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The Bob Pike Group
14530 Martin Drive
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Free Open Source Learning Content Coming By Liz Wheeler Free Open Source Learning Content Coming
The Learning CONSORTIUM is launching an open-source learning project. “Volunteers from dozens of our corporate members are working together to create free, reusable learning content on two topics: Working Virtually with Teams and Better On-Line Search Techniques,” said Elliott Masie in his Learning TRENDS email. When developed, all content and modules will be in the public domain for any organization to use or modify. For more information, go to masie.com.
Training Tax Credit Bill Introduced
A Senate bill entitled "Competitiveness through Education, Technology, and Enterprise (COMPETE) Act of 2007" was introduced March 9. The bipartisan bill provides a tax credit for information and communications technology training as well as advantages for small business and grad students in science and technology. The tax credit also applies to companies utilizing tech training, up to $4,000 per employee, according to the American Society for Training and Development. An Illinois representative introduced a similar bill in the House.
Soon-to-be Tech Trends
A new report identifies six emerging technology trends expected to have broad adoption in higher education within the next one to five years. The six trends, from the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE report titled 2007 Horizon Report, include user-created content and social networking (within the next year or sooner), mobile phones and virtual worlds (two to three years), new scholarship and emerging forms of publication, and massively multiplayer educational gaming (four to five years). The report notes that while user-created content and social networking are already common on campus, their significance to education is just being realized by school leaders. One of the critical challenges addressed by the report was the difficult of assessing the value of new technologies for training such as gaming. “Both at the student and at the professional level, assessment is lagging behind creative work. Learning that takes place in interdisciplinary, context-rich environments such as games and simulations is still difficult to evaluate,” the report said. New Study shows Corporate Social Networking Trends in Talent Management
Overused words banned from English
Stress from a computer screen? If learners are motivated, they retain more information. But can you extrinsically motivate your session attendees? Is it possible?
“While you can’t make your participants be motivated, you can create a motivating environment,” said Becky Pluth, vice president of training and development at The Bob Pike Group. Research shows that interacting with your learners “is one of the most powerful factors in promoting learning” while “interactions among learners is another” (Angelo 1993). And teachers who present the information in a dynamic manner and display a genuine interest in what they Getting people to use learning resources in the company library can be tricky, Kathleen Miller-Buettner and Susan Hayley-Gates say.
Their library has books, videos and audio tapes on communication skills, management skills, balancing work and home lives, and dozens of other topics.
But, as in many organizations, the materials once went mostly unused.
To encourage corporate library use—and learning—the training department initiated a TOM (theme of the month) Club. Membership is free. Each month has a topical theme – effective feedback, industry information and the like. Trainers, however, don’t disclose what the month’s theme is. Instead they post clues throughout the office and via email on the first day of each month. Employees guess the theme, placing their guess in one of the special TOM Club raffle boxes around the workplace. |
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