Organizational Clarity: “Don’t Clap Throw Money Misadventures in Employee Engagement” article

As you see by my comment from February 10, 2017, had a definite opinion regarding Vince Cyboran’s article “Don’t Clap Throw Money Misadventures in Employee Engagement” on the Roosevelt University RU Training blog site.

“I have, at a past organization endure one of these “pep talks” experience mentioned in this blog and unfortunately, it only caused the morale of myself and my coworkers to go further south. The introduction of just the basic aspects from Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor–Model of Workplace Motivation could have changed, in my eyes, the entire organizational culture.

This post states that hygiene factors do not motivate employees but most of the organizations I have worked, believed that to motivate employees they had to offer free lunches or breakfast donuts, instead of offering raises or bonuses. The introductions of these initiatives were successful at first as most of the employees at the time thought that this was good as a reward they were going to get.

However, with a high turnover rate, there was a constant influx of new employees, plus there was a new hiring requirement in which employees needed a Bachelor’s degree to be hired. These new employees did not favor the idea of the hygiene factors being used as a substitution to monetary or professional motivation factors. Therefore, with these new employees these initiatives quickly failed, but every once in a while, management does fall back upon free lunches or breakfast donuts, as motivators.”

Unfortunately, this still occurs many times over in a lot of different organizations, what happens is that people lowered their expectations of what they desire and organizations go to the level to meet them. Usually because giving their employees with these lowered expectations is better for the organizational bottom line than anything else. Keeping an idea of your professional self-worth, keeping a positive point of view you may get more than what you deserve, and if you do not why should you accept what the organization deems is logical or worthy of you? Maybe that is not a place that you, at the end of the day, deserve to be.

Reference

Vince Cyboran (2015) “Don’t Clap Throw Money Misadventures in Employee Engagement” Roosevelt University February 16, 2015 Retrieved from:

https://rutraining.org/2015/02/16/dont-clap-throw-money-misadventures-in-employee-engagement/

Organizational Clarity: “Game-based Learning to Promote Safety in Hazardous Areas” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “Game-based Learning to Promote Safety in Hazardous Areas” by Ashok Kumar K. Well, this is an article that deals primarily with industries that involve hazardous processes, so the training being interactive with the learners is a step forward than learning on the job.

Because as the article states learners do get bored when they just have to sit and listen to procedures and practices that deal with safety, so to combat this using an immersive learning experience will help.

These are the five aspects in the article that deal with game-based E-Learning training sessions:  

1. Hazards Hunt

2. Simulation Games

3. Gaming Elements

4. Gamified Assessments

5. Provision for Feedback

These last two aspects will tell you if the gaming experience is working with your training program or not, the feedback you gain form your learners will only assist in making your training programs better for the learners and the organization. If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/game-based-learning-to-promote-safety-training

Organizational Clarity: “MP4 – Making Flash-based E-learning Videos Universal” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “MP4 – Making Flash-based E-learning Videos Universal” by Phani Madhav. I must admit I do love MP4 formats when viewing any types of video the quality is close to DVD format and is usable on different types of avenues such as desktops or smartphones.

This article discusses why you should use MP4s to create Flash training programs and use instead of Flash, mainly due to the certain devices cannot use Flash effectively plus you can add subtitles (as mentioned in the article) to the videos which help with multilingual or international audiences.  Keeping the audiences involved and maintaining their interest in the material you are presenting is key so using MP4 format will assist you to avoid presentation problems as mentioned in this article.

These are four other advantages listed in the article when using the MP4 format:

1.       The quality of MP4 videos is near identical to those of original DVD videos 

2.       Content published in the MP4 format can be streamed on mobile devices

3.       Videos published in the MP4 format can be shared very easily on mobiles 

4.       MP4 can be used to develop videos for multilingual learners

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-development/mp4-for-universal-elearning-videos

Organizational Clarity: “25 Creative Image Effects for Stock Photos in E-Learning #156” article

From the Articulate community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “25 Creative Image Effects for Stock Photos in E-Learning #156” by David Anderson.

This article ties 25 projects that emphasizes the use of creative image effects for stock photos when you are using them in the E-Learning process. This allows you to bring the learner’s attention to the object or main idea of the presentation, this helps the learner maintain a visual of the subject matter and retain the knowledge learned at that time.

Each link is simply discussing the methodology or reason each presenter took as they approached this issue, in maintaining the focus of the learner. They are very brief so even though this article gives you a lot of links and examples it is really not that time consuming, you may even find some ideas you can use in your own presentations.

If you want to know more just click the link here:

https://community.articulate.com/articles/image-styles-and-effects-in-elearning

Organizational Clarity: “Less Time? Less Money? Think ELearning Authoring Tools” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “Less Time? Less Money? Think Elearning Authoring Tools” by Aruna Vayuvegula.

In regards to Rapid authoring tools, this article gives you a workable reason why E-learning should be used at your organization along with how easy creating E-Learning for your employees can be. This article also discusses the point where how training employees when there is a high turnover rate in your organization can be a waste of money. Training is an investment, employees are an investment for the organization, and usually a very costly one, so when employees leave in a few months of arriving in the organization it becomes a problem when projecting budgets for not just the training department but the entire organization.

Rapid authoring tools help solve the problem of training new employees by allowing the organization to have training sessions available anywhere and anytime. Establishing E-learning in an organization can take the material covered in existing classroom course content into an online program that the employees can easily access. This cuts down on costs for the training department when it comes to setting up rooms for training sessions, trainers for hours to present the material, etc., this becomes positive when dealing with high turnover rates in an organization.

As this article explains budgets, external factors and other various issues can become a reason for organizations to move towards E-Learning processes, and it gives a compelling argument why your organization should move towards this avenue.

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-development/authoring-tools-for-quick-elearning-development

Organizational Clarity: “Sound Effects in E-learning: Top 8 Sample Music Sites” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “Sound Effects in E-learning: Top 8 Sample Music Sites” by Gitika Nagra. With experienced and novice instructional designers constructing E-learning lessons for their organizations on a budget (we all have them) this article presents eight websites where you can find the music you need to up the level of your E-Learning training sessions.

Realistically, we have all sit in presentations in which a voice just drones on and on talking about the information presented adding music can actually help in keeping the learner's attention. With a little music, even boring subjects can be made to come alive so I would recommend using some of these sites for your E-Learning productions today.

But before you move ahead please take note of the “free” sites, free is always good whether you are working for an organization or self-employed, or even if you are a student creating a project for class, take the free option, FIRST.

These are the eight music websites listed in the article that will allow you to download music from creating your E-Learning training sessions:  

1. freesound.org
2. Free Music Archive (FMA)
3. Audionautix.
4. ibeat.org.
5. PacDV.
6. ccMixter
7. Partners In Rhyme 
8. Audio Archive

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/sound-effects-in-elearning-music-sites

Organizational Clarity: “5 Reasons for Cost And Time Overruns in E-learning Projects” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “5 Reasons for Cost And Time Overruns in E-learning Projects” by Hema Gopalakrishnan. One of the things that are hard to ask about or even discuss in a realistic sense through academic formats is overruns when it comes to costs and time, in academics, concepts of project management run at 100% perfection at all times. In reality, this is not the case, this article briefly discusses five reasons that there are the overruns and why project management is harder than what is explained in a textbook.

These are the five reasons for time and cost overruns in E-Learning projects listed in the article: 

1.       Initiating a project even before the inputs are ready

2.       Quoting in a hurry without having complete knowledge of the project details

3.       Poor planning 

4.       Wrong assumptions on part of both the client and the vendor 

5.       Change of stakeholder or internal teams

Knowing what could go wrong and what could cause overruns will assist you as a project manager to have measures in place to address these issues before they become major problems. Executing E-learning projects is hard enough keeping expectations, sponsors and stakeholders all in line, is a strange, difficult juggling act as it is. But this article may assist you if you face these type of issues in your organization when implementing a program or if you are a project manager just trying to get your project off and running without a whole lot of drama.

