timeless

The importance of relationship building in business is nothing new, of course. In 1918, the Carnegie Foundation published A Study of Engineering Education by Charles Riborg Mann which concluded that soft skills were much more important to career success than hard skills.

In 2016, a group of researchers from Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation, and Stanford Research Center extrapolated statistics from Riborg Mann’s 1918 report and concluded that 85% of job success comes from having well‐developed soft and people skills. The other 15% comes from technical skills and knowledge (i.e., hard skills).

So here we are, more than one hundred years later and the data still points to the indisputable fact that soft skills—like collaboration, communication, and connection—are essential to job success. Yet many companies still spend 75% or more of their training budgets on the development of hard skills. Isn’t it time to revisit these numbers?

Offered through OpenSesame, The Galvanizing Group’s library of interactive online courses—focused on relationship building and personal effectiveness—helps develop learners’ essential business skills and transforms the way employees build and maintain relationships.

Patrick Galvin is a TEDx speaker, author, and the chief galvanizer of The Galvanizing Group which was founded on the belief that business relationship building is a skill that can be learned, improved, tracked, and measured. Patrick is also a keynote speaker at OpenSesame’s Learning Unlocked 2020.

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Start by identifying the trends that are on fire right now (they might be COVID related and might not).  Next, examine your current business strategy and see how you can integrate those trends into your business today (or in the short term).  Third, realign your go-to-market strategy to incorporate the trend into your unique value proposition, messaging, positioning, product, pricing and even your target market.  

I have a client who offers an incredible line of coffee function drinks (www.smariorganics.com) which has three SKUs (KETO, Mocha, and New Orleans).  And guess which one far outsells the other two.  You got it, KETO.  Why?  Because it is on trend.  

You want the momentum from that trend to be pushing your business forward (and sales up) rather than the drag of not being on trend and holding you back.  I can tell you from experience, businesses that are on trend are so much easier to run than ones that is not.  

If you would like to learn more about being on trend, just click on the video below:  

Seth Godin is an online marketing guru is well-known for advice about branding, promotion, and positioning. Given his field of expertise, it’s no surprise that he’s made all the right moves when it comes to thought leadership. He parlayed his internet startup experience in the 1990s and early 2000s into 18 best-selling books, is a sought-after speaker at major industry events, and offers blog posts, videos, and links to interviews via his website. He’s also garnered a significant following on social media, with hundreds of thousands of followers awaiting his next pithy post.

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Gamification is when you take elements that you usually come across in games. This might be things like point scoring, competition or risk and reward. You then apply those elements to other things – in our case, digital learning.

It doesn’t mean that you need to turn your course into one big game, though. That sort of approach would often be prohibitively expensive and time consuming. Luckily, there are simpler ways to utilise gamification.

Before I get to that, there is one killer question that needs to be answered: why bother at all?

In a word – engagement.

In my view, digital learning demands engagement in order for it to be successful. Unengaged learners might complete the course in order to tick a box, but they won’t learn anything. And if they’re not going to learn anything then you’ve got to question the point of the course in the first place.

There are lots of ways to make a digital learning course engaging. Gamification is only one of them, but when it’s done well, it’s brilliant!

In order to maximise the impact of gamification in your course, here are a few bits of advice:

1. Know your audience

If you work as part of an internal Learning and Development team, then you probably already have a good handle on who your audience are. Are there any game elements that will appeal to your audience more than others? For example, I used to work for a sales company – for that audience, the addition of a league table was a simple and effective bit of gamification. The bulk of the audience thrived on competition and being on top, so the league table really played into that.

2. Give them something unexpected

A lot of health and safety training I’ve seen is pretty dry. It therefore doesn’t take much to give the learners’ something unexpected. But get it right and the course becomes much more memorable as a result.

When we created our health and safety course for OpenSesame, we added an element of jeopardy to it. The learners collect items throughout the course, and then trade those items for lives as part of the end of course quiz. Run out of lives? Then the zombies get you! Now that’s something pretty unexpected in a health and safety course.

3. Make sure it fits your course

The inclusion of gamification needs to fit in with the rest of the course. It needs to add something to the learning experience rather than just being another hoop that your learner has to jump through in order to complete the course.

The gamification might be there to increase the engagement with your course, but it should aid rather than detract from your instruction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Glanville is a director and co-founder of Popcorn Learning Media; a multi-award winning digital learning agency based in the UK. Mark has worked within L&D for 20 years and held several senior positions within internal L&D departments before starting Popcorn.

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According to OWASP, the pandemic created delays in scheduling the collaborations necessary to obtain data from organizations, performing the data science and analysis to identify the new Top 10, and obtaining the industry and media buy-in to drive awareness. The organization is now targeting mid-February for the new OWASP Top 10 release to coincide with the OWASP Global AppSec Days to be held in Dublin, Ireland.

Despite the delayed release, there are actions developers can take now to secure their applications. Many of the risks identified in 2017 still apply today, according to Global Learning Systems, OpenSesame’s training partner that specializes in secure coding training for developers. 

Effective and relevant aspects of OWASP Top 10 2017

Until the release of the new Top 10 next year, the 2017 OWASP Top 10 remains highly relevant. Global Learning Systems advises that we can expect to see many of these same risks on the 2021 Top 10 list, based on the data breaches and incidents that have occurred since the current list was published. In fact, one of the challenges application security professionals face is the stubbornness with which the same risks persist year after year. Historically:

• • Only three new risks were added between the 2013 and 2017 versions of the OWASP Top 10 list: A4: XML External Entities, A8: Insecure Deserialization, and A10: Insufficient Logging and Monitoring. 
  • Injections was #1 on the 2017 list and has been on every version since the inception of the Top 10. It also ranked #1 in 2010 and 2013. 
  • Broken Authentication was #2 in 2017 and 2013 and has appeared on every version of the list. 
  • 2017’s A7: Cross-site Scripting has made every Top 10 list since 2003.

Tips for securing your web application development in 2020

1. 1. Make sure your developers are well-informed on the 2017 OWASP Top 10. A complete understanding of this awareness document is the bare minimum your development teams should have to improve application security. 
   2. Offer on-going OWASP Top 10 technical training using real-life scenarios. Failure to continue educating and raising awareness of the current 2017 Top 10 puts your applications, data, and clients at risk.
   3. Stay informed of the latest security incidents and data breaches and share these updates with your development teams. Information alerts them to risks they may need to investigate and remediate in their code. 
   4. Follow the OWASP Top 10 team on Twitter for the updates on the new Top 10. 

A glimpse at how the new OWASP Top 10 is being developed

The OWASP Foundation has provided information about the methodology of the new Top 10. The organization will continue to collect data from as many sources as possible; use evidence-based, data science-driven standards; remain community-driven and reviewed; and align with other key standards and Common Weakness Enumerations (CWEs). OWASP is also improving its approach by enhancing its data science and community-driven qualitative process, allowing anonymous data submissions, and improving the presentation’s visual look while providing more ways for consumption. 

For more information on OWASP and secure coding training, as well as other cybersecurity awareness training, check out available courses from Global Learning Systems in the OpenSesame course catalog.

Marina Kelly is Technical Director and Data Protection Officer at Global Learning Systems. She holds an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and B.A. degrees in History (with Honors) and Education from St. Andrews University. After 10 years as a classroom teacher followed by various IT positions, Marina’s love of development, education and the minutiae of security and privacy intersect in her current role at Global Learning Systems.

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Sharing your vision and inspiration for the enterprise gives potential investors, employees, and customers a personal, concrete entry point into the story of your business, which can otherwise seem abstract, especially in the startup phase. And as your expertise and insight shine through, potential supporters have a reason to feel confident about your future success.

Of course, not everyone relishes the limelight; on the contrary, most entrepreneurs start a business because they’re passionate about the product or service they intend to offer, not because they like self-promotion. 

But in the era of social media we’re accustomed to the idea that we constantly curate our lives to present a story and create different versions of that story for friends and family versus dating sites versus professional networking sites. It’s essential to bring this 21st-century skill to bear on your business and find ways to share your personal story to help get the venture off the ground. Frequent practice is key; if you form the habit of sharing your business’ story, you’ll not only find the right words, but you’ll become more comfortable with it, too. 

Establish yourself as an industry thought leader. 

If you are just starting your business, you may not feel like a leader in the field yet. But given the research and experience that has gone into creating the company, you have a wealth of knowledge to share. Industry insiders may view you as an upstart, but your target market views you as an expert, so don’t hesitate to share your knowledge.  Customers prefer to buy from well-known names in the business, so put yourself in the spotlight. 

