Wednesday, January 25, 2012

What Great Bosses Know - 10 Training Tips - iTunes U Revolution?

Ever since the Apple education announcement I've been blown away by what this means for our industry.  In the process of scanning the new and improved iTunesU I found this interesting podcast.  It's called "What Great Bosses Know".  Here is the description from iTunesU...
"Jill Geisler heads the Poynter Institute's leadership and management programs. In these Poynter podcasts, she shares practical leadership for managers who want to be great bosses."
Episodes 13 titled 10 Training Tips caught my eye.  It's only 4 minutes so I listened.  Here are her tips.


  1. Adults learn differently than young people
  2. Make learning practical
  3. Interactivity is better than passive learning
  4. Do not use Powerpoint as a teleprompter
  5. Each person learns a little differently
  6. Always tap into the wisdom of the room
  7. Don't embarrass people
  8. Have fun
  9. Always end with next steps in mind - What will the students DO after the class
  10. Always include evaluations in your teaching
I like these tips.  Sure, many of you will say, "yeah, duh".  And I know some of you are making a list in your head of all the things she missed or forgot.  But that's not the point I'd like to make.  I don't know what Jill's background is, but she obviously has the ear of many Sr. Management types who NEED to hear this information.  Maybe these managers will be delivering a training session and just one of these tips could resonate with them.  That's helpful.

I often hear of the struggles to "get a seat at the table".  We want what we know about instructional design, and corporate training design, to be important and cared about.  Maybe iTunesU can help?  

Now that Apple has introduced the hardware, delivery system, AND authoring tool for designing, delivering, and consuming instructional content, it's only a matter of time before the market is flooded and ONLY the BEST instructional designs will float to the top.  And, at some point every training manager, or CLO, in the Fortune 500 will hear from their C-level peers, "Why can't our LMS be easy like iTunes U? And why aren't our training manuals as cool as the textbooks on my kid's iPad?"

No comments: