Expert insights. Personalized for you.
When I was a training manager at a Big Four accountancy firm, I found it bizarre that L&D people in professional services firms did not get together more to compare notes about their challenges and successes when they have so much in common. 7 th July sees the 10 th meeting of the Professional services e-learning forum, an informal networking and benchmarking group for L&D professionals working for the UK’s top 15 accountancy and top 15 law firms. MORE
e-learning trainingIn 1990 Peter Senge published “ The Fifth Discipline ” , giving a compelling vision of how companies could transform into learning organisations. The ideas chime with many L&D professionals, but adoption by business has been patchy. MORE
” e-learning training Over 15 years of working in L&D (and a dose of studying philosophy of science at university) makes me very alert to the phrase “research says” It is usually followed by an unsubstantiated claim. After all, if you are making a claim that is backed by scientific research it is not hard to include a link, reference or a footnote, so why wouldn’t you? MORE
e-learning training UncategorizedEaster holidays. A great time when we break out the board games in the Cole household. A particular favourite is The Game of Life (published by Hasbro). As a learning designer who often creates mini games for business purposes, I’m always interested in the subtext of a game – the behaviours and tactics that get rewarded with points and hence the model of how the world works that the game is implicitly teaching. 10 ways that the world works? MORE
trainingOver the years I’ve enjoyed/been guilty of reading many self-help books and the lockdown has been an opportunity to read several more. Chris Taylor distils the advice from hundreds of self-help books into 11 pieces of advice: Take one small step. Change your mental maps. MORE
As an independent L&D consultant who has expertise in face to face training, e-learning and happens to be a Chartered Accountant with digital marketing experience, Linkedin allows people who are looking for my skillset to find me. I’m often asked the question does Linkedin really help or is it a waste of time? Like most social media it allows us to do things that we do in real life faster, more cheaply, with more reach and more publicly (or with less privacy, if you prefer). MORE
e-learning trainingGDPR is one of e-learning’s hot topics in 2018. Here’s a blog that I co-wrote with Brightwave’s Head of QA on how it will affect L&D managers when they have a breathing space from getting learning to their colleagues about GDPR. link]. MORE
Formal: Simulations, face to face training. ” accountancy e-learning legal trainingI enjoyed a day out at the Learning Technologies Summer Forum yesterday. Like many conferences, there was no shortage of vendors trying to broadcast how their offering is the panacea to organisations’ performance problems. MORE
training Lucy Kellaway’s recent article in the FT “Compliments are always best made behind closed doors” challenges the conventional wisdom that workplace praise is best given in public and criticism in private. Whilst this maxim may be true for the praise giver and receiver, research by Chan & Sengupta “ Observing Flattery: A Social Comparison Perspective ” shows that we need to be careful about the collateral damage to bystanders. MORE
But when used appropriately technology can enhance what happens in the training room (and afterwards). Whenever you use a role play in training this could replace it. trainingFace to face trainers often see technology as threat or replacement of the face to face experience. At the eLearning Network event “A fresh look at elearning”, Julie Wedgwood demonstrated five tools which have great potential and they’re free! MORE
lets you get the train time you have looked up straight into Outlook with just the click of a button. You may have noticed that more and more websites are allowing you to download appointments into your calendar e.g. www.nationalrail.co.uk Though the technology for sending iCalendar files (.ics) ics) from the internet to your Outlook is by no means new, it’s a great example of people thinking through what the user journey is and making smart use of technology to make it effortless. MORE
accountancy e-learning legal trainingFor months I’ve been immersed in the zone where marketing and learning overlap – helping marketers become as confident and astute with digital media as they are with traditional media. Although Marketing and L&D departments tend to attract different types of people, in essence both roles involve communicating in a way that is designed to change people’s behaviour. MORE
accountancy e-learning legal trainingThe last 20 years has seen the evolution of terminology from Computer-Based Learning to e-learning to digital learning (and beyond). One term that has been static is SME (subject matter expert). Given how much the world and technology has changed in that time, is it time for a re-think? One Big Four firm has already started dropping SME as a term for internal L&D projects. MORE
e-learning trainingAs an experienced blended learning designer and judge of the e-learning Awards (recently rebranded as the Learning Technologies Awards), I was invited to appear on TV. As part of the learning designers series, I’ve shared three key tips on blended learning design on LNTV. Spoiler alert – or to whet your appetite – the tips that I’ve explained are: Consider your options. Knit the blend together. Use analytics. MORE
Face to face (F2F) training has sharply decreased owing to Covid. The longer that lockdowns drag on, the more that organisations will question if they ever will return to using F2F training. e-learning training MORE
How effective is virtual classrooms training in comparison with traditional classroom training? e-learning trainingOn 30 May I’ll be chairing an eLearning Network webinar on Ten things you always wanted to know about live online learning but were afraid to ask. I’m pleased to introduce three expert practitioners Mike Collins of Directline @mikecollins007, Phil Green of Olignment @philipgreen and Matt Turner of Brightwave @LiveTimeLearn. MORE
e-learning trainingOne of the best things about working in instructional design is that you get to work with a variety of organisations and ask some of their smartest people about the tricks of their trade e.g. What does best practice look like? What are the common pitfalls? What are the early warning signs that something may not fit the standard process? Much of this involves delving into the heuristics (or rules of thumb) that skilled people use to make effective decisions. MORE
Imagine you are running a training company that has successfully carved out a niche. You’re selling lots of training courses and it’s only capacity that is stopping you from selling more. One day you realise that you could increase reach, lock out competitors and reduce cost of sales if you put some of the training online. Here are five questions that I find many training companies in this situation have failed to ask. e-learning training MORE
Let’s start by recognising a problem inherent to the conventional model of L&D, which I call the “interruption problem” To access L&D’s services, a learner is taken out of their workflow to go to a training course, webinar or e-learning module. the Chairman mandates that everyone does customer service training). paying for off-site training or increasing the immersiveness and media treatment in e-learning). MORE
trainingNow that the festive season is becoming a distant memory and the kids are back at school, the magic fabric of Christmas has begun to fray a bit in the Cole household. And I admit, I’m to blame. Let me try to explain… It all began with me telling my children that if you’re good, Santa will fill your stocking with presents. MORE
e-learning training Last Friday I went to an excellent session of the Trainers and Developers Network led by Catherine Shepherd. In many organisations talent management is siloed away from L&D, but it’s usually helpful to understand more about what your colleagues in HR are doing (and how it interacts with your LMS). Here are my three main takeaways from the day. What is talent management? MORE
p19: 29% see their in-house e-learning as synonymous with compliance training – they are in “the compliance e-learning cul-de-sac” p20: Targeting learning by job role. Useful checklist: “How can we make compliance training more relevant to individuals?” Much of the e-learning that professional firms offer is compliance-based. MORE
If comfortable for this incident to be referred to on a training course or in a face to face presentation, why not in e-learning? accountancy e-learning legal training Learners are used to compliance e-learning. Anyone in a big company is used to having several mandatory modules a year to complete so the game becomes “how can I do this as quickly as I can and get my tick in the box?” MORE
e-learning trainingAt #learning live last week Don Taylor invited us to think about what’s the biggest change that we’ve seen in our experience of L&D. Zooming in on conferences, certainly one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen in the past couple of years is the introduction of a “backchannel” which normally takes the form of a Twitter hashtag that participants are encouraged to use. This is a 10th to add to my 9 ways of designing better conferences. MORE
accountancy e-learning legal training Just when you thought you had enough e-learning buzzwords, curation came along. For those who like definitions “ Content Curation is the act of discovering, gathering, and presenting digital content that surrounds specific subject matter.” ” Content curation evolved as a digital marketing discipline to enhance search engine optimisation and then crossed over into the learning space. MORE
accountancy e-learning legal training MORE
e-learning training At this year’s Learning Technologies show I’ve been invited by the eLearning Network to do a slot on ‘Ask the Expert’ about instructional design. I’ll be at stand 190 from 2-3pm on Wednesday 29 January, answering any questions you might have on instructional design. MORE
e-learning trainingAn update on a post about learning objectives which attracted a healthy amount of support and debate: refinements to that position and what it means in practice for learning designers. One of the richest compilations of high quality thinking is Will Thalheimer’s. MORE
accountancy legal training A really thought-provoking article by Ralf Dobelli (based on a longer essay) about information overload and in particular, news. To pick out some headlines, “news inhibits thinking, kills creativity, makes us passive and wastes time” So if Dobelli’s arguments are valid, why would anyone read or watch the news? One big factor is that everyone consumes news because they think that other important people do. MORE
At first blush it feels like an L&D department with expertise in training should be doing more training. accountancy e-learning legal training MORE
” e-learning training I chose the title for this blogpost because I like the tune , not because I wanted to offend… Anyway, here’s a chain of events that’s been played out in hundreds of organisations. Often it has pretty depressing outcomes, but in case you get too despondent, let me assure you there is a happy ending, especially if you like flowcharts. Management have a problem that they don’t want to or can’t solve personally. So they give a budget to L&D. MORE
accountancy e-learning legal trainingOnce again I had the privilege to judge the e-learning awards (now called the Learning Technology Awards). When I last judged the compliance category two years ago I wrote Five ingredients for compliance e-learning excellence . It was great to see that many of the entries reflected these five ingredients and the general improvement in learner experience. Here are five more top tips that I can share: Do user testing. MORE
e-learning trainingI’ve enjoyed reading Nick Shackleton-Jones’s book “How people learn” and a subsequent talk by him. Although I like the direction that he’s trying to nudge corporate L&D in, I have a few reservations about the ‘science bit’. Whilst I agree that mainstream psychology seems to have gone down a blind alley with experiments testing recall of random things, I doubt Nick’s claim that emotion is the only factor in town when it comes to memory. MORE
He demurred and said that the biggest emotion had been relief – he and Steve Redgrave believed that they were best in the world and had trained so hard that even if they had a bad day they would still win. training At this time of year there’s plenty of times that you’ll hear ‘Happy Christmas’ or ‘Happy New Year’ which got me thinking about the nature of happy. MORE
Training Related Topics From the Coleface
NOVEMBER 2, 2020
Face to face (F2F) training has sharply decreased owing to Covid. The longer that lockdowns drag on, the more that organisations will question if they ever will return to using F2F training. e-learning training
From the Coleface
AUGUST 10, 2020
trainingOver the years I’ve enjoyed/been guilty of reading many self-help books and the lockdown has been an opportunity to read several more. Chris Taylor distils the advice from hundreds of self-help books into 11 pieces of advice: Take one small step. Change your mental maps.
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From the Coleface
DECEMBER 16, 2019
e-learning trainingI’ve enjoyed reading Nick Shackleton-Jones’s book “How people learn” and a subsequent talk by him. Although I like the direction that he’s trying to nudge corporate L&D in, I have a few reservations about the ‘science bit’. Whilst I agree that mainstream psychology seems to have gone down a blind alley with experiments testing recall of random things, I doubt Nick’s claim that emotion is the only factor in town when it comes to memory.
From the Coleface
APRIL 17, 2019
e-learning training UncategorizedEaster holidays. A great time when we break out the board games in the Cole household. A particular favourite is The Game of Life (published by Hasbro). As a learning designer who often creates mini games for business purposes, I’m always interested in the subtext of a game – the behaviours and tactics that get rewarded with points and hence the model of how the world works that the game is implicitly teaching. 10 ways that the world works?
Advertiser: Skilljar
According to Talented Learning, more than 700 LMS vendors compete in today’s learning platforms marketplace. But of course, not all platforms are created equal. In this eBook, Skilljar will discuss the key components of an external training LMS, and why they’re essential for a well-designed customer training program.