To get started, you need to build a “platform” – that is, to boost your visibility by opening channels of communication with your audience. Among the ways to do it: 

• • A company blog. By establishing yourself as the voice of the company, you give the enterprise’s collective expertise a face and a name. A blog is also a great place to post news updates and share press mentions and other platform-building activities.
  • Social media. Not only should you broadcast posts on popular networks; be sure to follow other experts in the field, comment on their posts and contribute to discussion of current industry events. In so doing, you establish yourself as an authentic expert who’s in touch with up-to-the-minute industry happenings.
  • Reports, whitepapers, and eBooks. With original research and writing, you prove you’ve got in-depth expertise that can help your target market address needs related to your business offering.
  • Speaking engagements. Seminars or keynote speeches at industry events establish your credibility as a topic expert. 

Seth Godin is an online marketing guru is well-known for advice about branding, promotion, and positioning. Given his field of expertise, it’s no surprise that he’s made all the right moves when it comes to thought leadership. He parlayed his internet startup experience in the 1990s and early 2000s into 18 best-selling books, is a sought-after speaker at major industry events, and offers blog posts, videos, and links to interviews via his website. He’s also garnered a significant following on social media, with hundreds of thousands of followers awaiting his next pithy post.

The post A great business story starts with you appeared first on OpenSesame.

“I can’t draw. Therefore, I am not creative.” 

This is a major misconception about creativity – and absolutely false. You were born into this world with everything you needed to create. You are wired to be creative. You can’t help it. Creative thinking is what makes us human. And we all do it! 

Creativity is complex and there are many definitions of it. One of the definitions of creativity I use is based on one by Dr. Morris I. Stein: Creativity, the production of something that is novel and useful. That’s it. It’s that simple.

If that definition doesn’t do it for you, then try these on for size. Creativity is…

• • a student connecting what matters in his life to a career he can pursue with passion.
  • making an already-tight budget go even further.
  • finding a better way to feed the homeless people in your city.
  • preparing a delicious meal from leftovers in the refrigerator.
  • making bedtime fun to get kiddos to sleep.
  • finding a new way to tell someone that you love them.

Have you done any of those things? Of course, you have. Well, that’s what creativity really is.

Is everyone creative?

Yes. Enter the 4-C model of creativity.

Creativity researchers James Kaufman and Ron Beghetto have identified four types of creativity. Big-C, little-c, mini-c and Pro-c.

• • Big-C creators are people like Albert Einstein, Frida Kahlo, and Mozart. These are the clear-cut, eminent creative contributors.
  • Little-c is the kind of creativity that we do every day. Little-c creativity is finding a way to fix machinery on the farm with just wire and duct tape, improvising a socially distant graduation ceremony during COVID-19, or making a quilt using old clothing scraps.
  • Mini-c is creativity that is part of the learning process – often seen in young children. Mini-c focuses on the creative process. It is the new idea generated in a brainstorming session that might eventually develop into a breakthrough.
  • Pro-c is the creativity of individuals who are professional creators but have not reached eminent status. Pro-c is the chef who makes a living developing entrees, the musician who composes musical arrangements, the interior designer that makes your house beautiful.

If you look at the 4-C model, there is not a single person on this planet who doesn’t exhibit some form of creativity. In fact, creativity is crucial to our survival. Imperative to create a dynamic, thriving human experience. Creativity is in all of us. 

Dr. Roger Firestien has taught more people to lead the creative process than anyone else in the world. Roger is senior faculty at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State and president of Innovation Resources, Inc. He has written six books on innovation. His latest book, Create in A Flash:  A leader’s recipe for breakthrough innovation is available through Amazon or at createinaflashbook.com. Visit RogerFirestien.com for more details.

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Reason #1:  Most teams don’t follow the directions.  

Think about this analogy. The following are directions for riding a bicycle.

1. 1. Grab the handlebars of the bicycle with both hands.
   2. Place your right leg over the top of the bicycle.
   3. Straddle the seat on the bicycle while keeping your left foot on the ground for stability.
   4. Push up on your left foot while pushing down on the right pedal with your right foot.
   5. Repeat.  

Do you really think you could learn to ride a bicycle by reading those directions?

That’s what many people think they can do with their team when it comes to being creative. Just read the brainstorming directions – voila! All of a sudden, the team produces a torrent of creative ideas. That’s just ridiculous!

In case you need a reminder of the brainstorming directions, here they are. 

1. 1. Defer judgment
   2. Strive for quantity
   3. Seek wild and unusual ideas
   4. Build on other ideas

Most of the time teams don’t follow the directions.  Many brainstorming sessions are mislabeled and are actually discussions or even worse, venting sessions. Following these simple, proven guidelines will help your team create breakthrough ideas.

But it takes more than just following the directions.  Just like improving any skill, brainstorming takes practice.

Reason #2: Most teams don’t practice 

Great football teams’ practice. Great symphony orchestras practice. Fire departments practice. They practice so that when they must perform at peak effectiveness under stressful conditions, they can execute extremely well.

When was the last time you “practiced” getting creative?  Try this. Before a brainstorming session, practice getting creative by warming up. Here’s how.

First, get a facilitator to manage the process. Review the guidelines for brainstorming ideas listed above. Present the problem to be solved as a creative question beginning with the words, “How to…?” 

Then, the group generates ideas following the brainstorming guidelines. As ideas surface, the facilitator records them on a flip chart, or the participants write ideas on sticky notes and hand them off to the facilitator, who places them on the flip chart.

During a warm-up session, give the group a time limit and a quota for the number of ideas generated. I recommend a quota of 25 ideas and a time limit of five minutes.

Most warm-up exercises are admittedly silly. They’re designed that way on purpose. Many of the ideas suggested will be absurd or impractical. That’s intentional. It is absolutely imperative that you do a short warm-up exercise BEFORE attempting to generate ideas on the “serious” problem. 

There is no judging when you are generating ideas so don’t let the silly factor deter you.

The purpose of a warm-up activity is to: 1. Briefly train the group in the brainstorming method; 2. “Sanction” the time for speculation.  The warm-up sends the message that the expected behavior of the group is to speculate and not judge. 3. Create a judgment free zone.

A few of my favorite warm-up questions: 

• • What might be all the ways to improve a refrigerator?
  • How to get a hippopotamus out of a bathtub?
  • What might you do with 50,000 bowling balls that are flat on one side?

Use one of those, or make up your own! The key is to make it simple, and make it fun.

If you navigate around these two brainstorming pitfalls, you will significantly increase the effectiveness of your brainstorming sessions.  Not only will you generate more innovative ideas in a short period of time, your team will have fun doing it.

Dr. Roger Firestien has taught more people to lead the creative process than anyone else in the world. Roger is senior faculty at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State and president of Innovation Resources, Inc. He has written six books on innovation. His latest book, Create in A Flash:  A leader’s recipe for breakthrough innovation is available through Amazon or at createinaflashbook.com. Visit RogerFirestien.com for more details.

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Will these changes affect you? 

Chart Learning has been mapping the trends that impact private and public life for the last several decades. Together with industry experts across the globe, we review and compile valuable insights that are employed in the creation of our learning programs. Our goal is to ensure that our programs support students and learners in meeting the evolving market needs.

Technology has affected how work and life are viewed

We used to be restricted by a traditional concept of work and physical workplace objects. Desks, filing cabinets and desktop PCs forced us to be in the office to complete our work, and productivity was demonstrated first and foremost by one’s physical presence. Now, we can work from anywhere using our laptops, tablets and smartphones to connect with our colleagues and access and edit files. But this connectivity has removed the distinction between being at work and not being at work; we need never “switch off,” we’re accessible 24/7.

“The office environment of yesteryear is no longer allowing employees to interact with a global market, and even take work out on the road. The influx of new technologies that has been making the general convenience of our personal lives has grown exponentially and has taken over our professional lives as well.” writes Elizabeth Dukes, Author at iOffice in “5 Ways Technology in the Workplace Has Improved Our Lives.”

 There are two competing trends at play here, with work and personal time having become merged. Some folks attempt to draw a clear line between the two, whereas others embrace the merge and accept that their work is their life.

The latter trend has created a movement of self-employment, with people setting up businesses that support their passions and being able to work from anywhere. For those who remain employed, the office may become like a satellite. Tools for remote work and adapted organizational structures allow employees to take control of their schedules and to find a balance that suits them.

Reflecting on what this means for employers 

Employers may seek to engage employees in new ways, helping them to develop new skills and shifting how work is perceived and approached. Incorporating elearning into existing training and development programs is an effective way to do this. eLearning tools are delivered through “blended learning,” a mix of digital and in person education.

To make the introduction of elearning smooth, Chart Learning uses the best practice learning methodology available for blended learning, called the Performance Assurance System. This is particularly helpful to workplace trainers because it means the role of trainer is adapting and growing. Within the Performance Assurance System, trainers can become Certified Coaches to elevate their role and responsibilities.

