This blog will be getting a name check or two at the eLearning Network event on Friday 5th March. My challenge is to deliver a session in a Pecha Kucha style – 20 slides only, each set to forward automatically after 20 seconds.
This makes the preparation extra challenging…but think how much the average Board Meeting would be improved if directors had to give their update presentations in this style…6 minutes 40 seconds of well thought through presentation would free up a lot of time for questions and debate.
In February’s TJ, Peter Honey gives his angle on how happy sheets can distract trainers from doing the right thing. He compares the feedback that’s had from 3 types of session that he’s run, a standard presentation, a set of stories and a facilitated discussion actively involving participants. His conclusion is that he gets the highest happy sheet scores when participants can get away with passively listening to him. This contrasts with the school of thought that a good learning experience involves activity and a participant constructing their own meaning e.g. Kolb, the Generation Effect and several others. So why do participants rate a facilitor more highly if they don’t have to be active? read more…
The professional services sector is one where firms often seem to be merging. I used to work for Touche Ross, one of those many names which is no more. Much of 2009 felt pretty quiet in terms of merger activity but then in the space of 6 weeks, three come along at once.
Here’s some of the headlines:
Property advisors Drivers Jonas bought by Deloitte
Lovells merging with American law firm Hogan & Hartson
Tenon buy Bentley Jenison
This means it will be a busy time for those in L&D working on the integration and a time of job insecurity for those deemed surplus to requirements, but what’s causing this? read more…
At this time of year, there’s loads of commentators talking about emerging trends in L&D in 2010. Chances are that you’ve read a few that say that social media will be the big thing, and in particular the use of on-line communities to share learning. Whilst I’m happy to be proved wrong, it sounds to me like yet another cycle of hype and disappointment waiting to happen. So I’ll be happy to watch this one from the side lines, but before I do so, let me explain my reasoning. read more…
Jay Cross has an interesting article in the December issue of the “Inside Learning Technologies” magazine about making business decisions and the use of business metrics. As I made the claim in Feb that 2009 would be the year of “bad measurement” this is a topic close to my heart. read more…
In October’s TJ, Justin Collinge writes a thought-provoking article called “Are you m*ssing a tr*ck?”. His premise is that if you leave information out of a visual, or deliberately reverse the letters in a word so that the learner has to work out what the correct message is, they are more likely to engage with it and remember it. The scientific basis for this is the “generation effect” which I remember fondly from my days of being a psychology undergraduate. I like his linking of recommendations to scientific evidence, but I think he has drawn misleading conclusions along the way.
read more…
In the November Issue of TJ, Des Woods and Henry Marsden have an article called “How professionals learn”. As the former head of learning at Ernst & Young and head of professional development at Linklaters, Des is writing from considerable experience. This is a great article if you are relatively new to professional services in your L&D career, especially if you’ve worked in a different industry previously. read more…
Trainers and L&D professionals by their nature have some pretty strong views on what makes learning effective, based on how people learn. But how much of this is personal experience? Or how much of it is based on theories invented by management consultants? How much is actually backed up by scientific evidence? Is Kolb’s theory really true? read more…
If you’re struggling to think of what you’d like to receive or buy someone for Christmas, I’d recommend Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science. Amongst other things it successfully and perceptively:
- lampoons the nutritionist claims of the likes of Dr Gillian McKeith (whose only doctoral credentials appear to be having bought a mail-order doctorate from an American university);
- highlights the tragedy caused by the South African government’s insistence that garlic was more effective at treating AIDS than retrovirals; and
- examines how and why the media is so poor at representing science fairly. read more…
I’ve recently been leading an internal knowledge management project. Part of the technology of the portal allows social networking e.g. forums. As staff all have profiles on the portal, we communicated the expectation that people would post a photo of themselves on their profile…it makes communication feel a whole lot less impersonal that email. There are some obvious reasons why you’d want your photo there e.g. it raises your profile in the organisation, increases the chances that people will remember your name. So the percentage of people who have done this within the first 2 weeks was… read more…