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/elearning-projects-cost-and-time-overruns

Organizational Clarity: “15 Examples of Interactive Video Quizzes in E-Learning #15” article

In an article called “15 Examples of Interactive Video Quizzes in E-Learning #15”, the author David Anderson compiled this list of different examples of video used in the E-learning process. Keeping the video being interactive allows the learner to have a visual during the learning process.

This also captivates their attention where simple text or verbal presentations can “bore’ the learner and decrease the effectiveness of the training program. Having a video in the training process also allows the visual type learners to succeed, when most training programs are usually straight forward and presentation related.

Being interactive allows the learner to be a part of the process instead of watching it, to put the solutions or material that they learned to work in a practical way. By practicing through these videos quizzes, this also helps the organization gauge the effectiveness of the training program while it is being implemented.

Here is the hyperlink to “15 Examples of Interactive Video Quizzes in E-Learning”:  https://community.articulate.com/articles/interactive-video-quiz-elearning

Organizational Clarity: “Make Your Software Training Handy with These 10 Job-aids” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “Make Your Software Training Handy with These 10 Job-aids” by Ashok Kumar K.

If you ask me from experience or through the academic side what part of the training I like the most, it’s the job aids, these wonderful companions that a learner can use during and after the training session. Stop the presses and give me the job aid! When you have a Job aid, there is automatic reinforcement for the subject material covered in the training session(s).

Usually, training sessions will have one or two learners that get bored and have a hard time retaining the information covered, as a complement to E-Learning software or group trainings or even trying to help them comprehend the “hard” parts of a training program. This article gives you 10 formats and a brief description of the format so that you the reader can make the right decision of the type of format you want to use for your future training job aids.

 These are the 10 Job Aid formats listed in the article:  

1.   Step-by-Step Worksheets/Forms
2.   Flowcharts
3.   Checklists
4.   FAQs
5.   Microlearning Modules
6.   Shortcut Sheets
7.   User Guides
8.   Online Help Forums
9.   Infographics
10.   Mnemonics

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/training-solutions/job-aids-for-software-training

Organizational Clarity: "Can Organizations Benefit from Mobile Learning?” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “Can Organizations Benefit from Mobile Learning?” By Darshan Dudhagundi. Mobile learning has become an increasingly better option for organizations because of the options it brings in regards to accessibility and mobility.

An employee can access an organization’s E-Learning materials anytime, any place although I believe it is a hard sell only because most employees defend their time away from work, or when they are off the clock as sacred. Therefore, getting employees to use mobile learning is a 50/50 gamble, however, I think with added incentives employees would readily use mobile learning than spend a day in a classroom or in a larger arena for an all-day training event.

These are the five organizational benefits gained by using mobile learning:

1.       Improved consistency in training

2.       Improved completion rates and information retention

3.       Improved on-the-job support

4.       Improved productivity with better retention of information

5.       Reduced investment in infrastructure

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-development/mobile-learning-benefits-to-organizations

Organization Clarity: when you choose your career path

When it comes to selecting your career path it, as this article states, is based off of us, as individuals comparing ourselves against the success of others (Sonenshein, 2017). Also, cultural influences play a part of the individual, as the article states, chasing goals that are not their own. We look at others in our peer groups or even outside as standards of success when we should actually look and identify with what we are comfortable with.

Most of the time psychologically we are not equipped to do the things that the individuals we consider a success have done in the process of being a success. Sometimes we are not even emotionally able to handle the amount of rejections, losses or even critique that come with these career paths. Some people can handle the 24/7/365 high-speed corporate world and looking from the outside this may seem like a standard of success due to the money made and respect garnered, however the daily grind to making this possible is not acceptable or possible.