Trainers and coaches are valuable resources 

Supportive elearning content is not created in a vacuum. Subject matter experts seek assistance in producing learning material, no matter the format.

So how does “pre-packed” content fit into a trainer’s suite of materials? Off-the-shelf content acts as a template for customization. Subject matter experts can lend their expertise to foundational courses by:

• • Providing additional context and materials to complement the content
  • Interpret and apply real-world scenarios to difficult pieces of information
  • Facilitating discussion around the material
  • Providing organization-specific examples and application

Many trainers who embrace elearning content will see their role evolve from that of presenter or facilitator to that of a guide or resource. Employees can learn the basics from a video, but they may not understand what those basics mean to the company, or how they should be applied.

Most importantly, in an age of dedicated content consumption, digital tools represent greater opportunities to put materials in learners’ hands.

The recipe for success

Blended learning gives employers the tools to remove the burden of traditional workplace training. While it’s not a replacement for corporate learning specialists, or anyone in a training capacity, it makes the job of trainer far more efficient and effective.

The use of blended learning also allows for better analysis of training and how successful it is. Digitized training data allows employers to analyze results and demonstrate program effectiveness. eLearning tools and content make it easy to keep control over the aspects of training that are helpful and remove those that are burdensome.

Peter Horwing is the CEO of Chart Learning Solutions, headquartered in Sweden. Chart Learning Solutions is a performance improvement company in professional development, focusing on leadership, sales, customer service and team performance. This is accomplished using Chart’s Performance Assurance System, which has produced industry proven, award-winning courses with coaching.

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Einstein replied, “I would spend the first 55 minutes identifying the problem and the last five minutes solving it. For the formulation of a problem is often far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.”

Most people believe that creativity is coming up with a great idea. Not so. The key to creativity is solving the right problem. See, the source of a problem is usually different than it seems. And the fact is, it does absolutely no good to generate ideas for solving the wrong issue. 

We have been taught that the initial impression or definition of a problem is the real problem. We have good reason for this — schools already set up the problems for us. 2+2=4. What is the capital of Poland? Warsaw. But to increase your likelihood of creating a breakthrough idea, it’s crucial to challenge your impression of what you think is the problem.  To do this you’ll generate questions; questions that challenge your initial definition of the problem. Because the language you use to describe a problem is going to dictate the kinds of solutions you generate. 

Let’s say you are doing a Google search. What is the most important thing to do? Ask a good question. But for the purposes of identifying the real problem, you’ll need a creative question. 

A creative question puts forth what you want to create. Not what you want to avoid. For example, “We don’t have enough money.” Good or bad question? Answer: Bad question. In fact, it’s a statement. When you hear that statement, your brain says, “OK, we don’t have any money.” Decision made. Move on.

Let’s try a different approach. “How might we raise the money for this project?” OR “How might we reduce the cost of this project?”Good and creative questions. 

Questions framed in this way provoke your mind to search for solutions. They tell your brain. “Let’s go find some answers. And because we are using the word ‘might,’ these can be any answers. We haven’t made any decisions yet. Look for options.”

The problem we see is the problem we solve. Invest the time identifying the true problem. Generate ideas only after you have clearly identified the best problem.

The time you spend identifying the “real” problem prevents you from generating ideas that are off target and action plans that have no traction.

Dr. Roger Firestien has taught more people to lead the creative process than anyone else in the world. Roger is senior faculty at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State and president of Innovation Resources, Inc. He has written six books on innovation. His latest book, Create in A Flash:  A leader’s recipe for breakthrough innovation is available through Amazon or at createinaflashbook.com

Visit RogerFirestien.com for more details.

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However, ethics training is important in order to prevent all of us from taking steroids and bribing judges and fixing elections and basically making the world impossible to live in.  But that doesn’t mean it has to be boring.  So here are three simple questions to help you decide if that gift you just got is really a gift or a bribe.  Happiness, engage!

Is the gift standard for your industry?  

Vendors will often take potential clients out to dinner, companies will often fly prospective employees to on-site interviews, and nobody thinks twice about that.  If the thing you’re being offered is normal for your industry, there’s a good chance it’s OK.  After all, if everybody else jumped off the bridge, you probably would too!

Is the ‘Gift’ absurdly exotic?  

The problem with the above question is that some ‘standard’ gifts are so expensive that it’s virtually impossible to trust the person giving it to you.  Pretty much all of us can be bought, which is why Fear Factor was such a popular show.  So remember, kids – if anyone offers to bioengineer a Tyrannosaurus Rex of your very own, don’t get in the car. 

Is the ‘gift’ attached to an expectation of particular behavior or actions on your part?  

And here’s the real question.  The others are pretty obvious; a free dinner is normal, and a free speedboat is probably suspect – which is unfortunate, by the way, because I could totally use a new speedboat to replace the speedboat I don’t currently own.  But gifts that are attached to an expectation that you perform a certain action are almost certainly unethical.  The question I wanted to put here was, “Does the gift feel like a bribe?”  But then I thought that I wouldn’t feel bribed if I were driving my new speedboat, so I came up with a better one. 

I hope that wasn’t too horribly painful.  And basically all this boils down to is:  if you’re going to accept a bribe, make sure it’s big enough that you can live comfortably on it after you get caught and fired.  So if you’re expecting me to accept a free trip to Vegas for the weekend to streamline the process of getting your latest experimental medication approved, you can just keep on walking.  If, however, you’re bringing me a suitcase filled with $247 million in non-sequential bills, I’ll probably at least hear you out.

And then say no, of course.  Prison is not as much fun as it looks on TV – and a lot harder to break out of, too.

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When choosing discrimination and harassment training for your organization, consider these four questions: 

1. Is it relevant to your workplace and industry?

Training that is tailored to your organization and workforce adds authenticity and relevance, which can keep employees engaged in learning, instead of checking their phones. Industry-specific video scenarios, images, examples and terminology, along with a message from your CEO demonstrates that your organization is serious about preventing discrimination and harassment. And in the #MeToo era, compliance training should focus on behaviors and the consequences of actions and inactions. 

2. Does it clearly explain discrimination and harassment?

Prevention begins with awareness. Employees and managers need to know how to recognize the different types of harassment, which can be much more nuanced than touching and grabbing. There are many forms of discrimination and the list is growing. Besides federal protections against discrimination — based on religion, race, color, age, sex, pregnancy, disability, etc — there are state and municipal laws that provide additional protections. 

3. Does it teach bystander intervention?

Bystander intervention training is one of the most effective ways to stop inappropriate workplace behavior before it rises to the level of illegal harassment and discrimination. Teaching employees techniques to safely disrupt potentially harmful situations is a way for individuals to show support for targets of misconduct, and be proactive in helping to prevent future incidents.

4. Does it meet or exceed the evolving state training requirements?

Currently, New York, New York City, California, Illinois, Connecticut, Maine and Delaware require employers to provide sexual harassment prevention training to their employees and managers. As more states and municipalities enact sexual harassment prevention laws, organizations need to feel confident that their training is up to date on evolving requirements and guidelines. 

Senior leadership that actively supports a modern, interactive compliance training program focusing on raising awareness and changing behaviors can empower employees. Your team will gain the knowledge and skills to recognize, report, prevent discrimination and harassment, and help foster a culture of respect and inclusion.

Andrew Rawson is the Chief Learning Officer and Co-founder at Traliant. He has more than 25 years of experience in strategy, operations, and marketing. Prior to founding Traliant, Andrew served as the Global Head of Compliance Learning (eLearning) at Thomson Reuters, an information, technology, and services company with more than 60,000 employees. He has held senior management positions in the manufacturing, commercial construction, and software industries.

In addition to being a seasoned professional with a background of diverse organizational experiences, Andrew is a classic lifelong learner. His love of learning inspires him to deliver the most engaging and effective courses possible to the learners that Traliant serves.

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Implementing online anti-bribery/anti-corruption training to employees, third parties, partners and suppliers, in the language of their choice, is an important step in promoting business ethics and compliance that helps protect your organization from bribery, corruption and other unethical behavior.  Among the questions training should address are: 

What is the FCPA?

The FCPA is the principal federal law that makes it a crime to pay a bribe to a foreign public official for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. Jointly enforced by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the FCPA applies to any company that does business internationally or whose securities are listed in the U.S. Besides covering anti-bribery, the FCPA also has an accounting provision, which includes books, records, and internal controls. 

What is bribery?

Bribery has evolved into a sophisticated crime — it’s much more than offering someone an envelope stuffed with cash. Generally, depending on the country or statute, bribery means offering, giving or promising anything of value to a government official with the intent to influence that official or gain an unfair advantage, usually to acquire or maintain business. Bribes can be cash and gifts, such as electronics, cars, watches or expensive wine, as well as travel and accommodations, donations to a charity or a political party, trade secrets, stock tips, hospitality and entertainment, and offers of employment.