From the Coleface
NOVEMBER 15, 2018
accountancy e-learning legal trainingThe last 20 years has seen the evolution of terminology from Computer-Based Learning to e-learning to digital learning (and beyond). One term that has been static is SME (subject matter expert). Given how much the world and technology has changed in that time, is it time for a re-think? One Big Four firm has already started dropping SME as a term for internal L&D projects.
From the Coleface
APRIL 6, 2018
e-learning trainingGDPR is one of e-learning’s hot topics in 2018. Here’s a blog that I co-wrote with Brightwave’s Head of QA on how it will affect L&D managers when they have a breathing space from getting learning to their colleagues about GDPR. link].
From the Coleface
OCTOBER 29, 2015
p19: 29% see their in-house e-learning as synonymous with compliance training – they are in “the compliance e-learning cul-de-sac” p20: Targeting learning by job role. Useful checklist: “How can we make compliance training more relevant to individuals?” Much of the e-learning that professional firms offer is compliance-based.
From the Coleface
NOVEMBER 1, 2017
e-learning trainingAn update on a post about learning objectives which attracted a healthy amount of support and debate: refinements to that position and what it means in practice for learning designers. One of the richest compilations of high quality thinking is Will Thalheimer’s.
From the Coleface
MAY 31, 2017
e-learning trainingIn 1990 Peter Senge published “ The Fifth Discipline ” , giving a compelling vision of how companies could transform into learning organisations. The ideas chime with many L&D professionals, but adoption by business has been patchy.
Speaker: Clark Quinn, Ph.D., Author and Executive Director of Quinnovation
The pandemic and associated upheavals of 2020 has led to both the need and opportunity to rethink how we think, work, and learn. Being forced to distance, we took emergency steps to build mechanisms that supported remote-learning, with an emphasis on elearning and virtual training. The consensus suggests that our existing elearning and training weren’t as well-received as we hoped. Our efforts to rely on elearning more and translate training to virtual experiences weren’t well-designed. The underlying reason is that we’re not well aligned with how our brains really work! In this session, Dr. Quinn will also go over the implications for learning and working effectively both in general and in this new era. Come see what L&D can, and should, do to help transform organizations to work smarter (and wiser).
From the Coleface
JULY 30, 2015
Imagine you are running a training company that has successfully carved out a niche. You’re selling lots of training courses and it’s only capacity that is stopping you from selling more. One day you realise that you could increase reach, lock out competitors and reduce cost of sales if you put some of the training online. Here are five questions that I find many training companies in this situation have failed to ask. e-learning training
From the Coleface
MARCH 11, 2015
” e-learning training Over 15 years of working in L&D (and a dose of studying philosophy of science at university) makes me very alert to the phrase “research says” It is usually followed by an unsubstantiated claim. After all, if you are making a claim that is backed by scientific research it is not hard to include a link, reference or a footnote, so why wouldn’t you?
From the Coleface
JUNE 15, 2016
Formal: Simulations, face to face training. ” accountancy e-learning legal trainingI enjoyed a day out at the Learning Technologies Summer Forum yesterday. Like many conferences, there was no shortage of vendors trying to broadcast how their offering is the panacea to organisations’ performance problems.
From the Coleface
MARCH 21, 2016
e-learning trainingAs an experienced blended learning designer and judge of the e-learning Awards (recently rebranded as the Learning Technologies Awards), I was invited to appear on TV. As part of the learning designers series, I’ve shared three key tips on blended learning design on LNTV. Spoiler alert – or to whet your appetite – the tips that I’ve explained are: Consider your options. Knit the blend together. Use analytics.
Advertiser: Skilljar
On-demand training is a powerful tool you can leverage to support new customer onboarding and ongoing education through the customer lifecycle. In this eBook, we’ll delve into the 3 key benefits of on-demand training for your customer onboarding process.
