A lot of my work focuses on instructor-led training – whether in person or virtual. Over the past year, I’ve returned to elearning design as well. Just like a lesson plan is the cornerstone for helping me to organize all of my instructor-led thoughts into a coherent, engaging learning experience, I’ve found the elearning storyboard template to help me in the same way as I design tightly-focused, engaging elearning.
Continue readingTraining
A big list of training articles from Train Like a Champion.
Blogs as a Learning Tool
A few weeks ago I released a podcast about using podcasts in learning programs. To keep with such a “meta” theme, today’s blog post focuses on using blogs as part of a learning program.
While I’ve come to love (and sometimes hate) that writing a post every week forces me to stay on top of new developments in learning and development just so that I have something to write about, blogs can be used for more than a platform for individuals to write articles.
Continue readingAn L&D Professional’s Birthday Wish
Today is my birthday, and my wish for this year is that I get lots of presents. Since you’re just reading this now and not even Amazon’s same-day service will help you at this point, maybe you can give me a different kind of gift. For my birthday in this weird year of 2020, I’d love to get the gift of comments on today’s post. Specifically, I’d love the gift of knowing one thing – personally or professionally – that you’re thankful for this year.
I’ll start. Actually, since it’s my 45th birthday, I’ll share 45 things that I’m thankful for.
“But Brian, this is a column about L&D, instructional design and professional development… what does this have to do with any of that?”
I’m glad I asked. I’m a firm believer that work/life balance and mindful reflection are two essential elements to any professional development. Plus it’s my birthday, so you should do what I ask you to do.
Here are 45 things I’m thankful for…
Continue readingThe Monsters We Don’t See
It is Halloween week! While this year’s Halloween will look different than previous years, one of the ways we can always connect is with stories. Sure, the medium may differ depending on the times, and we may not be gathered around a room, but podcasts and blogs are a great way to share spooky stories to keep us up after we binge on candy and prepare to watch scary movies in the comfort of our own homes. This year’s story is about monsters you may not be able to see on your own.
We face these monsters every day as training professionals. They cannot be tackled the same ways the stories of our past have taught us to tame mysterious beasts. They lurk right in front of us; on our computer screen, on our social media accounts, in our books. Staying home cannot protect us from these monsters! This week on the Train Like You Listen podcast, Mad Scientist Clark Quinn, Ph. D, Executive Director at Quinnovation, joins us to spot and fight the monsters that plague so many in our industry.
Learning Campaigns
What is it like to be on the other side of the training? In other words, do your participants have a working world that lives beyond attending your training? In all of my experiences, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. In fact, often I have to account for not only meeting the training objectives, but also making sure there are several ways for the learned to access information and find various was to prompt them to engage with those tools, events, and resources.
The more we can access our learners, the more likely we are to be successful in our training outcomes. This week on the Train Like you Listen podcast, Amy Lou Abernethy, President, Co-Founder and Chief Learning Strategist at Amp Creative, stops by to talk to us about how we can use learning campaigns to increase learner engagement and promote a learning culture.
Top 200 Tools for Learning in 2020
Last week I shared several tools that I’ve found my children’s teachers using for online school activities that I thought could be helpful for those of us in the L&D field. Today I want to continue with the theme of tools we can use by talking about Jane Hart’s annual list of top tools for learning, which was released at the beginning of September.
New Technology in L&D
I’m always intrigued by Jane Hart‘s list because this is where I have a chance to see what technologies others are using, and I am sometimes inspired to bring something new into my daily practice.
I was intrigued to see both Netflix (for documentaries) and Spotify (for podcasts) break onto the top 200 tools for learning. There are also a variety of new tools that made the list that may help with virtual staff meetings, strategic planning sessions and presentations, such as Mural and Miro, which are both online whiteboarding tools.
I’m kind of wishing I had written this post last week so that I could have discovered ilovepdf.com earlier. This is a quick and easy way to convert pdf files into editable documents such as Word, PowerPoint or Excel files with, as stated on their landing page, “almost 100%” accuracy.
There are also several new mindmapping, email and game/survey tools to check out as well.
Old Favorites
When you consider that this list of top 200 tools are tools used by both corporate trainers and classroom educators, there is nothing on highest ranked, most popular 20 tools that surprised me. YouTube, Zoom, Google Search, PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams, Word, Google Docs/Drive, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, Wikipedia, Facebook, Excel, WordPress, Google Classroom, Google Meet, Slack, Canva, Skype and Trello make the top 20.
Other tools that are still popular in use among the Top 50 (in case you were wondering if some of your old stand-by’s were growing out of date) include Kahoot (for games and quizzes), Prezi (this actually surprises me that it’s still so popular, coming in at #39), Snagit (for screen captures) and Vyond (for animated video creation).