Who is considered a foreign public official?

It’s not always easy to identify a public official— it’s a broad category. Some examples are heads of state, cabinet members, judges and magistrates, legislators, regulators, law enforcement, government workers and individuals working on behalf of public international organizations, such as the UN, Red Cross or the World Bank. A good rule is to treat all business contacts as  ‘public officials’ and assume that anti-bribery laws apply to your interactions with them.

What should I do?

Training is an effective way to communicate and explain your organization’s internal policies and procedures for reporting incidents of bribery, corruption and other misconduct. Training should also reinforce a ‘tone from the top’ that ethical behavior and practices are core to your culture and that everyone, at every level and location, is accountable for their words and actions.

Bribery and corruption in the workplace are serious crimes, whose costs go far beyond criminal penalties and large fines. Organizations can minimize the risk of FCPA violations by communicating clear policies and procedures, and providing regular training to employees and third parties on their responsibility to recognize and report bribery and corruption and act ethically. 

Andrew Rawson is the Chief Learning Officer and Co-founder at Traliant. He has more than 25 years of experience in strategy, operations, and marketing. Prior to founding Traliant, Andrew served as the Global Head of Compliance Learning (eLearning) at Thomson Reuters, an information, technology, and services company with more than 60,000 employees. He has held senior management positions in the manufacturing, commercial construction, and software industries.

In addition to being a seasoned professional with a background of diverse organizational experiences, Andrew is a classic lifelong learner. His love of learning inspires him to deliver the most engaging and effective courses possible to the learners that Traliant serves.

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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 why you care and what this change will do for the business as a whole.
People are naturally resistant to change, but you need everyone behind you to make a cultural
shift so share your passion and be prepared to convince the naysayers.

2. Make it official

If you want employees to embrace a learning culture, make training and development plans
mandatory. Learning only becomes a culture (rather than an occasional event) when it is a
standard part of working life for all employees.

3. Embrace the influencers

The social leaders in your workplace go beyond management. Think of your longstanding and
socially dominant employees as influencers. If you want buy-in across the whole business, you
would do well to get them on board. Share your plans and consider their feedback. Their
support will help you considerably, so don’t be afraid to ask for help.

4. Celebrate your training champions

It’s important to show employees who successfully complete their training that their efforts
won’t go unnoticed. You don’t need to throw a parade, but a little recognition goes a long way.
Send emails, say a few words in the office or construct an elaborate balloon arch over their
desks. It’s your call.

Another benefit worth noting here is that public recognition will encourage the wider team to
get involved in training themselves. Everyone loves a pat on the back!

5. Use feedback

It is important not just to ask for feedback, but to demonstrate that you will listen to it. Hold
regular sessions, run polls and encourage your team to be open about the negatives as well as
the positives. Training is an investment, and this is an excellent way to establish true ROI. If
something isn’t working, change it. This will ensure you and your team get the most out of the
time and money spent on learning.

6. Take advantage of the skills you develop

A huge advantage of a culture of learning for any business is the potential for growth from
within. Before looking externally for your next hire, look at the additional skills and experience
your people have gained since they joined you. You might just find your “new hire” is already
with you.

Making this approach a standard part of your hiring process will show your team that you are
serious about supporting their growth and, in turn, will cement their engagement in your
training and development initiatives.

About the Author: Tom Moore is Chief Operating Officer at iAM Learning – creators of engaging animated elearning content that improves performance and encourages professional development. The iAM Learning library features high-end animation, likeable characters and captivating stories that make even the most serious subjects appealing and unforgettable. You can access the library free for seven days with a no-obligation free trial. Visit https://www.opensesame.com/s/iam-learning now to get started!

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Microsoft knows that it is not going to be easy for people to switch out the software that they count on
for their instant messages and video conferences, so why do it? In a nutshell, they want one central hub
for teamwork and collaboration. Skype can’t do this, but Teams can.

Teams will provide all the communication capabilities of Skype, but with the added bonus of file storage,
threaded conversations, app integration, and more thanks to its Cloud infrastructure. You can add a
OneNote notebook to your Team to organize your information, or integrate a plan from Planner to help
divvy up the work. You might start your day off by sending some instant messages to your manager,
then run up a video conference call that you record and save in your Team, and finally start a
conversation thread congratulating your coworker on her new promotion. Microsoft has been putting all
their eggs in the Teams basket, rolling out new features like the Blur my Background or adding the
option for external contacts to participate in meetings. It seems like every week there is something new
in Teams.

The shift to Teams is not just learning a new piece of software. People will need to learn a new
workflow: where to store files, how to manage meetings, how to chat and meet with people. That is why
it is critical to ensure that organizations have a solid plan to migrate from Skype to Teams and sure
employees are properly supported in this transition.

Through our partnership with OpenSesame, Intellezy can provide continuous support before, during,
and after your Microsoft Teams integration. Not only does Intellezy provide up-to-date elearning
content through the OpenSesame platform, but Intellezy can help mitigate risk with this transition and
drive adoption towards new workflows by offering change management and training services. Intellezy,
your results-driven partner for the people side of change.

Heather Walsh has over 20 years experience of delivering high-quality training and management solutions, including experience a trainer, content writer, project manager, business analyst, and client success manager. She has excellent communication skills, even when explaining complex or technical concepts. Walsh develops customer relationships that promote retention and loyalty and works closely with customers to ensure they are satisfied with the services they are receiving and to locate and improve upon areas of dissatisfaction. She partners with clients to ensure superior and consistent services with the goal of assisting the client towards meeting their metrics and growth goals.

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AMA’s Total Professional Model consists of specific competencies based on the level of responsibility in the organization and one’s own career path; offering a framework for individual contributors, managers, and leaders.

• Individual Contributor: an individual who has no direct reports and manages their own workload
• Manager: an individual who manages people and/or processes
• Leader: an individual who manages and leads organizations

Within each are the four domains of professional competence: Professional Effectiveness, Relationship Management, Business Acumen, and Analytical Intelligence.

• Professional Effectiveness: the mastery of personal productivity and interpersonal skills, which enables individuals to manage themselves and collaborate with others to achieve goals.
• Relationship Management: the ability to establish and maintain professional relationships in order to lead and influence others to achieve strategic goals.
• Business Acumen: the understanding of business operations at the financial, functional, and strategic levels and the maintenance of a customer-focused approach.
• Analytical Intelligence: the application of systematic thinking, analysis, and data interpretation to create insights that support organizational objectives.

Competency frameworks can be utilized for meaningful learning solutions while also creating and curating content. Skill assessments at the individual and team level as well as 360-degree ratings that are aligned with AMA’s Total Professional Model assist solutions specialists to craft learning journeys that address the right skills at the appropriate career level. These considerations provide learners with exactly what they need, when they need it. This competency framework also enables solutions specialists to accurately and efficiently identify areas for course development and expeditiously curate content.

When creating the AMA OnDemand Training Library, AMA’s Total Professional Model was a guiding light. We created a comprehensive strategy to develop 60 new courses based on competencies throughout the individual contributor, manager, and leader levels, allowing a person to access the right content at the right level while thinking long-term.

A competency model like AMA’s Total Professional Model pays immediate and long-term dividends. It provides a method to easily classify the values and skills prized by an organization and orient learning outcomes toward them. Furthermore, it provides an efficient process of curating content and making it easily accessible. Paired with quantifiable metrics that demonstrate skill acquisition, this builds the case for learning and development’s place in the business and in the budget.

Learn more about mastering the skills that drive performance here

About the author: Dan Goeller: At the American Management Association Dan is a Learning Solutions Manager responsible for the Finance, Data Analysis, and Future Technologies portfolios of courses.  He has also led the development and marketing of 60 new eLearning courses featured here on OpenSesame. A proud alum of the Business & Workplace Education program at New York University, Dan is an avid advocate of the benefits that Learning & Development can have on the individual, group, and organization.

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The GDPR means that if you collect and use personal data belonging to someone in the EU, your actions and activities will be regulated by it, regardless of where you are in the world. 

Every organisation that deals with EU data wants every one of their customers and colleagues to be confident that they can be trusted to treat their personal data with the privacy and care that it needs.

What is covered by GDPR?

The GDPR covers any information you may store that can identify an individual, but we’re not just talking names; it can include things such as bio-metric, genetic, cultural and economic information as well as email and IP addresses. 

Organisations cannot afford to ignore their responsibilities and must provide suitable staff training.

Failure to adhere to the GDPR could mean fines of up to 4% of annual global revenue or 20 million Euros, whichever is greater.

Despite these explicit requirements, many companies still believe that it’s just not necessary and are leaving their organisation at serious risk of penalty.

What must every employee know about GDPR

First, they must be able to recognise different types of personal data including email address, biometric, online and geolocation identifiers. They should also know how to keep this data safe by using password protected documents and be aware of best practice for sharing files or transferring data.