From the Coleface
SEPTEMBER 9, 2014
e-learning training Last Friday I went to an excellent session of the Trainers and Developers Network led by Catherine Shepherd. In many organisations talent management is siloed away from L&D, but it’s usually helpful to understand more about what your colleagues in HR are doing (and how it interacts with your LMS). Here are my three main takeaways from the day. What is talent management?
From the Coleface
DECEMBER 24, 2014
At first blush it feels like an L&D department with expertise in training should be doing more training. accountancy e-learning legal training
From the Coleface
NOVEMBER 4, 2014
accountancy e-learning legal training
From the Coleface
JANUARY 22, 2014
Let’s start by recognising a problem inherent to the conventional model of L&D, which I call the “interruption problem” To access L&D’s services, a learner is taken out of their workflow to go to a training course, webinar or e-learning module. the Chairman mandates that everyone does customer service training). paying for off-site training or increasing the immersiveness and media treatment in e-learning).
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From the Coleface
JUNE 25, 2013
accountancy e-learning legal training Just when you thought you had enough e-learning buzzwords, curation came along. For those who like definitions “ Content Curation is the act of discovering, gathering, and presenting digital content that surrounds specific subject matter.” ” Content curation evolved as a digital marketing discipline to enhance search engine optimisation and then crossed over into the learning space.
From the Coleface
AUGUST 4, 2014
If comfortable for this incident to be referred to on a training course or in a face to face presentation, why not in e-learning? accountancy e-learning legal training Learners are used to compliance e-learning. Anyone in a big company is used to having several mandatory modules a year to complete so the game becomes “how can I do this as quickly as I can and get my tick in the box?”
From the Coleface
JANUARY 27, 2014
e-learning training At this year’s Learning Technologies show I’ve been invited by the eLearning Network to do a slot on ‘Ask the Expert’ about instructional design. I’ll be at stand 190 from 2-3pm on Wednesday 29 January, answering any questions you might have on instructional design.
From the Coleface
FEBRUARY 15, 2013
As an independent L&D consultant who has expertise in face to face training, e-learning and happens to be a Chartered Accountant with digital marketing experience, Linkedin allows people who are looking for my skillset to find me. I’m often asked the question does Linkedin really help or is it a waste of time? Like most social media it allows us to do things that we do in real life faster, more cheaply, with more reach and more publicly (or with less privacy, if you prefer).
Advertiser: Rosetta Stone
Most global companies are diverse in perspectives, backgrounds, and yes, language. Language barriers can compound existing communication problems, often resulting in business losses. Learn the 9 warning signs your employees need language training today!
From the Coleface
MAY 9, 2013
” e-learning training I chose the title for this blogpost because I like the tune , not because I wanted to offend… Anyway, here’s a chain of events that’s been played out in hundreds of organisations. Often it has pretty depressing outcomes, but in case you get too despondent, let me assure you there is a happy ending, especially if you like flowcharts. Management have a problem that they don’t want to or can’t solve personally. So they give a budget to L&D.
From the Coleface
APRIL 19, 2013
accountancy legal training A really thought-provoking article by Ralf Dobelli (based on a longer essay) about information overload and in particular, news. To pick out some headlines, “news inhibits thinking, kills creativity, makes us passive and wastes time” So if Dobelli’s arguments are valid, why would anyone read or watch the news? One big factor is that everyone consumes news because they think that other important people do.
From the Coleface
JULY 4, 2014
When I was a training manager at a Big Four accountancy firm, I found it bizarre that L&D people in professional services firms did not get together more to compare notes about their challenges and successes when they have so much in common. 7 th July sees the 10 th meeting of the Professional services e-learning forum, an informal networking and benchmarking group for L&D professionals working for the UK’s top 15 accountancy and top 15 law firms.
From the Coleface
DECEMBER 24, 2013
He demurred and said that the biggest emotion had been relief – he and Steve Redgrave believed that they were best in the world and had trained so hard that even if they had a bad day they would still win. training At this time of year there’s plenty of times that you’ll hear ‘Happy Christmas’ or ‘Happy New Year’ which got me thinking about the nature of happy.