Either due to the lack of emotional intelligence or even a lack of professional skills as you see I mention multiple variables that constantly rear its ugly head to determine if an individual is able to handle a particular career path. You may want to be the next president of the United States, when if you take into account all of your psychological needs, and capabilities you may be happier being as a blogger! 

In essence, when you choose your career path just take a really good look at yourself, not someone else, to determine if you are putting all your time and energies into the right field. Culture, friends, and family may tell you one thing but in the end, they are not paying your bills, dealing with the struggles in your professional life, nor are they the ones who live with this decision every moment of every day. Reflecting upon yourself will allow you to be happier in your occupation but also you will save yourself time, money and a whole lot of stress!

Sonenshein, Scott (2017) Why Do People Chase the Wrong Career Paths? February 15, 2017 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc http://www.huffingtonpost.com/quora/why-do-people-chase-the-w_b_14749038.html

The Human Performance Improvement YouTube playlist.

Recently I was introduced to Human Performance Improvement this includes such topics as: Organizational Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, Environmental analysis, Fish bone diagram and Gap Analysis

So I decided to make a YouTube channel called “Human Performance Improvement” for now to cover some the terminology within this area of organizational study. For now, I have only 8 videos here is the hyperlink for the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl128ljkxUxpsOmRhN419qn30n30AeTs3

The playlist covers these videos:

• Human Performance Improvement in 90 seconds by Michael Cuomo
• Organizational Analysis Chapter 5 by Michael Nugent
• What is a Fish bone diagram? by Askme.com
• Cause and Effect Analysis: How to Create Fishbone Diagrams to Solve Problems
• How to do a GAP Analysis by Martha Begley Schade
• 5 Whys: Root Cause Analysis and Problem Solving EMS Consulting Group
• Environmental analysis – defined by B2Bwhiteboard
• Human Performance Improvement by Tim Rooney

You will, of course, find video descriptions after you click on the video hyperlink, but rest assured these are all videos that are Organizational Change and Organizational Development related I tried not to pick video presentations that were too “dry” but some of them tend to get that way. So I apologize in advance but happy viewing!

Organizational Clarity: “PowerPoint '13: Whimsical Course Template” free download

From the Articulate community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “PowerPoint '13: Whimsical Course Template” by Trina Rimmer for a free download.

This Microsoft PowerPoint presentation download was made with the 2013 version of PowerPoint made up of fourteen slides and would give any presentation or training session, a great look and feel to it.

Although it's free, this download contains great characters, icons, layouts and presentations of multiple uses. This is just one of those free downloads that have a lot of thought put behind it, to the point that it looks very professional as if done by the Microsoft Corporation itself

If you want to know more and download this PowerPoint just click the link here:

https://community.articulate.com/download/powerpoint-13-whimsical-course-template?

Organizational Clarity: "A Step by Step Guide to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to E-learning" article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “A Step by Step Guide to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to E-learning” By Darshan Dudhagundi. Need a quick guide to create some E-Learning courses quick and cheap but you only know how to make Microsoft PowerPoint presentations? This article is a step-by-step guide to make that possible, create an E-learning course from a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation before you do so there are six steps to complete before uploading the file to a Learning Management System.

The six steps to complete before uploading:

1.       Gather and Organize the Content in a Logical Flow

2.       Set Measurable Learning Objectives

3.       Fill Gaps in the Content

4.       Formulate Instructional, Visual, and Audio Strategies and Decide the Interaction Level

5.       Choose the Right Rapid Authoring Tool

6.       Convert the Presentation to an E-learning Course Using the Tool and Thoroughly Test the Output

This article mentions Rapid Authoring Tools you can use, along with links to other articles discussing the right Rapid Authoring Tool for you and your organization, that can be used to convert your PowerPoints to an e-learning course for future use.

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/guide-to-convert-ppt-into-elearning

Organizational Clarity: “3 Best Practices of Training Customers through E-learning” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email I received was a link to: “3 Best Practices of Training Customers through E-learning” by Gitika Nagra.