They must also be able to recognise and report possible personal data incidents and breaches and be aware of the consequences of non-compliance.

That may sound like an expensive hurdle, a complicated task that would require huge strides and huge costs in the run up to overcoming it, but thatʼs simply not the reality. 

Can online training really be effective?

GDPR readiness is legally required and is far less time-consuming or expensive than you might think, regardless of perceived obstacles such as company size, staff locations, or how much time you have to allocate to busy employees.

Elearning is a great way to train staff on GDPR – using case studies, quizzes, multiple choice scenarios online courses should be used to really test staff knowledge before they have access to personal data.

Kate Carter is Marketing Manager at Engage in Learning. She has a 25 year career in  b2b sales and marketing where her role is to promote the company’s products and services through multi-channel media. Kate speaks fluent French and enjoys travel in Europe and the US.

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It’s titled “Illinois Training Compliance Update: A guideline for implementation of Illinois’ new sexual harassment prevention training requirement.” It’s free, and you don’t have to sign up for anything or provide any contact information.

You can download it HERE

This quick read will provide you with information on timeline, content requirements, expert assumptions and suggestions, and selecting the best training solution solely based on what would be best for your organization.

I hope you find this information helpful as you navigate brand new HR, training and compliance requirements!

Established in 1994, WILL Interactive is the most highly awarded eLearning developer in the United States. WILL’s unique training methodology encourages active participation by putting learners in control of their own educational adventure. Users make decisions for the lead characters in an interactive movie and experience the consequences of their choices. Multiple independent studies have been completed on the effectiveness of WILL’s training methodology. The combination of learner engagement, artful storytelling, rigorously vetted content, and a user-driven training methodology grounded in the principles of advanced adult learning theory creates highly memorable educational experiences that are proven-effective
to positively influence attitudes, behaviors, and workplace culture.

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An engaging and long-lasting learning experience is critical to the success of your organization.

Today’s businesses demand rapid development and even faster deployment. Competition is fierce in nearly every sector and the low-unemployment economy has created a war for talent. The demand for training programs across organizations is on the rise to increase speed to market, product knowledge and ultimately a competitive advantage – all while expecting the L&D department to deliver more with less.

How can learning leaders cut through volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of these challenges and deliver a learning experience that will both meet employee expectations and business goals?

Adopting to better ways of learning will always boil down to one basic element – The Learning Experience

Factors such as budget, available resources, learner’s schedule and the learning environment are responsible in devising a development program. Different methodologies like on-demand, self-paced and mobile learning has shown noteworthy impact in reducing these costs. However, learner disengagement and non-completion of courses continue to rise. Learning in a corporate environment is irrespective of the role of the learner, be it for leadership development, product training or customer service. They want it to be dynamic – flexible as well as adaptable to their changing needs and schedules – and should also be available on-the-go – support different platforms like desktops, laptops, smartphones etc. Their approach towards a training program is for a holistic learning experience. It could be in the form of cross-platform content (audio/video, simulation), assessment during sessions, multilingual or fragmented into small modules.

To cater to such wide-spread expectations of learners, there are some trends that organizations must look into to avoid interruptions. Though today’s learning is more about creating experiences, it must be understood that its implementation to satisfy business requirements is equally important.

Here are 7 trends to inspire a next-gen learning experience at your organization:

Create Micro Modules 

Today’s learners will have everything but time. For trainers, it is important to create programs in small chunks/portions, making those lean, light and easily consumable as per learners’ availability.

Social Learning

Learning programs must emphasize on social learning. This allows learners to absorb from a range of content – be it audio-video, news feed or even in the form of live streaming. Also, the setup of the program should be in multi-consumable format for various social media forums.

Diverse Integration

The focus of next-gen learning should be to make it highly integrated to different communication media – audio, video, and other multimedia. As learners are becoming more agile, it is necessary to ensure seamless integration across channels.

Interactive Content

It is vital to accommodate collective ideas to make the experience worthwhile for learners in a knowledge program. Approaches like polling options, online assessments, use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) must be encouraged for better engagement.

Peer-to-peer Learning

Learning is no more a one-way communication. It has hugely transformed into an open communication channel. So, it is crucial for content creators to make courses in a way that encourages collaboration and empowers learners to learn from each other.

Supplemental Learning

Curiosity is one of the prime characteristics of next-gen learners. While they are engaged in developing a specific skill set, they always look for possibilities to inflate their learning horizon. It is necessary for trainers to offer supplemental opportunities by adding resources in content to help expand their knowledge.

Learning Management System (LMS)

A Learning Management System is a one-stop solution that can help trainers accommodate all the above requirements. Not only it provides flexible learning options, but also keeps a track of the progress for a learner. It helps them to fast track productivity, decrease admin burden, enhance performance and remain focus on their career development paths.

Ready to put these ideas into action? Learn how to transform outdated programs and improve your learning experience with the free eBook – Modernize for Engagement.

Infopro Learning, a leading provider in corporate training outsourcing and human capital transformation, helps organizations create an exceptional employee and customer experience through bespoke eLearning solutions. For more than 25 years, the company has designed and implemented engaging learning experiences that attract, develop and retain talent across the entire employee lifecycle. To learn more, visit www.infoprolearning.com.

About the author: Divesh Srivastava is currently working as the Marketing Manager at Infopro Learning, a leading provider in corporate training outsourcing and human capital transformation. He has over 5 years of experience in marketing strategy development and is a certified Content Marketing professional. His interest lies in conducting market researches to understand learning business needs and develop best practices to benefit organizations and amplify their return on investment.

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There are probably a hundred thousand e-Learning courses produced this way that are available for your employees to enjoy. The problem is, and I am sure you already know this, they don’t. They hate them. They are painful to use. Learners glaze over when forced to take them and speed through them as quickly as they can, just to mark completion.

I am going to let you in on a little secret. This is a realization that came to me decades ago when I was part of the team that built the first video-based learning simulation ever delivered (we had to wheel the desktop computers in on carts back then). Content does not change behavior. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter.  Ok, your content has to be accurate; that is a given. But accurate content is easy to find everywhere.  Just because you have factually correct content doesn’t mean your course will transform your workforce.

What does matter?  How you present content to your audience. Engagement moves the needle. Most talent development professionals care about two things.  First, they keep the legal office happy and check the compliance box. Second, and much more important, is that employee attitudes, behaviors and on-the-job performance improve. Learning professionals do not deserve a seat at the c-suite table unless they deliver meaningful results to the bottom line and health of the business. The litmus test for evaluating the quality of one learning module, or thousands, should be the same.

Fortunately, rapidly advancing technologies have opened the doors to reimagining three powerful techniques. So let’s look at the big three; story, video and interactivity. Each of these tools can make an impact, but when all three are properly integrated, they deliver learning experiences that are engaging, unforgettable and transformative.

Story

Since the beginning of time, people in all societies have used stories to share knowledge and experiences and to influence the actions of others. Storytelling is universal, and some say it is one of the unifying elements of humankind. Good stories become personal to the receiver as well as the sharer, because each person sees a little bit of himself or herself in every story.

Hearing a story triggers physical changes in the brain. Unlike slides that activate only the small part of the brain that decodes words into meaning, engaging stories are known to “light up” the entire brain. The same areas that are activated by actually living an experience are activated when watching, reading, or hearing a story.

Video

Video brings stories to life by showing events rather than just describing them in a narrative. No other medium simultaneously engages the cognitive and affective learning domains as well as video. As Richard Dreyfus once said, “No one dreams in avatars.”

For evidence of how people enjoy video, we need look no further than the millions of YouTube views or social media posts online. When people want to learn how to do something on their own, they flock to YouTube videos.

In addition to its unique ability to engage on multiple levels, video is the perfect medium for modeling behaviors and consequences. It allows learners not just to hear and visualize events but also to vicariously experience them. You can see this phenomenon in action in this video.

Interactivity

Training professionals agree there is power in learning programs that allow users to control their experiences and explore variations on “what if?” Visionary leaders now also recognize that the real interactivity of a program is not “clicks per minute.” Instead, the best interactive programs are those that “grab” learners and keep them engaged.

It should go without saying – and has been repeatedly demonstrated – that when learners are emotionally engaged, they retain more information. There is strong evidence that interactive learning experiences have as much positive impact on performance as real-life experiences – and in some cases, possibly even more.

Good storytelling increases learning, and great video brings a story to life. Interactive video puts learners in control of their experiences and enables exploration of “what ifs.” When these elements are properly woven together, learning becomes magic.  As the icon Marshall McLuhan said 30 years before the invention of the World Wide Web, “the medium is the message.”

About the Author:  Sharon Sloane

Sharon Sloane, a pioneer in the field of advanced instructional design, is the President and CEO of WILL Interactive.  She has 30 years of experience developing leading edge instructional systems for behavior modification and performance improvement.