Further down the list, at #182, you’ll find Pixabay. It’s a site I use every week when I’m looking for imagery for this blog or for my PowerPoint decks. If you haven’t stumbled upon it yet and you’re on the lookout for free stock images, definitely give it a look.
Tools for Learning I Plan To Try
My favorite audience participation tool is PollEverywhere, though I was recently exposed to Mentimeter (which comes in at #26 on the list). I’m not sure if it’ll give me something extra, but I’d like to check it out and see why it’s so popular.
I mentioned Mural as a whiteboarding tool. When I’m in person, I love to use a flipchart, whiteboards, and sticky notes to help organize my thoughts and play with ideas during meetings. In this world of COVID and virtual meetings, this could be a handy tool.
I’ve also just downloaded Snip & Sketch, which appears at #86 on this list. It’s a free download if you have Microsoft Office on your computer, and is Microsoft’s replacement to their Snipping Tool.
If you have a chance to check out this list of top 200 tools for learning, I’d love to hear which tools you’re using, and which tools sound like they could help you with your learning and development programs!
Want to try out a tool that can help you generate training activities – whether you’re delivering virtual sessions or you’re returning to in-person training? Perhaps Soapbox will appear on this top 200 list next year.
What can trainers steal from online, k-12 instruction?
Back in March, schools abruptly closed and went online. It was a messy experience for students, teachers and parents. This fall however, many schools and teachers have done an amazing job finding new educational technologies and navigating their classes through less than ideal circumstances. As I sometimes catch myself spying on my children in school to see what online school looks like these days, I find that some teachers are using technologies I’d never thought to use (or hadn’t even heard of).
I think there might be some lessons and technologies we, in the world of learning and development, can adopt from these online school experiences. Here are two recent examples that I’ve seen my children’s teachers use.
Continue readingTrainer’s Guides for Zoom and GoToTraining
In the spring, the whole world seemed to need to move to online meetings and virtual training, almost overnight. On April 1, we asked Train Like A Champion readers how comfortable they were delivering virtual training, and the results came back, split down the middle. Half of the respondents to the poll chose “I’m super comfortable” and the other half chose “I’m pretty shaky”.
My guess is that with practice and having virtual sessions become more of the norm, people are much more comfortable now than they were six months ago.
Just like with other tools (PowerPoint comes to mind), feeling comfortable using them, and feeling comfortable leveraging all of the features they have to use the tools for maximum impact are two different things. For that reason, my colleague Lauren Wescott, has spent time studying the most commonly used virtual platforms and has begun to generate a series of quick reference guides on how to maximize the use of the platform you may be using. The first two guides focus on Zoom and GoToTraining.
Continue reading5 Good Books for Trainers
Over the past several weeks, I’ve had the good fortune to be able to speak with a number of authors who have written books on various aspects of training and development.
In this age of COVID, with conferences and training events either being cancelled or going virtual, you may be looking for other ways to hone your craft, and one of these books may be just what you need.
Continue readingReal Cost of Instructor-Led Training
Instructor-left training costs can come in many forms. Financial costs are the traditional way in which this question is answered. “We were able to develop this training program for about $2,500.” But what’s the cost to you?
Just because you develop a training program in-house, doesn’t mean it was designed for “free”. Yes, your time is already budgeted and paid for, but it’s certainly not “free”.
If you didn’t have to spend so much time coming up with original activities and thinking of new ways to engage people, what else could you be doing with your time? Another way to think of it might be this: if you had an extra 4-8 hours of work time this week, how would you invest that time? Would you get one more project scratched off your to-do list? Would you shut down a bit early on Friday?
The Big Question
When someone (usually around budget season) asks: “How much does it cost to put together your training programs,” what do you tell them? Are you able to come up with a good answer? Do you know the true cost of instructor-led training?
We put this little calculator together to help determine the real cost of instructor-led training.
Cost of Training Assumptions
As you can see, our Cost of Instructor-Led Training calculator is making a few assumptions. It assumes that:
- It takes about 8 hours of development time to put together a plan and materials for one hour of training (including background research, activity development, facilitator materials, participant materials, PowerPoint slides, etc).
- Your labor hours are the only costs involved in training. Costs go up even further if you’re using graphic designers, purchasing off-the-shelf content or videos, printing participant materials in full color, etc.
Lower the Cost of Instructor-led Training with Soapbox
Yes, this particular training cost calculator brings Soapbox into the equation and offers an idea of how many labor hours you could save by automating some of your instructional design process, but there’s a bigger point to be made here.
The saying “time is money” is only partially true. Yes, when you’re at work, your time equates to labor hours, which have a cost to your business. Unlike money, however, your time cannot be saved. So the real question is: how do you want to spend it?
We would love to help you determine how to lower your cost of instructor-led training with Soapbox. We only need 15 minutes (we know your time is valuable!).