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You need a Learning Management System when your courses and training programs need to be accessible online. Quickly build the perfect business case and easily determine which LMS will provide the best return on investment you need with this how-to eBook!
From the Coleface
SEPTEMBER 30, 2013
training Lucy Kellaway’s recent article in the FT “Compliments are always best made behind closed doors” challenges the conventional wisdom that workplace praise is best given in public and criticism in private. Whilst this maxim may be true for the praise giver and receiver, research by Chan & Sengupta “ Observing Flattery: A Social Comparison Perspective ” shows that we need to be careful about the collateral damage to bystanders.
From the Coleface
JANUARY 24, 2013
lets you get the train time you have looked up straight into Outlook with just the click of a button. You may have noticed that more and more websites are allowing you to download appointments into your calendar e.g. www.nationalrail.co.uk Though the technology for sending iCalendar files (.ics) ics) from the internet to your Outlook is by no means new, it’s a great example of people thinking through what the user journey is and making smart use of technology to make it effortless.
From the Coleface
AUGUST 30, 2012
e-learning trainingOne of the best things about working in instructional design is that you get to work with a variety of organisations and ask some of their smartest people about the tricks of their trade e.g. What does best practice look like? What are the common pitfalls? What are the early warning signs that something may not fit the standard process? Much of this involves delving into the heuristics (or rules of thumb) that skilled people use to make effective decisions.
From the Coleface
JANUARY 29, 2012
accountancy e-learning legal trainingFor months I’ve been immersed in the zone where marketing and learning overlap – helping marketers become as confident and astute with digital media as they are with traditional media. Although Marketing and L&D departments tend to attract different types of people, in essence both roles involve communicating in a way that is designed to change people’s behaviour.
Speaker: Trish Uhl, Founder of Owl's Ledge LLC and the Talent & Learning Analytics Leadership Forum
Digital is disrupting every part of an organization's value chain at a record pace, creating a critical need to transform operations and employees' ways of working. Formal training alone can't keep up; it's often too slow, too generic, inconvenient, inefficient, unduly expensive and lacks or lags methods for measuring business-related effectiveness. Trish Uhl show you how to start leveraging Learning Engineering, a multidisciplinary approach that combines modern technology, data analytics, decision science, learning sciences and change management with human-centered engineering design methodologies to ultimately deliver targeted learning outcomes and business results that keep pace with the business and merge learning into the flow of work and lead Digital Adoption.
From the Coleface
JANUARY 10, 2013
trainingNow that the festive season is becoming a distant memory and the kids are back at school, the magic fabric of Christmas has begun to fray a bit in the Cole household. And I admit, I’m to blame. Let me try to explain… It all began with me telling my children that if you’re good, Santa will fill your stocking with presents.
From the Coleface
APRIL 2, 2012
But when used appropriately technology can enhance what happens in the training room (and afterwards). Whenever you use a role play in training this could replace it. trainingFace to face trainers often see technology as threat or replacement of the face to face experience. At the eLearning Network event “A fresh look at elearning”, Julie Wedgwood demonstrated five tools which have great potential and they’re free!
From the Coleface
SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
e-learning trainingAt #learning live last week Don Taylor invited us to think about what’s the biggest change that we’ve seen in our experience of L&D. Zooming in on conferences, certainly one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen in the past couple of years is the introduction of a “backchannel” which normally takes the form of a Twitter hashtag that participants are encouraged to use. This is a 10th to add to my 9 ways of designing better conferences.
From the Coleface
MAY 28, 2012
How effective is virtual classrooms training in comparison with traditional classroom training? e-learning trainingOn 30 May I’ll be chairing an eLearning Network webinar on Ten things you always wanted to know about live online learning but were afraid to ask. I’m pleased to introduce three expert practitioners Mike Collins of Directline @mikecollins007, Phil Green of Olignment @philipgreen and Matt Turner of Brightwave @LiveTimeLearn.
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