Training programs designed by Sharon have been featured in “Simulations and the Future of Learning,” “Digital Game-Based Learning,” “Training and Simulation Journal,” “Time Magazine,” “New York Times,” “Washington Post,” and “Washington Times” and on NBC TV and CNN. They have won over 70 awards, and she is the first instructional designer to be chosen as a Women in Film and Video “Woman of Vision.”

Sloane holds a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Connecticut and a BS in education from Boston University.

The post 3 Powerful Learning Mediums Reimagined appeared first on OpenSesame.

You might very well understand the many benefits of upgrading your LMS; however, your executive team might not immediately see the full value of a investing in modern learning technology. In order to convince them, you’ll need to understand their priorities and the challenges they need to overcome to achieve positive business outcomes. Then, you can connect the dots for them and position your request for learning technology to address their specific concerns.

Building a Business Case for a New LMS

Your ability to deliver a compelling business case for a new LMS hinges on how well you structure your argument to resolve the key challenges and priorities of your audience. Break down the problems of each person you’ll have to convince.

What’s your CEO or CLO’s biggest headache? What did they announce as their biggest priority during your company’s annual meeting? Directly addressing each of these problems will make your business case stronger and will help you handle any objections they might bring up.

Outlining Key Concerns for All Executive Decision Makers

Below is a breakdown of some examples of the key concerns held by L&D leadership, CEOs, and IT leadership, and how you can address them in your business case for learning technology. When building your case, be sure to perform outline the key concerns for all executive decision makers that might be involved.

CLO/VP/Director of Training

CEO

IT Leadership

For more materials that will help you build a better business case for a new learning management system (e.g., a presentation template, an ROI checklist, and more), download Docebo’s free LMS Project Toolkit.

Victoria Hoffman is a Content Specialist at Docebo. She is a graduate of University of Toronto’s Semiotics and Communication Theory Program and has 5+ years of experience in digital marketing. She enjoys writing and is always looking for a good book recommendation.

The post How to Gain Executive Buy-In for Your Learning Technology Project appeared first on OpenSesame.

The best way to prepare your IT security professionals for the new challenges faced in protecting network data is to train your them on security vulnerabilities and how to take action to decrease the likelihood of any data breach incidents at your company.

Many of these courses are available from IT University Online through OpenSesame, such as the Certified Information Systems Security Pro (CISSP) course or the popular Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) course. We highly recommend the CompTIA Security+ course series for your IT security team because these course offerings have always set the standard of foundational, non-vendor specific IT security knowledge and skills.

Furthermore, when looking for IT training, be sure to ask about how often content is updated to the constantly changing requirements and challenges.

Check out IT University Online, a leader in security elearning courses to best prepare today’s IT security professionals for the new challenges faced in protecting network data. Our courses are always updated to comply with changing certification requirements for different programs. No need to worry about training information being outdated.

The post Is Your Data Safe? Challenges in a Changing Security Environment appeared first on OpenSesame.

Professional exams are needed for everyone who wants to further their career and boost credentials. But how important PMP and CAPM are, really?

Having these certifications shows your high skills and knowledge,  it means that you can manage your projects, you are goal-oriented and motivated person.

So let’s take a closer look at them in this article to help you make an informed decision.

What are CAMP and PMP?

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

The first certification in our comparison is an entry level one. It was specifically designed for those who wish to start their career in project management and has a great value for aspiring project managers.

The CAMP process requires the candidates to provide information about their professional experience and pass an online examination.

Minimum Qualifications for CAPM:

The certification requires all candidates to provide High School Diploma (or Secondary Diploma) and at least 1,500 hours of experience on a project team.

If a candidate cannot provide the document or has no prior experience working in project management, he or she needs to attend formal training. If the trainee logs in at least 23 hours, the certification allows qualifying for the exam.

Other requirements include:

• Time allowed: 3 hours

• Question type: multiple choice

• Number of scored questions: 135

• Number of unscored questions: 15

The exam is split into a number of project management areas, including:

CAPM certification is valid for five years. After this time, upgrade is available.

Project Management Professional (PMP)

PMP is an advanced certification that only be acquired by professional who have at least 3 years of experience in project management and a completed bachelor’s degree. Thus, it is suitable for those professionals who want to advance their credentials.

PMP also allows to enter candidates with educational background related to project management (at least 35 hours), a completed secondary education, and 5 years of experience in the field.

Minimum Qualifications for PMP:

For this certification, candidates have to have more experience (at least 4500 hours of managing or leading projects), and education (at least a Bachelor’s degree). In addition to these requirements, all candidates must attend formal project management training for at least 35 hours (online or classroom).

For those candidates who don’t have a Bachelor’s degree (for example, a High School Diploma), taking the exam is allowed but the experience requirement is increased to 7,500 hours.

Other requirements:

• Time allowed: 4 hours

• Question type: multiple choice

• Number of scored questions: 175

• Number of unscored questions: 25

The PMP exam does not features as many areas as CAPM:

The candidates who pass PMP receive certification valid for three years. During this time, they are required to earn 60 professional development units (PDUs) to be able to qualify for a renewal.

The Difference Between PMP and CAPM

So, this one is obvious now. CAPM certification is designed for beginners in the project management field who wish to start their career there. Typically, they have little or no experience in leading or managing projects.

On the other hand, PMP is suitable for those who have been working in project management for years and have a lot of practical experience. Thus, the requirements for PMP candidates suggest that only active project managers with rich experience qualify.

Advantages of CAPM and PMP

Here are some important advantages of the exams.

• If you’re just beginning your way in project management business, you should definitely consider taking CAPM. It can really highlight your resume and help to stand out among others. The certification demonstrates your commitment to the field and eagerness to learn and become more professionals. The same could be said about PMP as well: it shows that you have an impressive experience and a desire for continuous improvement.

• You can use CAPM as a way to obtain a higher position in the next project because certification is always valued by employers. “I was able to accelerate my career thanks to CAPM,” says Gregg Leonard, a project manager at Awriter. “It really opened my eyes to new possibilities in managing of people, communications, and risks.”

• More value, however, is given to PMP. But don’t be discouraged: on entry levels, CAPM can provide you with a significant advantage over others!

Study Materials

For both exams, only one book is used – The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), Fifth Edition. The Project Management Institute has prepared this guide for all PMP and CAPM candidates, so it is quite comprehensive. People involved in project management highly recommend it for everyone who wishes to be involved in the field. Additionally, OpenSesame offers a variety of courses that count toward Professional Development Units for both PMP and CAPM.

In addition to the literature, exam training is available for candidates. It is also recommended to attend the training to increase the chances for success.

The Bottom Line

To pass CAPM and PMP successfully, you need to do a lot of learning and training. In the end, it’s all worth it because a certification can really accelerate your career!

Lucy Benton is a marketing specialist, business consultant who finds her passion in expressing own thoughts as a blogger, and currently writes for www.assignmenthelper.com.au . She is constantly looking for the ways to improve her skills and expertise. If you’re interested in working with Lucy, you can find her on FaceBook and Twitter.

The post Which is the Better Certification: CAPM or PMP and What is the Difference? appeared first on OpenSesame.

However, the majority of organizations do not support mobile learning. In Brandon Hall Group’s Mobile Learning 2016 survey, 35% of organizations responded that “there is limited access to learning material via web browsers only”, while 25% of organizations responded that “there is no mobile interaction with learning at this time”.

Ignoring mobile as a critical element of your eLearning strategy will limit the accessibility of your learning content and will subject learners to a poor learner experience. Missed opportunities such as these will ultimately lead to poor L&D results, which is why it’s time to start seriously considering a mobile learning strategy.

Mobile Adoption: No Signs of Slowing Down

According to Pew Research, 77% of Americans now own a smartphone. Recent research by Google has also found that nearly 40% of people search only on a smartphone in an average day as they look to meet immediate needs. This adds up to an average smartphone usage of 170 minutes per day. As a result of this shift, more Google searches are happening on smartphones than computers. Similarly, KPCB reports that 87% of millennials say their smartphone never leaves their side.

These stats demonstrate humanity’s growing dependence on mobile devices (especially among millennials). As a result, a mobile experience isn’t something new that learners would have to adapt to – rather, introducing mobile learning is simply making learning easier and more accessible.

In addition to improving the accessibility of training materials, mobile learning also helps to:

• Encourage learning on-the-go

• Facilitate learning at the point of need

• Improve social learning effectiveness

• Increase learner adoption and engagement

Mobile is Becoming a Global L&D Priority

Owing to the many benefits listed above, organizations are finally starting to prioritize mobile learning. Brandon Hall Group survey data shows that 57% of organizations said that they did not yet have a formal mobile learning strategy in place, but that they were working on one.