To get customers informed or on board with the products and/or services that your organization provides E-training them upon the benefits of purchasing or using what your organization offers. To do this effectively E-Learning as briefly stated in this article provides three methodologies for training.  Although it is more of informing than training, and I would make sure that is expressed because the last thing a customer wants to feel is that they are being “trained” when they want to purchase or use a service. 

The accessibility of these three options allows the customer to further research products and services before use to see how they “fit” for the customer’s needs and wants. Having them as tools to express the benefits of the being a customer of the organization, not only benefits the customer but the organization. These are the three practices listed in the article that will allow you to help train your customers through E-Learning:  

1.       Video-based Learning

2.       Microlearning

3.       Simulation-based Learning

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/customers-training-through-elearning-best-practices

Organizational Clarity: “6 Factors to Consider When Outsourcing Your Online Training” article

From the CommlabIndia community is an article from easy, cheap solutions to meet organizational needs. In an email, I received a link to: “6 Factors to Consider When Outsourcing Your Online Training” By Ashok Kumar K.  Sometimes organizations are able to afford to outsource parts of the training and development activities to third parties so that the main core training programs can be focused upon and developed further.

It has been my experience that usually, this is due to either budget constraints or even staffing issues in the training and development department. But before committing to a third party for outsourcing even one activity to an external company there are six factors that this author believes should be considered.

The six factors to consider when outsourcing for eLearning are:

1.       Decide the Scope of Outsourcing

2.       Measure the Outcomes

3.       Research Training Vendors Thoroughly

4.       Take Small Steps

5.       Take a Call on Control

6.       Build a Relationship

If you want to know more just click the link here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/outsource-online-training-factors

Organizational Clarity: Hurricane Awareness does your Organization have it?

In an article from the Articulate community, one of the examples that they use for their Rise program is a website called: “Hurricane Safety: Are You Prepared to Weather the Storm?” Now it is a great example of what the product can do however it is a great to prepare organizations located in hurricane prone areas. One of the things Organizational Development deals with when trying to combat a lack of production is external factors, and the weather is a major external factor!

I worked for one organization that had at least five sites in Florida and one in Chicago, every time during Hurricane season it seemed that the organization just did not have a plan for backing up the official duties of the employees employed in the Florida sites. There was always this season of chaos that went hand in hand with the Hurricane Season, everyone scurried around to figure out how the Chicago location employees would handle the employee duties of the affected sites.

In other words, if the East side of Florida was affected by a major hurricane this would mean at least three sites would be affected and therefore the employees in Chicago for every department would have to handle their workload and that of at least three other employees. I believe this is because the organization just did not have the right information on how to deal with a Hurricane, this website has tons of information regarding hurricanes! In fact, this website could be a great tool for helping employees and the organization on the proper procedures of evacuation and proper storage of the organizational property and equipment.

Although it would not cover the practical solution of dividing organizational operations over more geographical locations, most organizations cannot afford it nor have the organization culture to allow this to happen.

If you want to know more about Hurricane preparedness or maybe try to create something for your organization just click the link here:

http://articulate-heroes-authoring.s3.amazonaws.com/Trina/View%20this%20in%20action/hurricane-safety-are-you-prepared-to-weather-the-storm-scorm12-zIWw5Oi9/scormcontent/index.html#/?_k=cktn7x

Organizational Clarity: “Getting Started with E-Learning”article

In an article called “Getting Started with E-Learning”, the author discusses briefly different concepts such as:

• Understanding Key Concepts and Terms
• Creating E-Learning
• Your First Project
• Getting Familiar with Mobile Learning
• Connect with the E-Learning Heroes Community

Each section is interactive, and has a link that leads to more information regarding the concept you are more inclined to learn more about. Here is the hyperlink to “Getting Started with E-Learning”: 

https://community.articulate.com/articles/getting-started-with-e-learning