The global market for mobile learning also appears to be experiencing fast growth. According to Ambient Insight’s 2014-2019 Worldwide Mobile Learning Market Forecast, the worldwide market for mobile learning products and services reached $8.4 billion in 2014. The forecast also anticipates that revenues will reach $14.5 billion by 2019.

Thankfully, new developments in learning technology are making it easier than ever to deliver mobile learning content. In particular, a state-of-the-art learning management system (LMS) can help to facilitate a smoother, more effective learner experience. For example, the Docebo mobile app allows learners to learn on-the-go, ask questions for subject matter experts, and access learning content at the point of need.

Mobile eLearning Content – What’s Most Effective?

According to the aforementioned Brandon Hall Group Mobile Learning 2016 survey, some of the most effective mobile learning types of content include:

• Videos (27% say videos are highly effective via mobile)

• Virtual classrooms (16% say virtual classrooms are highly effective via mobile)

• Performance support (15% say performance support is highly effective via mobile)

Of course, the effectiveness of your learning content will vary between audiences, so it’s always a good idea to provide wide variety of learning content formats, topics, and types. More importantly, ensure your learning content is optimized for mobile devices by breaking it down into more digestible pieces (e.g., microlearning content), keeping file sizes small, and adding interactive elements.

Learn more about the rise of mobile learning in Docebo’s free report, Leveraging the Natural Synergy of Mobile Learning and MIcrolearning in eLearning. Download it today!

About the Author: Victoria Hoffman is a Content Specialist at Docebo. She is a graduate of University of Toronto’s Semiotics & Communication Theory Program and has 5+ years of experience in digital marketing. She enjoys writing and is always looking for a good book recommendation.

The post Mobile Learning is On the Rise – Is Your Organization Ready? appeared first on OpenSesame.

Establishing a good user experience means your course is much more likely to yield positive student experiences and excellent business results for your clients. So how do you go about creating the best possible user experience for your eLearning course?

1. Design For All Devices

Once upon a time, we all worked on desktop computers. Not anymore. Your clients will want to access your course anytime, anywhere. This means making your course website and software responsive to all devices, allowing clients to catch up with tutorials and course tasks via their smartphones and tablets as well as their computers.

2. Get the Right Support

The development of user experience is a field in itself and it may well be that you don’t have experience of it. If this is the case, never fear. There are a host of user experience professionals out there. Hire a freelancer or appoint a permanent member of staff by posting an ad on a job board.

3. Don’t Underestimate the Visuals

Formatting your course is of the utmost importance to user experience. You should create uncluttered pages with plenty of white space. Text should be succinct and divided by snappy titles. Images and video can also go a long way to improving the user experience. The brain processes image and video thousands of times faster than text. Including these visuals throughout your course will add variety and also allow students to assimilate material more quickly.

4. Be Clear in Your Course Description

A big part of user experience is making sure a product or service meets expectations. Therefore, it’s important to establish the right expectations with your clients. Work on your course description so it is clear and accurate and clients understand what they can expect to gain from it.

5. Provide Course Preparation Support

Getting to grips with new software can take time for the less technologically savvy. Help your clients to hit the ground running by providing course preparation support. Students on any eLearning course should be familiar with any software they need to use, know how to contact their tutors and be able to locate resources before the course begins. You could conduct this support through online tutorials, question and answer sessions or a simple course preparation document.

6. Encourage Peer Interaction

Working on an eLearning course, students can miss out on the benefits of peer communication.  Interaction with fellow-learners can provide support and an opportunity to share ideas and perspectives. Open up these possibilities to your eLearning clients by building a forum into your software. Alternatively, set up a Facebook group for the exchange of thoughts and resources.

Put time into developing your course user experience to create the best learning platform for your clients. And remember, happy and successful students are more likely to recommend your course to others, driving revenue and increasing brand authority.

Martha is a passionate blogger who enjoys writing about employee training, marketing and anything that helps small businesses grow.

The post How to Create the Best User Experience in Your eLearning Course appeared first on OpenSesame.

Even if these are your employees and you can easily make the course mandatory, you don’t want to do that. You want them to make a conscious decision and take this chance for professional growth. For that purpose, you’ll need to promote the course.

We’ll give you 3 tips that work.

1. Target Your Audience on Social Media

First, you’ll need to identify who your target learner is. You already know the answer to that, but what are they interested in? What pages do they follow on social media? This process involves some surveying, too. The results will help you understand the people you’re crafting the course for.

An active Facebook page for the specific course will be very helpful. Obviously, the learners will be interested to know more about this opportunity. Here, they will find all the information they need, as well as a call to action for enrolling in the course. Use the page to share information about the launch date, schedule, and assignments. Encourage the participants to ask questions and enter discussions on the page.

2. Use a Corporate Messaging Platform

Facebook is nice, but it’s not the most professional communication tool you can count on. If you realize that not all course participants have a profile, you’ll have to think of another platform that connects you all. You can count on Slack; a messaging tool that easily brings all people you need together. You can make a specific channel for the course. Everyone will have access to the discussion and they will see how the rest of the learners are doing.

Mary Gilbert, a marketing expert from BestEssays, explains that peer-to-peer communication is crucial for the success of an online course: “When the learners start discussing the lectures and assignments with each other, you’ll know your course is successful. Trigger discussions, so you’ll get them interested. Ask them to share what they learned and consider their feedback. You need active participation. Otherwise, they will just be bored.”

3. Show Proof of Achieved Results

The promotional process doesn’t end when the first wave of learners get their certificate. You can use the results to continue promoting the course, so the employees who didn’t participate will be encouraged to accept the challenge. The ones who successfully go through your course are the best proof that you’re providing quality and tangible results. Ask them to share feedback and feature it on the social media page. Emphasize the positive experience and invite others to join the fun!

You may develop the best eLearning course on a given topic, but it will still fail to attract the right audience if you don’t promote it. The promotion is the easy part. With a planned approach, you’ll quickly see results.

Brenda Savoie is a content marketer at Essayontime, private English tutor, and desperate dreamer. Writing her first romantic novel. Seeking contentment through mindfulness. Check her blog BestWritingClues Find her on Twitter and Facebook

The post 3 Essential Tips to Promote Your Next eLearning Course appeared first on OpenSesame.

Josh Bersin, founder and Principal of Bersin by Deloitte, draws the following observation from this issue:

“We are living longer, jobs are changing faster than ever, and automation is impinging on our work lives more every day. If we can’t look things up, learn quickly, and find a way to develop new skills at work, most of us would prefer to change jobs, rather than stay in a company that doesn’t let us reinvent ourselves over time.”

Learner experience – the experience of a person’s learning interactions – is more important than ever. Not focusing on providing a well-optimized learner experience could impact employee retention, which, in turn, can impact your organization’s overall success.

Here are three ways you can improve your learner experience with learning technology.

1. Accommodate learner needs

Learner needs are constantly evolving. For instance, employees are increasingly becoming more mobile-dependent. An influx of millennials into the workforce means employee knowledge gaps are growing. Similarly, learners face a number of costly distractions at work, and it is believed that the average human attention span has become shorter than that of a goldfish.

Although new technology is partially responsible for the way learner needs have evolved, it can also help to accommodate these needs. Your learning management system should deliver learning content with expedience, efficiency, and effortlessness. This means that it should include features that accommodate mobile learning, microlearning, gamification, offline learning, and so on. If you ignore your learners’ needs within the learner experience, the effectiveness of your L&D programs will suffer.

2. Tailor the learner experience with personalization

A large reason why online corporate training is ineffective is because it’s irrelevant to what learners want (and need) to learn in order to progress in their career or advance their skills in a particular role. Another way to improve the learner experience is to ensure that learning is tailored for each individual learner’s specific skills and competencies.

Fortunately, learning technology allows organizations to leverage learner data to generate insights that can fuel learning personalization. Personalization has proven to be effective – recent data by Brandon Hall Group shows 93% of companies agree that personalized learning helps employees reach their goals more efficiently.

Get started with learning personalization by investing in the right technology, establishing a competency framework, and tagging your learning content so it’s organized for personalization purposes.

3. Don’t underestimate the importance of user experience

User experience (UX) is closely related to learner experience – if UX is the overall experience of a person using a machine (e.g., a computer application), then learner experience is the overall experience of a person and their learning interactions (formal, informal, and experiential).

Brandon Hall Group’s Learning Technology 2017 survey found that 51% of respondents cited a “poor user experience” as a barrier to satisfaction with their learning technology, proving that many organizations understand that their current learning technology simply is not conducive to effective learning.

When it comes to learner experience, great eLearning content is essential, but it’s only the start – invest in learning technology that will allow you to provide a great experience so learners are motivated to learn and more engaged with your training programs.

Did you know that OpenSesame integrates with the Docebo LMS? Start your 14-day free trial today and start improving your learner experience!

About the Author: Victoria Hoffman is a Content Specialist at Docebo. She is a graduate of University of Toronto’s Semiotics & Communication Theory Program and has 5+ years of experience in digital marketing. She enjoys writing and is always looking for a good book recommendation.

The post 3 Ways to Improve Your Learner Experience appeared first on OpenSesame.

Research suggests trying to learn too much at one time is simply not working. Technology is advancing, attention spans are decreasing, and learning and development is struggling to keep up. Information is now more widely available, quicker to access, and easier to process. Could all of this mean long-form training models are becoming redundant?

With learners having less time available but more demands than ever, modern organizations are now looking to microlearning as their most effective learning solution to re-engage their workforce.

Here are 6 reasons why microlearning should be at the top of your learning agenda:

1. No more memory loss

Microlearning supports self-paced training and also overcomes the challenge of knowledge retention. Short, concise and agile material allows learners to quickly consume content immediately before it is needed, rather than trying to recall past training sessions from months before.

2. Increased relevance

Microlearning is usually 2-3 minutes in length, which means it has to be concise and specific. By breaking large topics up into targeted content, learners are able to easily search for information that is directly relevant to their needs.

3. Your learners use this learning strategy already

70% of employees make up the the ‘Google Generation’ who turn to search engines to get the information they need. As people increasingly access learning in small chunks, there’s an opportunity for L&D professionals such as you to make this a part of your ongoing training strategy.

4. Optimized for on-the-go learning

Give learners control by offering them the ability to train on the device of their choice, anytime, anywhere.

5. Let your learners take responsibility

Encouraging learners to take on the responsibility of recognizing their knowledge gaps is an essential part of creating a productive learning pathway. Microlearning encourages learners to define where they need help and gives them the ability to access useful content as they assess how efficient they are at delivering against certain tasks.

6. Learning that’s great to look at

Animation is more engaging than traditional forms of learning, increasing learner engagement and retention rates. This is what makes microlearning such a unique and exciting way to learn.

So, how would this look in practice?

The post Why Microlearning is the Hottest L&D Trend in 2017 appeared first on OpenSesame.

The question is: how have these changes impacted learner needs?

In an infographic entitled ‘Meet the Modern Learner’, Bersin by Deloitte presents a number of statistics that outline how online training is colliding with learners’ jobs, behaviors, habits, and preferences. They come to the conclusion that today’s learner is overwhelmed, distracted, and impatient.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these needs to better understand how learning programs must evolve in order to increase effectiveness.

No time to learn

It’s estimated that workers spend only 1% of the average workweek (37 minutes) on their employers’ training. Similarly, a recent survey found that knowledge workers spend 41% of their time on activities that offer little personal satisfaction.

Employees are clearly overwhelmed in their daily tasks and, as a result, are not placing the necessary emphasis on personal learning and development. They feel that there aren’t enough hours in a day to spend on learning initiatives.

Fortunately, learning technology (like a state-of-the-art learning management system) has opened up a number of capabilities that make corporate training more efficient for learners. For example, microlearning content (which involves producing bite-sized pieces of learning content) can allow learners to quickly and easily consume new information.

Thin patience

According to Statistics Brain, the average human attention span in 2015 was estimated to be 8.25 seconds – that’s shorter than the attention span of a goldfish (which is believed to be 9 seconds). Statistics Brain also reports that the average length watched of a single online video is only 2.7 minutes.

Learners simply don’t have the patience or the attention span necessary to engage with training. This is hugely problematic – lack of engagement can impact knowledge retention and learning motivation.

The more your learners have to sit through irrelevant and unengaging training sessions, the less effective your training will be. Consider introducing a personalized learning strategy to increase relevance. Similarly, centralizing your content in an LMS and will improve its accessibility and allow your learners to access materials at the point-of-need.

Constant distractions

Think about your own workflow at work – odds are, you feel like you’re spending a good chunk of your day checking your email (not to mention those Slack notifications that are driving you off the wall). Well, you’re not crazy – there are numbers to back you up.

Statistics Brain also reports that the average office worker checks their email inbox 30 times in an hour. Similarly, it’s estimated that the average employee is interrupted 56 times per day, which can cost up to two hours of daily productive time. If you do the math, that can add up to over 500 hours over the course of a year – yikes.

Next-gen learning technology should be able to support learning practices such as gamification and personalization which can help to cut through the noise and increase learner motivation and engagement.

Millennial influx

In 2015, millennials officially surpassed Gen Xers as the largest generation in the US labor force. However, 63% of millennials feel that their current employer is not fully developing their leadership skills.

Investing in the development in younger workers is key for increasing employee retention and the ability to hire leadership from within. It’s also key for filling organizational knowledge gaps that form as baby boomers retire. 

Meeting millennial learner needs is, once again, a question of content accessibility. Learning content must be mobile accessible, and access to the expertise of peer mentors should also be encouraged. As such, it’s important that your learning content facilitates social learning.

Meet tomorrow’s leader

The items listed above are just a few ways in which learner needs have evolved over the past few years. As long as technology continues to evolve, learner needs will continue to evolve. It’s important to have people, processes, and tools in place to keep up with these needs so your learners can continue to develop and bring success to your organization.

Learn more about meeting learner needs in Docebo’s free whitepaper, Tapping Into the Power of Personalized Learning.

About the Author: Victoria Hoffman is a Content Specialist at Docebo. She is a graduate of University of Toronto’s Semiotics & Communication Theory Program and has 5+ years of experience in digital marketing. She enjoys writing and is always looking for a good book recommendation.

The post 4 Things L&D Professionals Need to Know About Modern Learners appeared first on OpenSesame.

As a result, with a little bit of focus and a little bit of the capability to search online for the things that we need, we are able to become overnight experts ourselves. Content and platform — these are two of the elements we need to be able to learn the things we want to learn, or, in a business context, the things we need to learn in order to do our jobs, and to do our jobs better on an ongoing basis.

Mobile and microlearning play out in our daily lives

So how does this all relate to eLearning and content? Well, how we learn at home is actually not that different from how we learn in a business or enterprise context. We want to execute a required or desired function, and we want to do it well. And we need two things in order to be able to do that effectively: the content that is actually relevant to our job function, and the platform that enables us to absorb that content and apply it effectively.

This is where two evolving aspects of eLearning factor into the game: mobile learning and microlearning.

Let’s deal with each one independently first.

It’s no secret that mobile learning has been a huge element of eLearning in recent years. Right in line with the 70:20:10 philosophy that submits effective learning has three essential components — namely, experiential, social, and traditional (i.e. classroom-based and instructor-led) — mobile learning acknowledges that learners need information delivered to them on the job and right at the point of need.

It used to be accepted that learners could absorb all of the required knowledge in the classroom in advance of actually exercising the function of their jobs. No longer is this the case. Classroom knowledge retention is actually rather low. Learners, of course, need to learn key essentials of their job requirements from lessons provided in advance of actually engaging in their roles. But according to the 70:20:10 approach, they’ll only retain a small part of classroom knowledge, and what they will retain is what they have learned on the job, through experience.

Leverage already adopted tools

Now let’s move that forward and look at the learning landscape we have right now. Learners are used to learning with their devices, be they smartphones or tablets, in hand. These represent natural opportunities to get information right to the learner, right at the point of need.

Hypothetical, but let’s imagine an individual in manufacturing, at the plant-floor level, dealing with a perceived health and safety threat. Once upon a time, that worker would have to dive into the depths of their memory to recall a classroom lesson that related to the immediate threat. In the new model, the employee need only visit his or her mobile device, find the relevant application or lesson, and determine what to do in that immediate circumstance.

Desktop computers, textbooks, and instructors used to be far from us. Now, the essence of what we need is accessible right in our pockets, courtesy of our devices.

And it just begins there. Microlearning supports mobile learning in an enormous way. If you aren’t familiar, microlearning is a way of delivering essential learning content to learners in small, bite-sized components. Think of the recipes you learn on Facebook that are provided in under 60 seconds. That’s only one way of providing microlearning content effectively. And think of how that can be delivered. It can be on a bus or subway ride. It can be at any time of the day. It can be on the job, at the point of need.

So, obviously, mobile learning and microlearning have a natural synergy. They’re natural bedfellows — something I explored in a recent report. And they’re both elements that need to be leveraged in any LMS and content arrangement that you are using in order to maximize learning and development potential.

About the Author: Paul Leavoy is a Senior Content Manager at Docebo and writes about the biggest themes in learning and development. A longstanding journalist with over a decade of experience writing on business, environment, and sustainability, Paul has been writing and developing content in the cloud software space for over seven years.

The post Improve Learning Effectiveness with Mobile and Microlearning Synergy appeared first on OpenSesame.